Under Trump, ticket sales plummet for Kennedy Center performances

President Trump’s favourite philharmonic is, famously, “Les Misérables,” but fewer fans person been storming the barricades to get into the Kennedy Center this season.

The Washington Post reports that income for the existent play of music, creation and theatre astatine the Washington, D.C., taste instauration person declined dramatically since the president’s inauguration and his consequent takeover of the Kennedy Center’s leadership.

The Post cites information showing the Kennedy Center has sold lone 57% of its tickets from September to mid October, galore of which are believed to beryllium comped giveaways. That contrasts with a 93% summons merchantability complaint done the aforesaid play past year.

The venues surveyed see the Opera House, the Concert Hall and the Eisenhower Theater, with performances by the National Symphony Orchestra, touring Broadway musicals and creation troupes. Out of 143,000 imaginable seats for the existent season, 53,000 person not yet sold. When fans person bought tickets, they’ve spent little than fractional arsenic overmuch wealth from September to the archetypal fractional of October 2025 compared with the aforesaid clip past twelvemonth — the lowest full since 2018 different than the tallness of the 2020 pandemic.

After Trump’s election, helium appointed Republican diplomat and erstwhile State Department spokesperson Richard Grenell to pb the Kennedy Center, whose committee elected Trump arsenic its president. The caller enactment fired respective longtime staffers, and salient committee members and leaders similar Ben Folds near the organization.

““I couldn’t beryllium a pawn successful that,” Folds told The Times. “Was I expected to telephone my homies similar Sara Bareilles and say, ‘Hey, bash you privation to travel play here?’”

Artists that bash execute astatine the Kennedy Center person noted a alteration successful the audience. Yasmin Williams, a singer-songwriter who performed successful September aft a contentious email speech with Grennell, said that “During my Kennedy Center amusement connected Thursday night, a radical of Tr*mp supporters boo’d maine erstwhile I mentioned Ric Grenell and seemed to beryllium determination to intimidate me,” yet “playing that Malcolm X video successful that abstraction and forcing this existent medication to reckon with the harm they’ve caused, portion besides promoting joyousness and the powerfulness of euphony to the assemblage … this is wherefore I bash what I do.” (Kennedy Center spokesperson Roma Daravi told the Post that “This is an perfectly ridiculous claim.”)

Grennell, for his part, said connected X that that “We are doing the large things that radical privation to see. We are seeing a immense alteration due to the fact that radical are recognizing that they privation to beryllium a portion of thing that is common-sense programming.” In August, Trump announced his picks for Kennedy Center honors, including histrion and filmmaker Sylvester Stallone, glam-rockers KISS, vocalist Gloria Gaynor, state euphony prima George Strait and English histrion and comedian Michael Crawford.