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rior to the Trump takeover of the Kennedy Center, Saturday evenings were bustling. It wasn’t unusual to have 10 to 12 shows in a day — where all nine venues on the campus were in use and sold out — which meant more than 7,500 people would move through its hallowed halls.
The Saturday evening of this past Memorial Day weekend was very different. I stood alone in the Grand Foyer of the Kennedy Center having just finished a shift at the box office, a part-time position I’ve held since September 2019. As a freelance writer who covers the music and entertainment industries, this job allows me an incredibly flexible additional source of income. (To avoid any signs of favoritism, I’ve never written about the Kennedy Center prior to this.) The only show that evening, Shear Madness, was being performed upstairs in the Theater Lab to a crowd consisting mostly of a school group. Other shows originally scheduled for that date had long been cancelled.
To say the last 16 months have been rough for employees here would be a severe understatement. While the beauty of this massive hall can typically distract me from the never-ending nonsense of the new regime, the emptiness that night was only a reminder of it. If I uttered a word, it would echo and bounce off the Orrefors crystal chandeliers and sconces donated by the country of Sweden; the mirrors from Belgium; and the eight-foot bronze bust of President John F. Kennedy by the American sculptor Robert Berks, the wall behind it one of the few places in the building where the words “John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts” have remained unchanged. Surrounded by the grandeur that is a living memorial to President Kennedy, I thought about how the Center would not exist had it not been for a Republican president: Dwight D. Eisenhower.
