Command Performance An Actress In The Theater 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. Command Performance offers a sharp and sometimes hilarious take on those sometimes surreal days. 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, gracefully skewering the poseurs and politicos who crossed her path, or documenting her own uncomfortable adjustment to political reality, Alexander is charming, honest, and convincingly passionate on why we need art, and why the government should be in the business of supporting it.