US arts czar finds plenty playing in Peoria

“I’m having a good time!’’ Landesman reports at intermission in the hallway of East Peoria High School to Kathy Chitwood, Eastlight’s executive director. She’s the local live wire who, outraged by a now-notorious Landesman crack about the city, dragooned the newly installed chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts here last week for an immersion in culture, Peoria-style.

It’s the end of a grueling day of arts appreciation in Central Illinois, and while energy may be flagging among some who’ve been tailing him through 13 hours of tours, meetings, and receptions, Landesman hasn’t run out of steam - or superlatives.

Over the course of the day, his ardor seems only to grow, to the point that “vibrant arts community’’ becomes his default characterization of Peoria, an industrial city of 113,000 and home to Caterpillar, the construction equipment manufacturer. In the evening Landesman is still at it, onstage at the high school with his new pal Chitwood, beaming and declaring: “I’ve got a big crush on this woman!’’

His ebullience is a reflection of his natural tendency to play the extrovert: He didn’t get to be one of the most quotable people on Broadway by hiding a roguish charm under a bushel. But it should be remembered that he hasn’t come all this way simply to launch his national cultural crusade, under the NEA slogan he dreamed up: “Art Works.’’

He’s also here because being off-the-cuff can land you in the soup.

He bruised feelings in these parts back in August when, a few days before starting the job as the country’s top arts bureaucrat, he implied in an interview with The New York Times that Peoria didn’t exist on the map of cultural significance. In speculating that the doling out of federal money to the arts had become too focused on spreading cash around equitably, rather than rewarding merit, he suggested a bit cavalierly that the city might not be worthy: “I don’t know if there’s a theater in Peoria,’’ Landesman said, “but I would bet that it’s not as good as Steppenwolf or the Goodman,’’ Chicago’s preeminent nonprofit theater companies.

The remark reinforced another stereotype, that of New York - where Landesman, a St. Louis native, worked and lived for most of his career as a theater producer and owner - as snooty and dismissive of middle America. For though it may indeed be the case that few theaters in the heartland accomplish what Steppenwolf can, there’s more than one way to look at artistic achievement.

Peoria wanted Landesman to absorb this, to learn something beyond the connotations of the famous question: “Will it play in Peoria?’’ The phrase, coined as a reference to the baseline appeal of shows on the old vaudeville circuit, gave rise to an image of the city as both an embodiment of mainstream America and a numbingly average place.

“My first reaction was just mad - not again, not again!’’ Chitwood recalls when someone forwarded her the Times article. She talked to her friend Suzette Boulais, who heads ArtsPartners of Central Illinois, a regional arts umbrella group, about inviting the chairman to come out. She shot him an e-mail.

To her astonishment, he called her, at home.

“He really did start the conversation with, ‘Kathy, it’s Rocco!’ ’’ Chitwood says, attempting to imitate the galloping pace of Landesman’s speech patterns. The call ended with the commitment of a visit. “I couldn’t believe he said yes,’’ she adds. “It’s a big country and everyone wants him. I didn’t think we would be important enough.’’

It wasn’t quite the red carpet that another Midwestern town, the fictional Sweet Apple, Ohio, rolls out for Conrad Birdie in the musical “Bye Bye Birdie,’’ now being revived on Broadway. But Peoria did seem eager to give Landesman a hearty welcome, from the tour of the rehabilitated warehouse district, where a new Peoria Riverfront Museum is to be built, to the hoots and applause that greeted him on the East Peoria High School stage.

Under the surface of all these good Midwestern manners, though, there is a tension, and as is often the case, it has to do with the pocketbook. Landesman’s published comments about Peoria had something of a chilling effect, fostering a worry that NEA funds - however limited - would now be channeled only to big cities.

As Chitwood puts it, “We wanted to say to Rocco, ‘We don’t want all our money going to Chicago and New York.’ ’’

So to prepare for Landesman’s visit, Chitwood made a short promotional film that features images of a child with a dollar bill and local actors explaining that they are taxpayers, too. Landesman says that of the total NEA budget - $167.5 million next year - 60 percent is spent on direct grants to arts institutions. A small amount goes to Peoria, in the form of literacy program grants and aid to arts groups like the Peoria Symphony Orchestra. The remaining 40 percent of NEA money is distributed directly to the states.

Landesman heads next to Nashville and St. Louis to continue his “Art Works’’ campaign. In Peoria, he himself learned something about the power of his pulpit. But chastened he’s not. Asked if he regretted his remark about the city, he replied, “Absolutely not. Everyone has regarded this as a big ‘whoops’ moment, but I meant what I said. I was upfront about my ignorance.’’