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Welcome
John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC
WEND
Transpire comes from the Latin
Transpire comes from the Latin verb spirare (“to breathe”), which also breathed life into perspire, aspire, and inspire, among other words. Wafting up into English in the late 16th century, transpire was originally used (as it still is) for the action of vapor passing out of the pores of a living membrane such as the skin. From this use followed the related senses of “to become known” and “to be revealed; to come to light” (think of information “leaking” or “slipping out”).
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Welcome to the BBC World Service & British Council International Audio Drama Competition 2026. To enter, you’ll need to complete the online submission form and supply us with: The script for your 40-50 minute audio drama with up to six central characters.
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Stonecoast Review now open for the Summer 2025 Issue (#23)
Theme: Power
What do you think of when you hear the word “power”? What does it mean to have power? What does it mean to use it? What does it mean to abuse it? How does it feel when it’s taken away?
The word connotes different definitions and bears different weights for each of us. It manifests itself in unexpected ways and settings, and remains absent or suppressed in so many others.
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Over a 5-year period, The Democracy Cycle – a collaboration between the Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC) and Civis Foundation (an affiliate of Galvan Initiatives) – will commission and develop a total of 25 new performing arts works across the fields of theater, dance, music, opera, and multi-disciplinary performance that express themes related to the nature and practice of democracy, particularly as it is practiced in the United States.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** MORGIANE ***
Because orchestras, opera houses, and festivals rely almost entirely on private funding, they ought to be in a position to resist Trump’s stabs at Stalinist control. The question, though, is whether even the slightest hint of trouble—a commission for a transgender composer that annoys a reactionary board member, a Latino-oriented series that receives closely monitored N.E.A. funding—will trigger what Timothy Snyder calls anticipatory obedience. In more than a few cases, organizations seemingly launched diversity programs not out of a committed belief but out of a fear of being chastised on social media. Now fear could push them in the opposite direction. This dire moment in American history is forcing a test of character. As Thomas Mann said, in another fraught period, there is no escaping politics in the arts.
A couple of weeks after the Inauguration, I attended a concert performance of Edmond Dédé’s opera “Morgiane” at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, at the University of Maryland, just outside Washington. Dédé was a Black composer born in 1827 in New Orleans. In 1855, he immigrated to France, where he made his way as a composer and conductor. “Morgiane,” which he completed in 1887, was intended to be his breakthrough, but no one took it up. The score resurfaced in 2008, in the collections of Houghton Library, at Harvard. The Washington-based company Opera Lafayette and the New Orleans group OperaCréole came together to bring “Morgiane” to life; its first outing was at St. Louis Cathedral, in New Orleans, in January. “Morgiane” displays sufficient inspiration that it would have merited attention no matter who had composed it. With Dédé’s personal story in mind, the undertaking became essential.
More...
https://archive.ph/fJISE
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This year’s edition of Musical Louisiana presents the long-awaited world premiere of New Orleanian Edmond Dédé’s Morgiane (1887). This historic composition remains the earliest known surviving full-length opera written by a Black American composer. Lauded for works that transformed some of France’s most popular stages, Dédé packed a variety of musical genres into Morgiane, which has remained a hidden gem for over a century and yet to be heard—until now.
Morgiane tells a tale of vengeance, truth, and reconciliation that begins when a young couple’s wedding day is disrupted by the sultan’s desire for the bride. When the bride’s family seeks revenge, a shocking revelation comes to light, leading to a path of forgiveness.
https://hnoc.org/events/musical-louisiana-2025
This year’s edition of Musical Louisiana presents the long-awaited world premiere of New Orleanian Edmond Dédé’s Morgiane (1887). This historic composition remains the earliest known surviving full-length opera written by a Black American composer. Lauded for works that transformed some of France’s most popular stages, Dédé packed a variety of musical genres into Morgiane, which has remained a hidden gem for over a century and yet to be heard—until now.
Morgiane tells a tale of vengeance, truth, and reconciliation that begins when a young couple’s wedding day is disrupted by the sultan’s desire for the bride. When the bride’s family seeks revenge, a shocking revelation comes to light, leading to a path of forgiveness.
https://hnoc.org/events/musical-louisiana-2025
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Born in 1827, Dédé was part of the fourth generation of free persons of color in his French-speaking Creole family. His father, a clarinetist, encouraged his musical interests. Dédé excelled at the violin, and was considered a prodigy at an early age.
But like many people of color, he faced discrimination. He left for Mexico, returned home to work as a cigar roller, until the reality of Jim Crow laws made him quit the United States for good. Like other Black artists, Dédé fled to Europe, settling in France as the American Civil War loomed.
There, he was celebrated as he composed and conducted orchestral works, art songs, ballets and operettas. Dédé audited classes at the Paris Conservatoire and later served as an accompanist and composer at the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux in southwestern France. He conducted in the city's popular music halls, among them the Alcazar and the Folies Bordelaises.
More...
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/03/nx-s1-4868011/oldest-black-american-opera-premiere
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“He wanted to be a composer in the art music tradition,” Sally McKee, a retired historian at the University of California at Davis tells the publication. “He wanted to be like Mendelssohn. He wanted to be like Brahms.”
He came tantalizingly close to that goal when he finished Morgiane. It was a fantastical story of a young bride abducted by a villainous sultan, until the bride’s mother—the title character, Morgiane—reveals a shocking secret to help save her kidnapped daughter.
But Dédé never saw it performed. He died with little money a few years later and was buried in a communal grave in Paris. Few people understood—or even witnessed—his great work, bursting at the seams of two bound volumes.
More...
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/one-of-the-oldest-surviving-operas-by-a-black-american-composer-will-be-performed-for-the-first-time-138-years-after-it-was-written-180985943/
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Dédé made notes in the margins of his “Morgiane” manuscript, crossed out entire pages, rewrote the music again and again, and changed its title. At first he called his opera “The Sultan of Ispahan,” after the villain of the story — a sultan who steals a young bride to have her for his own. But Dédé renamed it for a more sympathetic character: Morgiane, the bride’s mother, who goes off in search of her abducted daughter and serves up an unexpected twist in the end.
It was Dédé’s dream, McKee said, to have “Morgiane” performed. But it never happened. Dédé moved to Paris around 1889 and his star soon faded. By the time of his death, in 1901, his family seemingly didn’t even have money for a proper burial. Dédé ended up in a communal grave outside Paris, with no headstone or marker. And with his death, the manuscript for “Morgiane,” bound into two hulking volumes, did what many overlooked works tend to do.
It disappeared.
ALMOST A CENTURY LATER, in 1999, Lisa Cox, a dealer of antiquarian music based in England, got a phone call from a man who operated a music store in Paris. His name was Bernard Peyrotte and he was calling with some news.
Peyrotte and a French conductor, Jean-Marie Martin, had been collecting musical scores for half a century. Some dated back to the 1600s. There were nearly 10,000 in all, and Peyrotte had made a decision: He was selling.
“It was an incredible collection,” Cox said in an interview recently. Peyrotte and Martin didn’t just have operas by Verdi, Wagner and some of the biggest French composers of the 19th century; many of the scores had unique updates and variations, and some came from unexpected places, like modern-day Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. The collection was eclectic, rare, significant. And Cox knew who to call about purchasing it: Virginia Danielson, who was at the time the Richard F. French librarian at Harvard University’s Loeb Music Library.
In fall 2000, Cox and Danielson traveled to Peyrotte’s house outside Paris, where they chatted over wine and cheese. Then Danielson spent a few hours there reviewing Peyrotte’s scores and quickly made a determination. “The collection,” she said, “was absolutely worth having.” Harvard made an offer, funded by John Milton Ward IV, a longtime music professor, and his wife, Ruth Neils Ward, and the collection began to make its way across the ocean to Cambridge, Mass.
It was a process that would take years. It wasn’t until 2008 that Andrea Cawelti, the Ward music cataloger at the Houghton Library at Harvard, opened a box that would change things for Edmond Dédé.
More...
https://archive.ph/g3AYv
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The opera’s overture sets the stage for the smorgasbord of melodic invention to come, a highly entertaining compression of key themes that traverses the work’s full gamut of emotional states and primes the start of Act I with a big oompah and cymbals and finishes in the mode of Carmen’s beloved overture. Quigley maintained a firm hold on the reins here to meet the band where they were, but it was easy to imagine how much this passage would cook in a polished reading.
The action proper begins with the first of the work’s many notable choruses, here the wedding guests for Ali and Amine singing a gentle hymn to the blessed day. The especially dense interplay between orchestra and chorus that will be a hallmark of the choral passages throughout the work is immediately evident, Dédé’s score making use of coloring in the orchestra to continually enrich the choral writing.
A series of numbers for the principals ensues to establish the plot’s central mystery: bride Amine learns that her father, Hagi Hassan, is not her biological father, but her mother Morgiane refuses to reveal the truth of her parentage.
More...
https://parterre.com/2025/02/05/and-her-mother-too/
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Edmond Dédé: Selections from the opera "Morgiane" and more...
A free-born native of New Orleans, Edmond Dédé (1827–1901) spent over four decades conducting orchestras in Bordeaux, France. His recently found but never-performed opera, Morgiane (1888), is the earliest full-length opera by an African American composer. UC Davis Professor of History Sally McKee, author of The Exile’s Song: Edmond Dédé and the Unfinished Revolutions of the Atlantic World (Yale University Press, 2017) will offer some remarks on the work’s significance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxrMJi0_4KQ
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The Rivals
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Greetings NYCPlaywrights
Greetings NYCPlaywrights
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
A Sunday Afternoon with Broadway Performers Javier Ignacio and Josh Walker
Join us for an unforgettable afternoon of music and storytelling with Broadway’s Javier Ignacio and Josh Walker. Ignacio, renowned for his roles as "Harry Houdini" and "Dog Boy" in the 2014 revival of Krieger and Russell’s Side Show, also appeared in the 2021 Tony award-winning Broadway revival of Sondheim’s Company, starring Patti LuPone. He will be joined by the acclaimed Josh Walker on piano.
Walker, known for his performances in Side Show and nearly two decades with the legendary Radio City Rockettes, will serve as the music director for this special event.
This family-friendly show will feature beloved musical theatre standards, jazz classics, exciting new compositions, and laugh-out-loud stories from the heart of New York City
— brought to life as only Javier and Josh can!
Sunday, March 9 · 2:30 - 4pm EDT
Central Library
8911 Merrick Blvd. Jamaica, NY 11432
Register for up to 3 free tickets
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-sunday-afternoon-with-broadway-performers-javier-ignacio-and-josh-walker-tickets-1226781108319?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Onstage/Offstage is opening our call for submissions of 10-minute plays to produce and air on its podcast, now in its 13th year. This year's theme is “Diversity/Equity/Inclusion.” We seek plays that center on the characters' struggle rather than the topic itself. Please make sure your submissions are character-centered. Also please read and follow these guidelines, especially submission acceptance dates, if you wish your play to be considered.
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The Jim Henson Foundation awards grants each year for the creation of innovative new works of contemporary puppet theater. Our definition of a puppet is an object that is given the appearance of life through direct or indirect manipulation by the human hand. The Foundation’s Board of Directors judges applications based on the excellence of the puppetry including puppet design, manipulation and theatrical execution.
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RubySky Productions is looking for plays of 10 minutes or fewer, for their next audio production. Us Rubys are keen to inspire the next generation of playwrights, so please share to any family or friends. Any subject and genre, just keep to under 10 minutes please and ideally suitable for audio. Open to anyone worldwide under 18, no other restrictions.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK ***
He said he co-wrote the movie as a critique of most of the press rolling over ahead of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Clooney called out President George W. Bush for the misbegotten war, and he was called a traitor for being against it.
“It was a pretty tough time,” he recalled.
The movie, he said, was really about: “We need the press” because “government unchecked is a problem.”
Now, with President Trump throwing Washington into a tumult, Clooney said, we are living through a time when “You take a narrative, you make it up, don’t worry about facts, don’t worry about repercussions.” He said the play “feels more like it’s about truth, not just the press. Facts matter.”
Certainly, there are unavoidable echoes of McCarthy’s Washington in Trump’s Washington, a place rife with “alternative facts,” as Kellyanne Conway called them, as well as conspiracy theories, reckless attacks and punitive measures. The White House, for example, wants government employees to snitch on colleagues who are promoting diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Associated Press journalists were barred from covering some White House events because the news outlet refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
“No rules count anymore,” Clooney said. “It’s like letting an infant walk across the 405 freeway in the middle of the afternoon.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/theater/george-clooney-broadway-good-night-good-luck.html
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A work of historical drama, Good Night, and Good Luck centers on a clash between famed journalist Edward R. Murrow and infamous U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, of anti-communist HUAC fame. The title comes from Murrow's broadcast sign-off. Clooney starred on screen as Murrow's co-producer, Fred W. Friendly, and as previously announced will lead the stage version as Edward R. Murrow, the role played by David Strathairn on screen. Clooney also directed the original film. Clooney and Grant Heslov have penned the stage adaptation from their 2005 screenplay, and David Cromer will direct.
Clooney revealed his supporting company in front of the Winter Garden February 6. Among those newly announced to be joining him are Ilana Glazer (Broad City) as Shirley Wershba, Clark Gregg (Agents of Shield) as Don Hollenbeck, Mac Brandt as Colonel Anderson, Will Dagger as Don Hewitt, Christopher Denham as John Aaron, Glenn Fleshler as Fred Friendly, Paul Gross as William F. Paley, Georgia Heers as Ella, Carter Hudson as Joe Wershba, Fran Kranz as Palmer Williams, Jennifer Morris as Millie Green, Michael Nathanson as Eddie Scott, Andrew Polk as Charlie Mack, and Aaron Roman Weiner as Don Surine.
More...
https://playbill.com/article/ilana-glazer-clark-gregg-more-join-george-clooney-in-good-night-and-good-luck-on-broadway
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George Clooney interview on Fresh Air, 2005
Actor, producer, writer, director George Clooney directed and co-wrote the new film Good Night, and Good Luck, about the showdown between legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow and Sen. Joseph McCarthy that took place in 1954. Clooney also has a role in the film, portraying Murrow's producer Fred Friendly. The film is receiving much critical acclaim.
The film Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, about game-show host Chuck Barris, marked Clooney's directorial debut. His acting and producing credits include Ocean's Eleven and Ocean's Twelve; The Jacket; Full Frontal; and Welcome to Collinwood.
Clooney also starred in the Coen brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou? He became a household face and name with his role on NBC's ER. Clooney is also the nephew of the late singer Rosemary Clooney.
https://www.npr.org/2005/12/27/4963561/george-clooney-the-journey-to-good-night
***
Good Night, and Good Luck was criticised by some on its release for making Murrow into too simplistic a hero. While most historical films simplify things, this one doesn’t completely sanctify its protagonist. After Murrow debates with McCarthy, his boss Bill Paley (Frank Langella) accuses him of not correcting the senator on one point of fact: that the lawyer and State Department official Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury, not treason. Paley suggests Murrow didn’t want to be seen defending a known communist. Joseph McCarthy – who effectively plays himself in the film, appearing in documentary footage – emerges as a straightforward villain, but he made that bed for himself and most historians have let him lie in it.
“We don’t make the news,” says Paley. “We report the news.” As Murrow is drawn into a war with McCarthy, the station frets about its revenue. Good Night, and Good Luck does a fantastically clever job of intercutting real footage of McCarthy and other figures into its drama, mostly to serious effect – though there is a moment of levity when Murrow must interview Liberace. “Have you given much thought to getting married and eventually settling down?” Murrow asks the exceptionally camp but closeted performer. “I want to some day find a perfect mate,” the real Liberace replies in the documentary footage. “In fact I was reading about lovely young Princess Margaret, and she’s looking for her dream man too, and I hope she finds him some day.” Not even subtle. Remarkably, in 1959, Liberace won a lawsuit against the Daily Mirror after it implied he was what was then called a “homosexualist”.
More...
https://archive.ph/OL2DX
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(The New Yorker, 1953)
To the top men of the Columbia Broadcasting System, it is a matter of concern that their news broadcaster Edward R. Murrow, whose baritone voice over the C.B.S. radio and austere presence on C.B.S.-TV have made him both a semi-public figure and a valued private property, has appeared, over the years, to be less attracted to eminence than to trouble. To be sure, Murrow, a lean, dark, handsome, and deceptively easy-mannered man of forty-five, who bears his own eminence without visible effort, is on cordial-to-intimate terms with most of the important people in the United States and Great Britain and gives no evidence of being indifferent to their esteem.
But it has been noticed that his satisfaction in his work as an informer of public opinion increases with his proximity to gunfire, to some real or fancied calamity, or to the brink of complete physical exhaustion. During the Second World War, his habit of excusing himself from his post in London to go off on bombing missions brought frequent ineffectual protests from William S. Paley, chairman of the board of the Columbia Broadcasting System and the only man there who has ever tried to boss Murrow; declining to be bossed, Murrow made a couple of dozen combat flights, of which Paley said later, “They didn’t do us much good from my point of view, but there was no way to make him stop, short of firing him.”
Since that war, Murrow has had fewer opportunities to expose himself to hostile marksmen. He did manage to get in two trips to Korea while the shooting was going on there, but for the most part he has had to content himself with the pursuit of floods, droughts, and tornadoes and with such personal discomforts as going too long without sleep and flying too much in airplanes, the first of which causes him to sweat profusely and the second to have trouble with his ears.
More...
https://archive.ph/OHgmQ#selection-797.0-797.1847
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George Clooney likes the story of a television figure who uses his celebrity to make a positive impact on American culture. It isn’t hard to see why. Son of the longtime news anchor Nick Clooney, the former ER heartthrob grew up believing in the power of TV to make a difference. Now, at age 44, he has directed his second big-screen work on the subject.
Where Clooney’s underrated Confessions of a Dangerous Mind picked the febrile brain of The Gong Show host Chuck Barris, his new Good Night, and Good Luck salutes TV-news pioneer Edward R. Murrow, whose on-air battles with Red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy helped make the country safe for free speech—at least temporarily. (Also see a review of The Edward R. Murrow Collection.) Albeit set in the ’50s, Good Night is hardly yesterday’s news: The movie completed production not long before the New York Times broke the story that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting had hired a researcher to investigate the “political leanings” (read: liberal bias) of commentators such as PBS’s own Bill Moyers.
More...
https://archive.ph/HrD50
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Journalists, including some at CBS News, are expressing alarm at reports that CBS parent company Paramount Global is trying to settle a legally dubious lawsuit lodged by President Donald Trump last fall.
Trump sued CBS after an October “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris – Trump’s opponent in the presidential campaign – included an edit that Trump said was unfairly favorable to Harris. Despite legal experts’ widespread assertion that CBS’ editorial judgment was protected by the First Amendment, The New York Times Thursday night reported that a settlement was in the works.
That sparked outage in CBS’ newsroom.
“Trump’s lawsuit was a joke, but if we settle, we become the laughingstock,” a CBS correspondent said on condition of anonymity.
CBS in October called the suit meritless and said at the time “we will vigorously defend against it.” A Paramount spokesperson on Friday declined to comment. A lawyer for Trump, Edward Paltzik, did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but he told The Times that “real accountability for CBS and Paramount will ensure that the president is compensated for the harm done to him.”
The Times noted that “a settlement would be an extraordinary concession by a major U.S. media company to a sitting president, especially in a case in which there is no evidence that the network got facts wrong or damaged the plaintiff’s reputation.”
More...
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/31/media/cbs-trump-settlement-60-minutes/index.html
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*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Go Try Play Write February 2025
Winners will receive $100 and a subscription to Bamboo Ridge Press.
The prompt for February 2025 is:
A hell of a prompt. Write a 10-page maximum scene or an 8-page maximum monologue where you send someone to hell. This is as open as can be—all that matters is that someone did something or a number of things that receives eternal punishment. Writers, consider this prompt primal scream therapy.
***
Strongbox Theater Short Plays Festival 2025
This short play festival is in keeping with STRONGBOX's mission to:
Foster a partnership between the arts and our community at large to raise the visibility of the arts in East Rockaway, NY and its surrounding Long Island area;
- Assist new playwrights in getting their talents seen by and shared with our local audiences, and to
- Cultivate an appreciation of theater by new patrons.
$100 royalty will be paid to each playwright
***
Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Performing Artist in Residence program allows artists and visitors to experience the Garden through a different lens.
The theme for the 2025 residency is Natural Connection.
Explore the relationship between humans and nature and their dynamic and sometimes fraught interdependence. Highlight how human actions reshape the environment, while nature’s responses and constant shifts influence human lives, ideas, emotions, and futures. Challenge the audience to think about their role and responsibility within this cycle, examining the human-nature relationship here in Brooklyn or beyond.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** THE KENNEDY CENTER ***
In 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed bipartisan legislation creating a National Cultural Center in the nation’s capital. In November of 1962, President and Mrs. Kennedy launched a $30 million fundraising campaign for the Center’s construction. Former President Eisenhower and his wife Mamie participated in the event which demonstrated the bipartisan support for a world-class center for the performing arts in D. C. In 1963, President Kennedy signed legislation to extend the fundraising deadline for the Center.
Two months after President Kennedy’s assassination, by an Act of Congress signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on January 23, 1964, the nation’s National Cultural Center was designated as a living memorial to President John F. Kennedy. By this Act, President Kennedy’s devotion to the advancement of the performing arts in the United States was recognized.
The Center’s mission is established in its authorizing statute: present classical and contemporary music, opera, drama, dance, and other performing arts from the United States and other countries; promote and maintain the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as the National Center for the Performing Arts; strive to ensure that the education and outreach programs and policies of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts meet the highest level of excellence and reflect the cultural diversity of the United States; provide facilities for other civic activities at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; and provide within the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts a suitable memorial in honor of the late President. To fulfill the mission as the nation’s cultural center, the Kennedy Center presents world-class art by the artists that define our culture today, delivers powerful arts education opportunities nationwide, and embodies the ideals of President Kennedy in all the Center’s activities provided throughout the living memorial.
More...
https://theatrewashington.org/venues/kennedy-center
***
In September of 1971, the nation was cracking in half.
The front pages of The Washington Post were aflame with violence and conflict: the ongoing catastrophe of the Vietnam War, political upheaval in Latin America and, here at home, racial unrest as busing foes boycotted schools. The bad news was unrelenting.
That is until the edition of Thursday, Sept. 9, when The Post’s lead story took a markedly different tone: “Bernstein’s Mass,” read the headline, “A Reaffirmation of Faith.”
This good news topping A1 was the previous evening’s official premiere of “Mass,” composer Leonard Bernstein’s genre-hopping magnum opus. “Mass” was Bernstein’s response to a request from Jacqueline Onassis for a piece to honor her first husband and inaugurate the soon-to-open John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a $66.5 million colossus overlooking the Potomac River and declaring the arts as central to American life — if not to D.C. pedestrians.
More...
https://archive.ph/iGRJM#selection-553.0-553.461
***
Donald Trump got himself declared chair of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after purging the board of everyone appointed by President Joe Biden. In their stead, he appointed his own political allies, donors, and their wives, including second lady Usha Vance and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. He also appointed loyalist Ric Grenell as interim executive director. Other celebrities affiliated with the Center, including Shonda Rhimes (appointed by former President Barack Obama), have announced their resignation in the wake of Trump’s announcement.
Although generally not a hotbed for controversy, the Kennedy Center, as the US’s national cultural center, is an important tool for the country’s cultural soft power. During the height of the Cold War, the Kennedy Center hosted American and Russian ballet dancers performing together, a symbolic act that paid enormous diplomatic dividends. It’s run in public-private partnership, which means all presidents have the right to appoint members to the board of trustees.
More...
https://www.vox.com/culture/399885/trump-kennedy-center-shonda-rhimes
***
The Kennedy Center has quietly removed a highly anticipated National Symphony Orchestra concert celebrating LGBTQ+ Pride from its website, intensifying fears that federally affiliated cultural institutions could be the next battleground in President Donald Trump’s war on the LGBTQ+ community.
The event, “A Peacock Among Pigeons: Celebrating 50 Years of Pride,” was scheduled for May 21–22 as part of the center’s acknowledgment of WorldPride 2025 inWashington, D.C. A centerpiece of the Kennedy Center’s Conflux initiative—its flagship social impact partnership program—the concert was designed to celebrate LGBTQ+ identity and visibility through music.
More...
https://www.advocate.com/politics/kennedy-center-trump-worldpride-concert
***
Yes, Donald Trump could destroy the Kennedy Center. Or worse.
Until a week ago, it was unthinkable that the president of the United States would take direct control of the nonpartisan Kennedy Center for the Arts, fire board members not deemed personally loyal to him, replace them with members of his inner circle and install a widely disliked political operative with little experience in the arts as interim director. But now the thought has been thought, so two more previously unthinkable things must also be considered: Can Donald Trump destroy the Kennedy Center? Or will he use it in the usual way that authoritarians have used the arts in the past, as a vehicle for Trumpian propaganda?
***
To understand what is going on, it is necessary to consider Trump’s favourite European authoritarian, Viktor Orbán. Hungary’s prime minister has chipped away at his country’s constitution and judiciary. But a no less powerful tool has been his attention to parts of society often regarded as unimportant compared with a country’s constitution. Alongside crushing independent media, Orbán’s government has co-opted the arts, appointing right-leaning directors to theatres, and instigating nationalist art exhibitions. Orbán understands that culture creates the climate for emotion and memory, imprints national myths, and – often intangibly – acts on politics.
More...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/14/trump-chair-kennedy-center-washington-president-authoritarian
***
It was just last week that Mr. Trump announced his plan to purge the Kennedy Center’s board of its Biden appointees and to install “an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!” He named one of his most fiercely loyal apparatchiks, Richard Grenell, interim president and proclaimed that there would be no more “ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA” shown. He complained about drag queens performing there and said it had all become too “wokey.” Some artists canceled shows. “Welcome to the New Kennedy Center!” Mr. Trump said on social media, posting an A.I.-generated image of himself waving his arms like a conductor in a concert hall.
Most of the people who turned up at the Kennedy Center on Thursday night to see performances in its various theaters had purchased their tickets long before any of that was set in motion. Now they found themselves at an arts center on the cusp of becoming something different — something Trumpian.
Some speculated what that might look like.
“I feel like we might just have ‘Cats’ on rotation moving forward,” said Pamela Deutsch, a documentary film producer who once worked as an usher at the Kennedy Center. (Mr. Trump, who once had dreams of becoming a Broadway producer, is a longtime fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber.) She was there to catch a set by the comic W. Kamau Bell. So was Louis Woolard, a 73-year-old psychotherapist from Maryland. What sort of cultural programming did he envision under the artistic stewardship of the 47th president? “I don’t know,” said Mr. Woolard. “I guess country music.”
...“You know, Trump took over, he’s the new chairman of the Kennedy Center,” (W. Kamau Bell) said at the top of his set. The audience let out a low boo. “You shouldn’t call it the Kennedy Center anymore,” he said. “Let’s call it the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center.” More booing. “If you’re going to have people running it with no expertise at all,” he continued, “you might as well have it named after the guy with no expertise at all.” (Earlier that day, Mr. Kennedy had been confirmed as health secretary.)
Mr. Bell tore into the president and talked about white supremacy, nationalized health care, oligarchy, fascism, socialism, transgender rights, slavery, kale chips, Nazidom and other such topics that would presumably qualify as “wokey” under new management. The comic also guessed at what sort of changes were in store.
“How many times can you give Kid Rock the Mark Twain award?” he wondered as the audience groaned.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/arts/music/kennedy-center-donald-trump.html
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To understand what is going on, it is necessary to consider Trump’s favourite European authoritarian, Viktor Orbán. Hungary’s prime minister has chipped away at his country’s constitution and judiciary. But a no less powerful tool has been his attention to parts of society often regarded as unimportant compared with a country’s constitution. Alongside crushing independent media, Orbán’s government has co-opted the arts, appointing right-leaning directors to theatres, and instigating nationalist art exhibitions. Orbán understands that culture creates the climate for emotion and memory, imprints national myths, and – often intangibly – acts on politics.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/14/trump-chair-kennedy-center-washington-president-authoritarian
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It was just last week that Mr. Trump announced his plan to purge the Kennedy Center’s board of its Biden appointees and to install “an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!” He named one of his most fiercely loyal apparatchiks, Richard Grenell, interim president and proclaimed that there would be no more “ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA” shown. He complained about drag queens performing there and said it had all become too “wokey.” Some artists canceled shows. “Welcome to the New Kennedy Center!” Mr. Trump said on social media, posting an A.I.-generated image of himself waving his arms like a conductor in a concert hall.
Most of the people who turned up at the Kennedy Center on Thursday night to see performances in its various theaters had purchased their tickets long before any of that was set in motion. Now they found themselves at an arts center on the cusp of becoming something different — something Trumpian.
Some speculated what that might look like.
“I feel like we might just have ‘Cats’ on rotation moving forward,” said Pamela Deutsch, a documentary film producer who once worked as an usher at the Kennedy Center. (Mr. Trump, who once had dreams of becoming a Broadway producer, is a longtime fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber.) She was there to catch a set by the comic W. Kamau Bell. So was Louis Woolard, a 73-year-old psychotherapist from Maryland. What sort of cultural programming did he envision under the artistic stewardship of the 47th president? “I don’t know,” said Mr. Woolard. “I guess country music.”
...“You know, Trump took over, he’s the new chairman of the Kennedy Center,” (W. Kamau Bell) said at the top of his set. The audience let out a low boo. “You shouldn’t call it the Kennedy Center anymore,” he said. “Let’s call it the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center.” More booing. “If you’re going to have people running it with no expertise at all,” he continued, “you might as well have it named after the guy with no expertise at all.” (Earlier that day, Mr. Kennedy had been confirmed as health secretary.)
Mr. Bell tore into the president and talked about white supremacy, nationalized health care, oligarchy, fascism, socialism, transgender rights, slavery, kale chips, Nazidom and other such topics that would presumably qualify as “wokey” under new management. The comic also guessed at what sort of changes were in store.
“How many times can you give Kid Rock the Mark Twain award?” he wondered as the audience groaned.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/arts/music/kennedy-center-donald-trump.html
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