Don’t cry for him, America, but when it comes to his vision for the Kennedy Center, President Donald J. Trump appears to be dreaming impossible dreams.
The president, who is also now the board chair for the Kennedy Center, convened a meeting of said board on Monday. In a recording of the meeting shared with The Washington Post, Trump and members said they’d like to see “Camelot,” “Cats,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Hello, Dolly!” and “The Phantom of the Opera” featured at the Kennedy Center. Speaking with reporters, Trump said, “We’re going to get some very good shows.”
Most Kennedy Center audiences were never the sort of conservative theatergoers clamoring for a season of ‘Cats,’ ‘Phantom’ and ‘Fiddler on the Roof.’
There are a number of practical problems with this wish list, the first of which is that none of those musicals are touring in North America (although a tour of “Phantom” does launch in November). And if the Kennedy Center were to try to mount its own nonunion productions, it would run into a brick wall of standing labor contracts.
“We’re gonna fix that,” the president said upon learning that the Kennedy Center would have had to pay the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees in order to have board member Lee Greenwood sing at the meeting. “They wanted $30,000 to move a piano,” Trump claimed.
And yet, none of these obstacles prevent the president of the United States from assuming “Cats” will be onstage at the Kennedy Center next year, as if he has the power to summon Mr. Mistoffelees and Rum Tum Tugger through sheer will.
Since Feb. 7, when Trump announced plans to appoint himself America’s arts impresario in chief, he has fired roughly two dozen board members appointed by President Joe Biden, had the remaining trustees elect a new president of the board and dismissed Kennedy Center leader Deborah Rutter, who had helmed the institution for 11 years.
Life at the center has been a tumultuous free fall ever since, with a series of cancellations and missed deadlines. The second week of March, when the Kennedy Center typically announces programming for the next season, has come and gone. Across Washington, venues like The Anthem and Shakespeare Theatre Company are fielding calls from artists and organizations looking for somewhere else to perform. Most notably, the producers and creators of the musical theater juggernaut “Hamilton” announced they were canceling a two-month run, which most likely have generated more money than any other show in the 2025-26 Kennedy Center season.
“I never liked ‘Hamilton’ very much,” the president said, undeterred.
Yet alleged financial mismanagement at the Kennedy Center has been top of mind for Trump and his surrogates, including Ric Grenell, the former ambassador whom the president appointed to replace Rutter on at least an interim basis, who accused the center of having low cash reserves.
As a nonprofit organization, the Kennedy Center is required to submit public tax returns, and the most recently available filings indicate it is not in financial distress, with a total budget of $268 million and a surplus of $6 million. About 16% percent of the budget comes from a congressional appropriation specifically earmarked for physical upkeep, because the center was dedicated in 1971 as a national memorial to slain President John F. Kennedy Jr.
Staffers have admitted that some needed maintenance has been deferred, and regular visitors know that massive columns on the weather-beaten Potomac River side are under scaffolding for repairs. Still, the center hardly seems in need of the make-it-great-again overhaul the president claims. “It’s in tremendous disrepair, as is a lot of our country,” Trump said. His redecorating plans include “the seats, the décor, everything” and will be funded by Congress.
But in a series of recent interviews, a board member appointed during Trump’s first term has shared his own glitzed-up vision for the Kennedy Center. Among other things, New York real estate magnate Paolo Zampolli has proposed fashion shows, a Cipriani restaurant and a ramp so he can travel by boat from Georgetown instead of taking an Uber.
“I see the center like La Scala of Milano,” he told Politico. “So luxurious. So prestigious.” The center hardly seems in need of the make-it-great-again overhaul the president claims. But Zampolli’s vision of the Kennedy Center as a hangout for Washington’s 1% sets up an odd dichotomy for the proposed audience. The average red-hat-wearing tourist who might buy tickets for “Cats” has never dreamed of eating overpriced spaghetti at Cipriani. The reality is that most Kennedy Center audiences are in the middle of these two demographics: They are federal workers who enjoy classical music, NGO lobbyists with undergraduate theater degrees and labor leaders with affinities for modern dance. And they are exactly the people now weighing whether to boycott Kennedy Center performances, because they are laid off, they are protesting Trump’s takeover or both. More important, most Kennedy Center audiences were never the sort of conservative theatergoers clamoring for a season of “Cats,” “Phantom” and “Fiddler on the Roof.” “Those are G-rated, general audience, high school-approved shows,” Lulu Picart told me. A Broadway performer and theater artist, Picart appeared at the Kennedy Center in the 2023 touring production of the musical “1776,” which featured a cast of female, trans and nonbinary performers as America’s Founding Fathers. Picart and her cast members were appalled to wake up one February morning and discover all record of the groundbreaking performance had been scrubbed from the Kennedy Center’s website. (Ironically, the Trump administration has made artistic endeavors celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence a priority over at the National Endowment for the Arts.) The president, in an Evita-like photo-op on Monday, stood in the Kennedy Center’s Opera House presidential box, arms outstretched as if there were hundreds of fans below him instead of a handful of handpicked board members. “It won’t be easy, you’ll think it strange,” the eponymous character Evita sang in the opening of her anthem for a new Argentina. She’s absolutely right. The changes Trump is proposing won’t be easy. And as anyone who knows show business could tell the president, it’s also very, very strange.
Rebecca Ritzel
Rebecca Ritzel is a Washington-based culture critic who contributes to The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Globe and Mail and other outlets. 
