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Yesterday, BroadwayWorld reported that the board overseeing Washington’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts voted to rename the venue the Trump-Kennedy Center.
Al Vincent, Jr., the executive director for Actors’ Equity Association, released the following statement:
“The Kennedy Center was initially designated, as President Lyndon Johnson put it, to be ‘a national project and a national possession,’ intended to ‘symbolize our belief that the world of creation and thought are at the core of all civilization.’ It was named in honor of President Kennedy in the aftermath of his death, commemorating a president who championed the rights of the worker and the value of the artist.
“The new board of this institution, which has sought to stifle free and open expression in the arts, is preoccupied with the performing arts center’s name rather than its mission.
“This is a lawless move, and we ask Congress to affirm the Kennedy Center’s proper name. And on behalf of our members who want to continue safely earning a living there, we ask that the board of the Kennedy Center instead focuses on addressing its recent decline in ticket sales and loss in audiences.”
BroadwayWorld previously reported that ticket sales at the Kennedy Center declined significantly following a leadership transition earlier this year. According to ticketing and spending data cited by The Washington Post, attendance for major productions between early September and mid-October fell to its lowest level since the pandemic. During that six-week period, approximately 43 percent of seats in the Opera House, Concert Hall, and Eisenhower Theater went unsold, meaning only about 57 percent of available tickets were sold or distributed as complimentary. In comparison, those venues saw 93 percent of seats filled or comped in fall 2024, 80 percent in 2023, and 94 percent in 2022.
