Sister Mary Ignatius Isn’t Happy : Costa Mesa city fathers as drama critics? It’s a laugh

Who decides issues of censorship in the arts? This is one of the questions at the heart of the National Endowment for the Arts controversy.

In Costa Mesa, the City Council adopted a home-grown arts policy that precludes the use of grant money for “obscene matters,” and in doing so, invited any number of debates about the merits of this artwork or that.

Just as feared, the controversial arts policy already is putting a chill on the arts in a city that has deemed itself Orange County’s “city of the arts”--a title that has become a joke.

Acting on the objections of a few residents, the City Council ordered the city attorney to investigate charges that a current production of Christopher Durang’s “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You” at the Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse violates another aspect of the city’s policy, which prohibits the use of grant money for “the conduct of any religious or political activity.”

Now any person who doesn’t like a particular play, artwork or other form of artistic expression can urge the city to withhold grant money from the organizations sponsoring such works by labeling it “obscene” or a “political or religious activity.”

There’s no question that “Sister Mary Ignatius” takes a brutal, satirical look at Catholic dogma, and some will be offended by its approach. But the city attorney has better things to do with his time than act as a theater critic and censor.

There is some better news: The Independent Commission set up by Congress to resolve the controversy over NEA grants unanimously agreed to oppose statutory restrictions on the kinds of art that the agency can support. It also urged NEA Chairman John E. Frohnmayer to rescind a requirement that grant recipients certify that they will not produce an obscene work.

In Costa Mesa, the commission’s recommendation can be expected to do little to quell the controversy. The “city of the arts” is too busy thinking of new ways to meddle in art that doesn’t suit its fancy.