It was the night after President Trump officially took over and chaired the Kennedy Center. And two well-dressed Washington women wandered along the gorgeous red carpet inside the Grand Foyer. side. They reached the eight-foot-high bronze head of Lord John F. Kennedy above the hall, looking in solitude his eyes.
Did one woman joke to the other woman until the statue of President 35 was demolished and replaced by one of the 47th? They laughed badly.
It was just last week that Trump purged the board of Biden appointees at the Kennedy Center and announced plans to set up “Amazing Chairman Donald J. Trump!” He nominated one of his most fierce and faithful apocalypse, Richard Grenell, as interim president, and declared that “anti-American propaganda” was not shown. He complained about Drag Queens playing there and said it all turned out to be “wake up.” Some artists have cancelled the show. “Welcome to the new Kennedy Center!” Trump said on social media that he will post an image generated by his own AI waving his arms like a conductor in a concert hall.
Most people who appeared at the Kennedy Center on Thursday night saw performances in various theatres and bought tickets long before any of them started moving. Now they find themselves in a skewed arts center that is going to be something else: something Trump's.
Some speculated what it would look like.
Documentary film producer Pamela Germany, who worked as a Kennedy Centre adventurer, said: (Trump, who once dreamed of becoming a Broadway producer, is a longtime fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber.) She was there to catch the set of Comics W. Camau Bell. So was Louis Ullard, a 73-year-old psychotherapist from Maryland. What kind of cultural programming did he imagine under the artistic management of the 47th President? “I don't know,” Ullard said. “I think it's country music.”
On the other end of the Grand Foyer, the American Ballet Theatre was producing “Crime and Punishment,” an effort to make dances from Dostoevsky. A 75-year-old real estate investment banker named Wayne Koonse was waiting to scan his tickets. “Marinsky and Bolshoi will probably be invited as he has come to work with Putin,” he said.
For many liberal Washingtonians, for those scandalized by Trump's acquisition of the Kennedy Center, Thursday night was like a cross between awakening and a final call. Drug performers protest outside in the cold as George Washington University students marched over shouting about Trump. Inside, some ballet heeled patrons were literally holding pearls while thinking about the future of the facility. On the other end of the foyer, “Do the Work! Anti-Rachist Activities book was on sale before Mr. Bell's stand-up routine. (He co-written the book.)
“You know, Trump took over, he's the new chairman of the Kennedy Center,” he said at the top of the set. The audience booed low. “We shouldn't call it Kennedy Center anymore,” he said. “Let's call it the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center.” Boo more. “If anyone had run it without expertise, it could have been named after a man with no expertise,” he continued. (Mr. Kennedy was confirmed as Health Secretary that day.)
Bell was torn apart by the president, and perhaps under new control, including white hegemony, nationalized healthcare, olihead, fascism, socialism, socialism, trans rights, slavery, kale chips, nazidom and more. We talked about topics that we think are eligible for as “Awakening.” The comic also speculated what changes were in store.
“How many times can I give the Kid Rock the Mark Twain Award?” he wondered if the audience would have groaned.
On a couch outside the ballet, the couple (teachers from Arlington, Virginia) tried to understand the meaning of “anti-American propaganda” president. “I can't understand that,” my wife said. “Immigrants” proposed a husband. “But what does that actually mean?” I asked my wife.
Some were worried about whether they should boycott future locations. “Like a lot of people in Washington,” Koonse said. “We're trying to understand. You want to support the artist, but you don't want to support anything related to this reversed movement of art.
Much of what President Trump is doing in Washington is about payoff. He is revenge in the town where he sniffed him. When he was president last time, some artists who accepted the Kennedy Center honor refused to go to the White House, and in response he and Melania Trump did not go to the Kennedy Center.
However, Vice President J.D. Vice President Vance and his wife, Usha, seem to really enjoy programming for the Kennedy Center. She has been a member of the Opera Board for over a year, and the couple took their young child to produce the “Jungle Book” in December. Refugees are trying to find safety in a new environment. (In other words, they probably woke up.) They really enjoyed going backstage after it was over.
In Trump's war on the town's system, the fight over this may seem like a relatively low stake. What is the Performing Arts Center compared to the Department of Justice, Transatlantic Partnerships, Foreign Aid, and all that? Still, it hit a chord. People raising Grand Foyers on Thursday – many of them now federal workers fearing their jobs – appeared particularly upset by what was going on there.
Michael Gray, a 63-year-old retired refugee officer who worked for the State Department under George HW Bush, was there to watch ballet. Gray asked what he thought of the president's declaration of anti-American propaganda. “I think that's nonsense,” he said. But he managed to take a long view.
“Things come and they go,” he said. “But art is not like that, art's love is not.”
