- In both Hampton Roads and Richmond, the debate has been joined about funding for the arts.

We'll consider that debate on our place, our time.

We'll also profile artist and iat and look at the Virginia stage company's treatment of a 20th century classic.

Hello, I'm Vian Webb.

Welcome to our place, our time, whatever you might think of the government's role in funding the arts.

Whenever you visit our state capitol of Richmond, you're constantly reminded that governments declare and remember their ideals by means of art.

Thomas Jefferson's noble design for our state capitol building embodies everyone's ideals of the Republican form of elected government.

The walls of that state capitol building are crowded with famous portraits of historical figures and in the gardens there are statues of those figures and statues of symbols that guide and lead us even today.

What brings these thoughts to mind is that right now in Richmond, there's a debate going on in what role the government should fund the arts and to what extent Tim Morton reports.

- We are faced with nearly a $2 billion shortfall, the largest in our state's history and one of the most severe in the nation.

And if I accomplish any one thing during my tenure, I want to be certain that we continue to insist upon fiscal discipline and now is not the time to initiate new programs or to expand discretionary spending and existing programs.

Accordingly.

- You get the idea.

The financial state of the commonwealth is doleful.

Every state agency and department is having to cut its budget.

Virginia Museum, we went to Richmond to hear the story of one state agency, the Virginia Commission of the Arts.

It was Arts Advocacy Day.

- I'm the vice chair of the Virginia Commission for the Arts and we are hosting with Arts Alliance Associates of Virginia and Arts Advocacy Day to call attention to the importance of the arts in Virginia and also obviously to pay, pay attention to the fact that our budget's been cut by 80%.

- My organization personally has gone from around $90,000 down to about 67 and it's expected to zero out next year or get a very small amount of funding.

If we stay at a million - Of the effects are probably greater in the rural areas because for the most part rural areas, if they're served at all by arts organizations, they're small arts organizations, mostly volunteer and when cuts come, there's nothing to cut but programs, therefore you, you feel it right away.

- About 150 supporters of the arts from around Virginia are here.

They fanned out now and are meeting with their delegates and senators over on Capitol Hill.

Meanwhile, members of the Virginia Commission of the Arts are meeting here at the Valentine Museum discussing how they can make the cuts.

The governor has ordered the cuts.

The governor has ordered amount to the largest of any state agency.

More than 80% of the commission's budget over its 23 year history.

The Virginia Commission of the Arts has made more than 15,000 grants to arts groups and individual artists throughout Virginia.

Its state appropriation.

This year was $5.2 million.

Governor Wilder has recommended that it be cut to $1 million.

The 13 member commission is appointed by the governor.

The members representing different regions of the state.

A Hampton Roads representative on the commission is Norfolk lawyer, Bob Brown.

- Even before the cuts, we were only appropriating for the Virginia Commission, about 86 cents a person for the arts at a million dollars state appropriation.

We're down to less than two bits.

It's only 16 cents per person.

It it's, it's an insult to the integrity of Virginia to say that we can't as a state, as a commonwealth, the common good.

That's what Commonwealth is all about, to support the arts at a fair level.

- Ms.

Peggy Bagot is the executive director of the commission.

You told your commission today that these budget cuts are going to cause a major revision of how this agency operates.

What do you mean by that?

- We're gonna be eliminating whole categories of funding.

Over the years, we've built up a variety of various funding categories to address different needs in the arts and one of the things that we talked about today is which one of those programs will be the ones to go was a very painful discussion.

We will maintain general operating support for nonprofit organizations.

We'll maintain a local government matching grant program, a touring program, artist residencies in elementary and secondary schools, but a number of our other programs will be going out.

The project grants for organizations, our prizes for individual artists, salary assistance for arts organizations.

In effect, what this means is that any startup ventures will just not be receiving any funding from the commission.

In the future, we'll be lucky to keep the arts organizations we have in the state going - Focus on Hampton Roads.

For me, how will it affect the larger organizations that we have in the urban areas - Where the Hampton Roads area is gonna really feel these cuts is next year the three large performing arts institutions, the opera, the symphony, and the stage company would've been eligible for $150,000.

We're now talking about cutting general operating support by 80% and that makes a big difference in their budget and it's coming at the worst possible time.

Corporate contributions are starting to go down, although individual contributions haven't yet gone into a nose dive.

If we go into a major recession, we'll see a decrease in that.

Almost all of the arts organizations around the state are reporting that their earned income from ticket sales, gift shops, whatever they do to earn money is down.

People are scared about the recession and they're cutting back on their family spending - Around the Arts Commission's office, we looked at posters, displaying arts events.

The commission has helped with grants over the years.

There were operas, history and literary programs, plays, art shows, ballets and musical events from folk to classical among many others.

You have been executive director of this agency 10 years and you were with it before then.

- That's correct.

- Tell me about yourself - Personally.

Yeah, well try to keep the agency going as best we can rebuild the programs plan for the future when the economy turns around, we've got broad support in the legislature and I think the legislators would like when times turn to be able to direct more funding to the arts.

But the economic situation is critical in the state right now.

We haven't seen anything like this in many, many years, certainly not since I've even been living in the state - Crossing the capitol grounds.

We had to pause before the statue of the late Harry Byrd senior and wonder what the champion of fiscal responsibility and pay as you go would have to say about Virginia's present financial condition with Bob Brown.

We went to visit the Norfolk legislative caucus, house majority leader Tom Moss chaired a meeting at which the cause of the arts was one of several causes.

- I think that the arts would not be a top priority up here right now.

The problem that we have is that we can't even fund health coverage.

There are people that are homeless and when you have that situation, you have to prioritize.

We recognize the cultural aspects of the art and what it means to this area, but we also know what it means for a person to have to sleep on the street.

I say we know, but we know this happens.

And so we are going to try our very best to restore as much as we can of the our funds, not to the fullest extent, but perhaps relieve the disparity a little bit.

- I would, the best they could do would maybe get another million, million and a half into that, that, that, that agency.

Is there a - Chance for that?

- Well, there's always a chance for it.

It depends on how the other committees review that budget and where they can find any, find any money that can be shifted there.

Where does - The - Lawrence h FRA is the Secretary of Economic Development to whom the Virginia Commission of the Arts reports in the governor's Cabinet - Arts fits in.

It was placed in the secretariat when the Secretary of Economic Development was created four years ago because the arts do have an impact on our economic development.

Whether that's a permanent home for it, I don't know.

- There are about 125 people representing the arts up here today and the legislators are telling them they're gonna try to restore some of that money, maybe two and a half million rather than the million the governor has proposed.

What do you think?

Are the legislators just saying that today?

What are the chances of that?

- The issue comes down if changes are going to be made in the proposed budget to increase the funding for any agency, we've got to come up or the legislature has to come up with a place to take that money.

If you're gonna put more in Art's Pocket, you gotta pick somebody else's pocket.

And the question is, can you afford to pick a pocket in worker safety in mine, safety in health and human resources.

That's the question that the legislature has to deal with.

- Is that a copy of the budget?

In Old Harry's Grip, I - Just as mastership designer William Francis Gibbs so carefully considered nature's elements during his 50 year career designing ships.

So does the Mariners Museum explore the diverse elements that made up America's noted naval architect and marine designer William Francis Gibbs.

- People walk into a museum and expect to see the artifacts and they expect to see the all of the things that are left over from careers and that sort of thing.

But sometimes by seeing the actual footage and the man himself on board the vessel makes a big difference.

So we're always trying to bring it alive and make it have some reality.

- And the reality of William Gibbs life became over 6,000 naval and commercial vessel designs between the years 1915 and 1967 when he died during World War ii, about 70% of the tonnage that was launched was of Gibbs design.

He planned light cruisers, destroyers, escorts, landing ships, and the workhorse of the Naval Fleet Liberty ships.

Throughout his life, Gibbs held a prevailing concern for safety, especially fire prevention.

In 1936, he designed the world's most powerful fireboat, the firefighter, which is still used in New York's harbor today, and the need to forge ahead through iccs was met in Gibbs innovative icebreaker design.

But William Gibbs greatest achievement came in the creation of the Super liners, SS America and his lifelong dream.

The SS United States, the largest passenger ship ever built in America at the Newport News shipbuilding in dry dock in 1952.

The gallery even includes the design tools used to plan the ship.

This sexton, a navigational tool was used by the last master of the Superliner SS United States.

Commodore Leroy Alexander.

- We used to cross the ocean in four days and eight hours and she ran just like a train.

But regardless of when we docked in New York, Mr.

Gibbs was always on the dock sea, always on the dock.

Seas arrive.

- The Gibbs Gallery is the latest permanent addition to the Mariners Museum.

In Newport News.

I'm Holly O'Neill reporting.

- Ann Aat grew up in Syracuse, New York and graduated from Syracuse University.

She received her master's degree in art from the University of Michigan, and then in 1971 she moved to Virginia Beach and became the first full-time faculty member in art at Tidewater Community College.

As an artist, IAT works in the conventional mediums of oils and watercolors and in the unconventional mediums of computer imaging and book art.

In fact, one of her books was just recently added to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, contributing producers Carol Rand and Tom Hudson.

Tell us about the contrasting modes of the Ann Aats work.

- This all night copy center seems an unlikely spot for making art, but for Anne iat, it's a studio where she can access inner symbols.

Art is teacher and administrator at Tidewater Community College.

I describes how she came to use copiers and computer generated images.

- I was drawing on the television.

Someone suggested that one could do this and in fact, it's addictive.

You can draw with what is a liquid line of light and you can change it instantaneously.

You can record it, you can reproduce it, you can modify it.

It's like having a sketchbook that's alive.

Absolutely wonderful.

I came to where I wanted to make printouts of these kinds of images.

I found that I could buy a printer, but the format wasn't large enough for me, so I took it to a color copier and I began using the things that a color copier has to offer this process.

- But before you get to the color copier, you use a little biology box with glass that's painted.

Would you tell me about that?

- Well, yes.

It was a failed design experiment for my classes years ago.

I had taken several pieces of glass about six by eight inches each, maybe 11 of those, and painted on them with acetate ink, which is sort of like using nail polish, a little more translucent, just random small dabs of paint.

I took them to the color copier and overlaid plate over plate at different angles, et cetera, and began enlarging.

And I noticed that of course what you're getting is exactly what the camera sees.

So what you get is what it sees, but you have already fed it some particular information and you are making selections.

It's a collaboration, clearly, it's a collaboration.

If you can manage to enlarge something, something like 8,000 times or percent, then these strange marks begin in their overlapping to form imagery.

An imagery, which I began to notice really related to my personal imagery - Of all the art you make, your book art is the most political, not only by right of structure, which challenges traditional formats of books, but also by its controversial subject matter.

- That's right.

There are many things that you can challenge.

The format, of course in every way, the turning of pages in the sense of time, the notion of sequence and series, visual material and how it's incorporated with text, et cetera.

One of the books that I made that very recently I've been most interested in is a really a small model of a janssen's history of art, a standard text, you know, used across the country in art history courses.

And I made it exactly 4% of the original size of the text.

The reason being that he had given over in his third edition space exactly 4% of the space of the book to women artists, 20 women artists is who he named.

And so in my version of it, I've written a letter to him.

This is of course Johnson Jr.

Written a letter to him and asked him if he needs more names that I certainly have a long list.

I'd be glad to send - The watercolor studies that you do in the Adirondacks every summer, brim with a certain reverence for nature and accordingly seemed very contradictory to the mechanically produced images that you make in other parts of your art.

How do you reconcile the difference in the two?

- Do I have to reconcile them?

I don't even try.

I just do what comes next.

Remember, my idea here is that I go to the Adirondacks to regenerate myself after a year of teaching among other things.

And nature in its utterly outrageous generosity offers me something that excites me.

And in the process of making a statement about it, I'm dealing with light.

I'm dealing with that same energy, which in fact is if you want to put them together the same as the computer, the computer is dealing in little pieces of energy and it's light again.

And I find order in both places.

I find freedom in both places to work.

I don't see them as being so different, only superficially.

As you said, - Computer images are met with resistance, not only by the public, but within the art community itself.

What causes the skepticism - Change?

For one thing, it's difficult any time to introduce a brand new medium.

And it is a quite new medium in the hands of artists, I think.

And I think they have some of the same basic objections that Plato had to writing and reading overall that we wouldn't use our memories, that we may be constructing something outside of our minds, which in fact was not real, was not true, did not in any way come near the purity that he was seeking.

This medium after all, like television, like video is very potent.

Anything that can in fact influence our sense of reality is very potent.

It can be abused, it can be used very powerfully.

Again, may I quote Faye Lin Faye said, you can make an image by pushing the button or you can push the button with technology and do us all in - Several of our broadcasts of our place.

Our time have been preempted in the past two weeks so that we could bring you the debate preceding and the events occurring in the Persian Gulf.

And so many of you may have missed our next story and we'd like to bring it to you again because we think it's timely and still very important.

The Virginia Stage Company has just opened a new production of Samuel Beckett's play waiting for Gadot.

It's been almost 40 years since Gau played for its first audiences in Paris and it befuddled and enthralled those Parisian audiences.

It's been called one of the leading plays of the 20th century.

Mike Sinclair visited a rehearsal at the Virginia Stage Company to pursue the meaning of waiting for Gado - Extrapolations.

Our relaxations, - Samuel Becketts waiting for Gadot was first performed in Paris in 1953.

Once considered on the cutting edge of the avant-garde waiting for Gadot is now taught in colleges and high schools as a classic.

This week, just over a year after Beckett's death, the Virginia stage company's artistic Charles Towers has decided to take another look at Gado.

- Yeah, sometimes I wish he he'd never been taught in college.

It's a play.

It's a play that's meant to be performed.

It's a very funny, alive, vibrant play that apparently perplexed audiences in the early fifties when it was first done here.

But I think the world has changed quite a bit since the early fifties and and I don't think it's perplexing anymore.

Is it still relevant?

Well, yes.

That's what makes a classic.

It makes it relevant.

Is it, is it still cutting edge?

No.

No.

I suppose it's not cutting edge.

I suppose it really was in the fifties and it's not now.

Is it still brilliant?

Yes.

It's it's a remarkable piece.

I've studied it.

I thought I knew it and each day that I work on it, it's like unfolding, taking layers off an onion or something.

There's more and more richness.

- Let's just do the tree for balance the tree.

- There have been volumes of criticism written about Gadot Scholars have poured over the pages searching for hidden meaning at some performances.

A study guide accompanies the program to make this production accessible.

Towers is allowing beckett's words to speak for themselves.

- You think God sees me?

- It's a play.

We're treating it like a play.

We pick up the script, we look at the script, we work on it.

We, we ask ourselves, what about this makes it come to life?

What doesn't make it come to life?

What's funny, what's not funny?

All those basic questions.

And, and in doing so, I hope will breathe freshness into it because we, we don't have a philosophy behind.

It is not some sort of philosophical stance we're taking.

I think it's about the human condition.

I think it's about people picking up this play is really like picking up a piece of music.

He gives you rhythm, he gives you shape, he gives you style.

And, and unlike many plays where you sort of cross the stage directions out because they're left over from somebody else's old production and you wanna create your own.

He has carefully shaped so much of the, the movement and, and which is unique.

The actual action that is, that occurs comes from his imagination.

- This show brings scenic and lighting designer Pavel d Bruski, back to the Wells Theater d Bruski designed sets for Macbeth, the Tempest and Lia liaison.

Deja Ros is designed for cado breaks with tradition and through the wells proscenium.

- We wanted to get away from some sort of barren landscape, which is he never, Beckett never calls for, he says a country road.

And whether he means that literally or not, it doesn't matter.

But, so it's kind of black and sandy color was out for us.

And, and we really, so we started with some color of, of and, and a piece of the earth.

Somehow we wanted it to be on a piece of the earth.

And so we have this sort of swelling on the stage, which is a, a little spot of earth and it is actually sort of greenish and the figures in their dark clothing and bowler hats will stand out, I think from them even more.

And the road, which is such an important piece of the play, instead of running right and left, actually comes from the back of the theater.

And then right out through the house, - Beckett's, precise scripting, repetition of language and use of long pauses makes the play technically very difficult.

Towers cast Doug, mark Kennan and Nesbit Blazedale to breathe life into the two tramps, estrogen.

And Vladimir, - I found the thing that was, that was very helpful for me was to read it really fast.

Just read it as fast as I could.

'cause then you start getting the flow.

I mean that's how, that's how this, there's a lot of one-liner, one liner, one liner, one liner, one liner pause.

And it's like I was saying about the way Beckett writes, these pauses are very specific.

We have reflections, we have prolonged reflections, we have pauses and we have silences.

And they're all sort of just slightly different lengths, but they're all important for what they are.

- Our job is to find a meaning that is logical to these characters so that the audience therefore can, if they wish, can enjoy and come out with a, with a, with a, a message or a, an experience, perhaps that's a better word.

The experience that these characters have gone through.

Native of - These, the play tells the story of what happens while two men wait for a Mr.

Au.

But who is this Mr.

Au and what does he represent?

Scholars have debated for years, and Beckett was conspicuously silent on the subject.

Will you let him alone?

- Mr.

Gado told me to tell you he won't be coming this evening, but surely tomorrow.

- I don't know.

I'm just waiting for him.

I don't know who he is personally.

I wouldn't recognize him if I saw him.

- He is not God.

- No, - He is not the man around the corner.

He is symbolic in some kind of meaningfulness in life.

Now that's not going to help much.

But if you can visualize somebody who lives down the road that you've never seen before, that has something perhaps that you don't have and you don't know what that is and that, but you might think that that might give you something in life that you lack.

Now, perhaps that's who Gado is.

- I think everyone has their own gau.

- See, disagreeing with me already.

- That's what I think.

Sorry.

- Waiting for Gadot has become a classic nearly 40 years after its first production.

Beckett's play still resonates with meaning, but what meaning does Towers want his audience to come away with?

You're - Not unhappy.

- I can't answer that.

I, if I could answer that, I wouldn't have to do the play.

I, I could just talk about it.

I, I I think it's really all going into the, into the experience of, of the event.

It's an event.

It is a a a kind of to go to a Beckett playing, particularly this one is, is a theatrical event.

And, and I think they'll leave with what, whatever it is that we finally achieved on the stage.

And I, and I think it should be quite exciting.

- Waiting for Gado Opens at the Wales Theater on January 11th and runs through January 27th.

- He's considered one of the busiest musicians in Hampton Roads, organist, conductor, and teacher.

Next week on our program, we'll profile Donald McCulloch, founder and now director of two choruses.

We'll also explore the 200 year old history of Fort Norfolk, which some consider to be the city's best kept secret.

Thank you for watching.

For our place our time, I'm Vian Webb.

Partial funding for our place, our Times Made possible by grants from the Arts Commissions of the cities of Virginia Beach and Chesapeake.

From the Virginia Commission for the Arts and from the Arts Commissions of the cities of Newport News, Norfolk Hampton and Williamsburg.