Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Number 2 | Page 45
Low Brow to High Brow and
the Entertainment Industry
Kevin Doyle
Kevin Doyle [US/IE] is a writer and director of interdisciplinary theatre and film working between
the United States and European Union. A graduate of the Drama Studies program at Purchase
College (SUNY), he serves as artistic director of Sponsored By Nobody, an international theatre
company based in Brooklyn, NY. He has won several honors in the United States and abroad,
including a USArtists International Award, a Saari Fellowship Award (Finland), Artist in Residence
at the Watermill Center, and grants from the Asian Cultural Council, CEC ArtsLink (New York), and
the Svenska Instituet (Stockholm). He conceived and directed the interdisciplinary theatre project
W.M.D. (just the low points), which premiered at The Game Is Up! Festival in Vooruit (Gent).
He is developing THE AЯTS, a theatrical deconstruction on the history of arts funding, as recipient
of the 2017 IMPACT Residency Award from the Drama League of New York and LaGuardia
Performing Arts Center (http://www.sponsoredbynobody.com).
During the closing days of October ����, Americans from all across the
United States assembled in Washington, D.C. to offer testimony before the
Special Subcommittee on the Arts. Senators and Representatives from both
major political parties heard arguments and justifications for establishing
the public funding of the arts in the United States. Investment in science
served as one recurring comparison. The arts deserved funding because the
government had placed so much emphasis on material support for math
and science in the post-WWII period that American culture was lacking. A
second common argument was one of equality; citizens living in Minnesota
or Kentucky deserved the same access to the best of the arts and culture that
citizens living in New York City. Other arguments arose during the hearings
over the course of that week, but the tenuous distinction made then between
“high art” and “low art”, or highbrow and lowbrow, has been overlooked and
misunderstood.
Most historians and critics have interpreted these
issues as a debate between which art forms deserved
federal funding. Indeed, there was a tension
between “high art”—classical music, theatre, opera,
dance, and independent cinema—and “low art”—
folk arts, crafts, popular music, and urban/street
44
doi: ��.�����/aia.�.�.�