W. Kamau Bell was scheduled to perform at the Kennedy Center the day after President Donald Trump’s overhauled board of trustees elected Trump as chairman, fired president Deborah F. Rutter and made former acting director of national intelligence Richard Grenell interim president, throwing the center into chaos and confusion.
In the Truth Social post announcing his intentions to take over the storied arts institution, Trump had promised to make the center “GREAT AGAIN,” adding, “The Kennedy Center is an American Jewel, and must reflect the brightest STARS on its stage from all across our Nation.”
The implication was clear: The performers previously booked at the center were not the “brightest STARS.” Why would those performers still want to climb on that stage?
Bell had a simple answer: “I’m the exact kind of performer he doesn’t want in there, so this is the most important time to do my gig.”
In the week following Trump’s announcement, ticket sales dropped by roughly 50 percent compared to the previous week, a stunning aberration, according to several Kennedy Center staff members who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal.
End of carousel
As the audience closed up their wallets, the artists scheduled to perform at the center — some of them Trump critics, or who feel targeted by his actions — faced a choice: Let the show go on, despite what’s happening on the tip of the Kennedy Center’s iceberg, and use art to protest. Or pull out and let the silence left by the void speak for them.
Actress and comedian Issa Rae kicked off the first round of withdrawals. Most shows remain in place. The new leadership’s vision for what’s next is still taking shape.
“We want to make art great again,” Grenell said Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, in his first public remarks since becoming interim president. He said the center would attract topline talent and host “a big, huge celebration of the birth of Christ at Christmas.” (The center routinely puts on Christmas events.) Grenell has not responded to interview requests from The Washington Post.
For Bell, it wasn’t a question. He was booked to perform long before any of this happened. And the 52-year-old comedian has made a career out of going there, using his comedy to explore controversial subjects.
“I’m the guy who met with the KKK,” he says. “I do a different calculus than everyone else.”
So, he showed up. Outside, drag queens led a dance party protesting Trump’s criticism of drag shows at the center. Bell stopped by to offer his support and receive theirs.
Then, he went onstage and spent the first 20 minutes talking about everything happening at the center.
If he were asked to perform there now, the math may have changed. Despite the prestige, “it’s still just a venue,” he says. “D.C. is full of venues,” he says. “I would rather perform for the people of D.C. than do a gig at the Kennedy Center after Trump is fully embedded in there.”
The Kennedy Center declined to comment on ticket sales or artist cancellations.
Performing anyway is one way of protesting, Bell says, but not the only way. He respects the choice of artists like Rae to cancel.
“We’re all on the same side of this,” says Bell. “ … We’re just doing this differently, the way there was Malcolm X and there was Martin Luther King, Jr. We needed both of them.”
Soprano Karen Slack’s math looked a lot like Bell’s. The opera singer said on social media that she still plans to perform her concert “African Queens” in March. The program was not commissioned by the Kennedy Center but by other arts organizations, including Washington Performing Arts, which made the decision easier for Slack. Those organizations rented out the Kennedy Center space for the performance.
“How can I sing about powerful women who fought against oppression on a recital named after Ruth Bader Ginsburg at an institution as esteemed as the Kennedy Center and just walk away?” she wrote.
“This is an American project, as much as it is representative of Black women,” she told The Post. “Why would I, in this moment, shy away from presenting it in the Mecca of the arts?”
“My art is my resistance,” she adds.
For others, the calculation is different.
“As soon as what amounts to a coup happened with President Trump,” says author Louise Penny, “there was absolutely no way I was going to do it. It was a painful decision, but it was not difficult.”
The popular Canadian mystery writer, who has co-written a novel with Hillary Clinton, planned to debut her upcoming novel “The Black Wolf” at the center, “but in the wake of Trump taking over, I have pulled out,” she wrote on Facebook. “It was, of course, going to be a career highlight. But there are things far more important than that.”
“I don’t know how many times in a day I say, ‘I don’t understand.’ It’s like I’ve woken up on a different planet,” Penny says of watching the news from the current administration. “ … Which is why, when this Kennedy Center thing happened, it was just so obvious. There was no decision to be made. There was no question. And there was no doubt, no regret. It was at least something I could do.”
Penny didn’t struggle with the decision because her appearance would be a one-off to promote her book. Going, she felt, wouldn’t have as much of an impact as not going — a common thread among those who chose to cancel their performances.
“At the end of the day, if I don’t feel good about walking into a building to put on a show, I’m not going to do it,” says Adam Weiner, front man of the rock band Low Cut Connie. “I feel bad for the people who have worked there for many years and the people who booked us. I hope that it returns to its former mission. But currently, it’s an institution that I’m not interested in supporting or offering my show to.”
He posted his decision to pull out of an upcoming show there, and was “as surprised as anybody” when his announcement went viral. His fans run the political gamut from conservative to liberal, and most supported his decision.
“When you speak of social impact, sometimes not performing can have more impact than performing,” Weiner says. “In this case, I really stand by decision because I feel like it’s been more impactful to pull out than to do the show.”
“It says to me that there’s a lot of people out there — I’d say the majority of people out there — who were waiting for artists to step forward and say ‘F— this.’”
Amanda Rheaume, a Canadian singer-songwriter, was so surprised when the Kennedy Center first contacted last year asking her to perform that she half-wondered if it was a joke. It wasn’t. She excitedly applied, and paid, for the paperwork to perform in the United States. But with the takeover of the board, Rheaume wondered if it would be safe to perform at the center as a queer woman.
Rheaume considered showing up anyway, letting the art act as resistance. It was, after all, an enormous opportunity to expand into the United States. A gig at the Kennedy Center tends to beget many more. But, ultimately, it wasn’t worth it.
The Kennedy Center hosts more than 2,000 performances each year for more than 2 million visitors. Adding to the internal chaos of the last two weeks is the constantly changing events calendar.
Many worry the new leadership will begin making changes for them. Emma Cooley, a D.C.-based stage actor, is among them.
“We have free speech in this country,” says Cooley. “We have to find a way to keep creating our art, even if it’s not at the Kennedy Center. There are plenty of other platforms and spaces in D.C., where we can keep creating.”
“We can’t back down,” Cooley adds. “In fact, we need to get louder.”
