Kennedy Center struggling as cancellations over Trump involvement ongoing

[riversedge]

Source: msn


Story by Ewan Gleadow • 5h •

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The president's name was added to the building after the Kennedy Center board were dismissed and then replaced by a Trump-friendly team.............

But there has been pushback from both productions who have cancelled their shows and audiences who say they refuse to attend events at the venue. A venue insider, speaking to The Guardian's Charlotte Higgins, says the atmosphere post-name change is very negative.

They said it was like a "funeral parlor - there's a deathly pall over the place". An annual concert which is performed on Martin Luther King Day has been scrapped,............


Part of the problem, Higgins suggested, is the new chair of the organization, Richard Grenell. She wrote, "This former ambassador to Germany might have wished for better things; at any rate, entirely inexperienced in the arts, he seems utterly out of his depth. Things have unravelled. Artists have departed the centre in droves. Hamilton pulled out. So have audiences."

Some audience members made their reason for protest clear, with Washington National Opera director Francesca Zambello sharing some loyal customers had returned shredded brochures to the venue..................

Higgins wrote, "Every day, Zambello was receiving messages of protest from formerly loyal members of the audience: shredded season brochures stuffed into an envelope and returned; missives saying, among other things, 'I’m never setting foot in there until the ‘orange menace’ is gone.'”...................

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/kennedy-center-struggling-as-cancellations-over-trump-involvement-ongoing/ar-AA1UuMMB?ocid=winp1taskbar&cvid=15c0258be3334de0a5c8845e04296a2a&ei=15

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I love the idea of stuffing the torn up Art center brochures and sending them back.


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FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump gestures while he poses for a picture at the presidential box at the Kennedy Center, in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 17, 2025. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo © provided by RawStory