Command Performance An Actress In The Theater Of Politics

A renowned actress's charming, opinionated, and wise memoir of her tenure at the National Endowment for the Arts brings humor and human dimension to the politics of art and the art of politics.. Renowned actress Jane Alexander had attended her share of protest marches in the 1960s and 1970s, but she had never been involved in mainstream politics and was happily engaged in her acting career when she was asked to consider becoming head of the ever-embattled National Endowment for the Arts. This witty, entertaining account of her tenure there brings a Washington outsider's perspective and an actor's eye for the telling human detail to the often stultifying subject of bureaucratic politics.Alexander's NEA tenure coincided with the ascent of the Gingrich Congress and its attempt to sabotage arts funding. In Command Performance she offers a sharp and sometimes hilarious take on those sometimes surreal days, and a gimlet-eyed portrait of Washington at work, play, and cocktail reception. Whether she is listening to Gingrich suggest to Melanie Griffith that there's a part for her in the movie version of his novel, trying without much success actually to talk to the president who hired her,