Iconic musical Hamilton The New York Times have cancelled its highly-profile plan to perform at John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts next year. The news comes weeks after President Donald Trump declared the Kennedy Center chairman.
“This latest action by Trump means it's not the Kennedy Center as we knew it.” Hamilton Creator Lyn Manuel Miranda told The New York Times. “The Kennedy Center is not created in this spirit, and while it's the Trump Kennedy Center, we won't be part of it. We're not going to be part of it.”
In February, Trump replaced all Democrat appointees with his own political allies, donors and his wife, including Second Lady Ushavance and White House Chief Susie Wills. He also appointed Loyalist Rick Grenell as interim executive director. Other Kennedy Center celebrities, including Shonda Rhymes (appointed by former President Barack Obama), announced their resignation after Trump's announcement.
Though not generally a hotbed for controversy, the Kennedy Center is the US National Cultural Center and an important tool for the country's cultural soft power. During the Cold War, the Kennedy Center held a symbolic act in which American and Russian ballet dancers performed together and paid enormous diplomatic dividends. It is operated in public-private partnerships. This means that every president has the right to appoint members to the board.
These members oversee the centre's federal funding management and assist in the selection of Kennedy Center recipients each year. This means that although historically they have not focused on individual programming, they have the ability to help shape the direction the center is taking. Trump is the first sitting president to be a member of a one-sided fire committee appointed by the opposition, and he is far less likely to do so for the explicit purpose of setting himself up as a chair.
However, this kind of movement is a characteristic of Trump, his instinct to make technically legal moves, and other presidents will avoid it from embarrassment and politeness.
Trump reportedly hopes the center will move away from programming that “wakes up.” He has openly expressed his disdain for the centre that has hosted drug shows in the past. This is a continuation of violent anti-LGBTQ horrors that he was elected and now helps guide his policy decisions. “Last year, the Kennedy Center featured a drug show that was specifically targeted at our youth. (The Kennedy Center actually held a series of drug shows last year, all targeting adult audiences.)
This kind of movement is a characteristic of Trump, his instinct to make technically legal moves, and other presidents will avoid it from embarrassment and sense of politeness.
Trump's desire to censor drug performance is in itself a threat, indicating the right-wing desire to treat all the strange art as pornographic and the strange people themselves as indecent. Plus, it's just a small part of the bigger attack on Trump's art. Last week, the National Arts Fund announced under Trump that it would celebrate its 250th anniversary next year, eliminating grants to underserved communities and prioritizing patriotic art.
It's all well-restrained, but there's another wrinkle that especially dims the Kennedy Center's hostile takeover of Trump. The most forgotten aspect of Trump's first terminology was that it came soon Hamilton A phenomenon in which the theatre world retained an extraordinary level of cultural power. During the first year of the Trump administration, American theatres were struggling with flashy confusion over Trump's issues.
Before Trump took office shortly after the 2016 election, Vice Presidential Election Mike Pence attended an exhibition Hamilton. At the end of the show, the cast spoke to Pence directly from the stage, calling on him to protect and defend “.”all Includes our “of different colours, beliefs, orientations” and “supports our intransitable rights.” Enraged Trump asked for Hamilton Boycott accordingly.
In June 2017, Shakespeare was performing at the public theater in the park. Julius Caesar Caesar is the person who is assassinated by Trump. Trump's favorite conspiracy theorist, Laura Rumer, took part in one performance and cried out the stage midway through the show. This is unacceptable! ”
Then there was 1984 The production, featuring torture scenes, warns Trump of the arrival of fascism, has members of the epic audience stunned and vomited.
Trump was a Manhattan creature of the 1980s, with the latest Andrew Lloyd Weber Show being the hottest ticket in town. He looks like a real Lloyd Webber fan. Lloyd Webber's gorgeous and greatest aesthetic has to speak to Trump's golden mind, but he is also the product of the moment when an elite Manhattan power broker bent Broadway access and cleared up each other. Trump always seemed eager to include in wealthy and exclusive cultural institutions, but in his victory moments, when he finally became president, they all denounced him.
Now, Trump is undoubtedly controlling the most important theatres in the country. He shapes that legacy and untold the industry that shunned him. Now he has the power to make his revenge accurate.
Updated, March 7, 2025, 10:25am: This story was originally released on February 14th, 2025. Updated to include news of Hamilton cancellation.
