Latest news with #DeborahRutter
San Francisco Chronicle
24-05-2025
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
Kennedy Center ex-president decries ‘false allegations' about her tenure
The offstage drama at the embattled John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts just took another turn. Deborah Rutter, whose tenure as president of the premier Washington, D.C. arts organization was cut short this year by President Donald Trump, issued a withering statement on LinkedIn decrying 'false allegations' about her leadership. Those critics, she wrote on Tuesday, May 20, lack 'the context or expertise to understand the complexities involved in nonprofit and arts management.' The statement follows allegations made Monday, May, 19, by Richard Grenell, who Trump appointed as the institution's interim executive director, that the center's deferred maintenance and deficit were criminal matters for prosecutors to investigate. The remark, reported by the Associated Press, came during a meal with Trump and board members at the White House's State Dining Room. It was not immediately clear what law the center might be breaking; deficit spending by nonprofit arts organizations has practically been the norm, not the exception, since the COVID pandemic. Berkeley's Aurora Theatre Company, for instance, recently announced plans to forego producing a season next year after draining its savings. Moreover, Rutter pointed out that Trump's allies approved previous Kennedy Center budgets. 'The Finance, Audit, and Executive Committees of the Board — composed of appointees from President Trump's first term — had full transparency into all financial transactions and decisions,' she wrote. She also noted that when she left in February, as part of a wave of terminations and resignations that reconstituted the center, the organization had $10 million in reserve funds. 'Perhaps those now in charge are facing significant financial gaps and are seeking to attribute them to past management,' she hypothesized. 'This malicious attempt to distort the facts, which were consistently, transparently and readily available in professionally audited financial reports, recklessly disregards the truth.' The dispute exacerbates an already tumultuous 2025 at the Kennedy Center. In February, Trump appointed himself chair of the board. Soon after, a host of shows at the organization, including Tony Award-nominated 'Eureka Day' by Oakland playwright Jonathan Spector, was axed from the lineup. A Kennedy Center artist leaked 'unprofessional and rude' emails Grenell sent her in April, further exposing the internal chaos there since Trump's takeover. This month, 'Les Miserables' cast members announced plans to boycott Trump's attendance at a June 11 Kennedy Center performance, which recently scheduled a run of 'Mrs. Doubtfire' despite the presidents frequent castigations of drag. Also this month, center employees took steps with the National Labor Relations Board to unionize.
Los Angeles Times
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Post-Trump purge, can the Kennedy Center save itself? How Mark Morris showed the way
Washington, D.C. — Like much else in the nation's capital, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is in a state of uncertainty. For 53 years, this massive performance complex has served — with bipartisan grace and, at its best, conspicuous American flair — to honor a single U.S. president. But in February the center was appropriated by another president who now also rules as chairman of a board of trustees, all of whom are his appointees. The takeover resulted in the firing of the center's long-serving president, Deborah Rutter, one of the country's most impressive arts leaders. Over the last decade, she expanded an already vast institution's offerings. The center's new temporary president, Richard Grenell, a former ambassador to Germany, lacks arts management experience. In the meantime, the new administrators warn that the Kennedy Center is impoverished, that the facility has become shoddy and that some of its programming ill serves the American ideal. Diversity and drag are out, which has led to the disinviting of, among others, the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington, D.C., from performing on the premises. Celebrating Christmas, promises Grenell, is very much in, as will be striving for profit-making programming. One suggestion is commercializing the center to take advantage of its real estate value and prime location on the Potomac. On a recent afternoon I wandered the Kennedy Center's grand hallways leading to an opera house (home of Washington National Opera), concert hall (home to the National Symphony) and the Eisenhower Theater (suited for drama and dance), all overseen by a super-sized bust of JFK. I visited the galleries and shops and restaurants, the Millennium Stage (where a free chamber music performance was taking place) and checked out a recent addition, the Reach, a $250-million complex of flexible venues, an investment the new administration bemoans. It was a beautiful spring day, and the Kennedy Center appeared to be well-tended but unusually quiet. Other than a small crowd listening to members of the National Symphony perform chamber music, I felt like I had the building practically to myself. A clerk in one of the gift shops was thrilled to finally have a customer. I was the only one in the galleries. Exhibits still reflected diversity. Rainbow flag Kennedy Center T-shirts remained for sale. There have been cancellations in protest of the takeover — notably Rhiannon Giddens, the Broadway production of 'Hamilton' and what was to have been the Washington premiere of Gregory Spears' moving opera 'Fellow Travelers,' based on the Lavender Scare, the 1950s federal persecution of gay men and lesbians in government. But Mark Morris' potentially controversial new ballet, 'Moon,' was having its world premiere that evening as planned. Morris may be America's leading choreographer, but he also can be a fanciful bad boy of dance. Tell him he can't do something and, I've been told, look out. It would be hard to imagine the current Kennedy Center welcoming Morris' manner of dispensing Christmas cheer. His brilliant yuletime hit, 'The Hard Nut,' based on Tchaikovsky's 'The Nutcracker,' has been delighting audiences of all ages for three decades, but it does happen to include a comedic maid in drag. When the Kennedy Center last fall commissioned Morris to make an evening-length centerpiece for its vast 'Earth to Space: Arts Breaking the Sky' festival, nothing more was intended than to honor JFK's initiative that led, in 1969, to Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin being the first Earthlings to walk on the moon. The festival is an exuberant example of the sweeping events that Rutter created. It includes concerts, opera, dance, film, talks, installations, exhibits, interstellar musical journeys of one oddball sort or another, appearances by astronauts and space-specialist celebrities, not to mention daily screenings of a new film, 'The Moonwalkers,' featuring Tom Hanks. All of this takes on new meaning, especially if we recall JFK's 1962 speech at Rice University in Houston. In it he defended the enormity of the Apollo 11 mission's expense by noting, 'There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet,' and warned that 'its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again.' NASA is preparing for a moon landing again in 2027. The temptation, this time, goes beyond scientific curiosity to colonization, mining rare elements and using the moon as a waystation to Mars. The two most zealous space buffs on Earth loom large in Washington, with Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk in a moon race with their respective rocket enterprises, Blue Origin and Space X. Enter Mark Morris. He had been cagey all along about what he had in mind, other than to include the moon landing and the Golden Record, the disc that astronomer and media personality Carl Sagan made for Voyager 1 and 2. Launched in 1977, these two NASA spacecraft were the first intended to leave our solar system. The recording includes sounds, voices and music of the Earth's peoples, in hopes that it just might reach intelligent life somewhere out there. 'Moon,' which is a series of short dances that lasts just under an hour, begins with an animated display of five-pointed stars in a semicircle on a screen that served as the backdrop for the Eisenhower stage. The stars slyly become the circumference of the U.S. presidential seal. But rather than leading to outrage, an image of JFK appeared beneath the seal, and then one of the moon. The audience laughed and then warmly applauded. Morris' silvery moon was a place of mystery and wonder. Musical choices were agreeably eccentric. Beyond the Golden Record's greetings in many languages to aliens, Morris turned to gloriously schmaltzy swing, bluegrass and country recordings from the '30s, '40s and '50s. These included Al Bowlly's 'Roll Along, Prairie Moon,' Bill Monroe's 'Blue Moon of Kentucky,' Bonnie Guitar's 'Dark Moon' and Hildegarde's 'Honey-Coloured Moon.' Pianist and organist Colin Fowler, joined by bassist Jordan Frazier, added their contributions from the pit. A few of György Ligeti's startlingly strange solo piano numbers from 'Musica Ricercata' showed up. Dancers rolled by on wheeled stools like little space people to some of Marcel Dupré's eerie '24 Organ Inventions.' With gorgeously impressionist lighting (by Mike Faba), intriguing outer space projections (by Wendall K. Harrington), elegant costumes (by Isaac Mizrahi) and little toy spacemen scattered about, the Morris 'Moon' became a luxuriant dreamlike escape from Washingtonian reality. Most important of all, his company had never been better, and the dancers themselves provided the real fantasy. Otherworldly movement somehow matched the different music in ways that seem rational but not needing to make sense. Movement, itself, was adventure, around every turn an imaginative new surprise. To walk into a newly uncertain Kennedy Center can feel fraught. But in his program note, Morris asks us to 'observe and enjoy Moon and Space, without understanding a thing.' The genius of 'Moon,' however, is to remind us that wonder can be around the least expected corners. Can 'Moon' remind NASA to go to the moon to wonder, not to plunder? Probably not. But it can remind artists that if 'Moon' matters, so still must a Kennedy Center that nourishes and produces such work. Following the three Kennedy Center performances, 'Moon' will be visible in the next seasons over parts of America, including Southern California, where Morris has a large following and favored status in many venues. (The head of the Broad Stage in Santa Monica came to D.C. for the premiere.) In the meantime, Morris' 'Pepperland' reaches the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills next month and the Music Center Plaza in downtown L.A. is offering daily two-minute afternoon breathing and Morris-choreographed movement 'microbreaks,' meant to help us 'pause, reflect and recharge.' Kennedy Center, please, before it is too late, pause, reflect and recharge. America needs you. And you, if you decide to understand a thing or two, will need us.
Washington Post
14-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Kennedy Center staff describe climate of fear as events drop from calendar
The fallout from President Donald Trump's takeover of the Kennedy Center's board and purge of its leadership continued Thursday, as the center's staff worried about the storied arts institution and shows began to disappear from its lineup. Comedian, actress and Hollywood creator Issa Rae said on Instagram that she was pulling her sold-out show, 'An Evening With Issa Rae,' from the upcoming slate of programming, becoming the first major artist to publicly cancel an upcoming show at the Kennedy Center. 'Unfortunately, due to what I believe to be an infringement on the values of an institution that has faithfully celebrated artists of all backgrounds through all mediums, I've decided to cancel my appearance at this venue,' she wrote, adding that tickets will be refunded. The cancellation comes the day after the new board of trustees installed Trump as its new chair, while also voting to terminate Deborah Rutter as president and making former acting director of national intelligence Richard Grenell interim president. After the shake-up, musician Ben Folds and opera singer Renée Fleming said they were stepping down as artistic advisers with the center, as did the treasurer of its board of trustees, TV producer Shonda Rhimes. The center terminated its general counsel and the head of its public relations department, according to people with close knowledge of the Kennedy Center who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared reprisal. The center's new public relations staff did not immediately respond to questions about firings or show cancellations. Also Thursday, David Rubenstein, the deposed chair of the center's board of trustees, broke his silence with a statement posted on social media praising the center. It did not mention his successor. 'I am sorry that I could not be in Washington yesterday with Deborah Rutter and all of you,' Rubenstein said. He praised Rutter and the Kennedy Center staff for 'supporting the Kennedy Center over many years and through a number of difficult times' and making it 'the beacon for the performing arts its founders intended.' 'President Kennedy would be proud of your selfless work, your long hours, your commitment to excellence, and your dedication to the performing arts,' he said. Rubenstein, originally appointed by President George W. Bush, was recently terminated along with every Biden-appointed board member. Meanwhile, other shows connected with the Kennedy Center have been canceled or scrubbed from its website. In 2023, the center commissioned 'Finn,' a kids' musical about a shark that finds he fits in more with smaller fish than his fellow predators. A creator of the show said it could be read as a metaphor for LGBTQ+ experience, though there is nothing in the musical explicitly about the community. 'We just really wanted to write a show that we wish we had 20 years ago,' said Michael Kooman, who created the show with Chris Nee and Christopher Dimond. 'A show that would make growing up a little bit easier for someone who feels like they're different.' During a limited roughly four-week run, it received rave reviews, frequently sold out and turned a profit, Kooman said. The musical was about to embark on a two-year tour, which was produced by the Kennedy Center. On Wednesday, before the board meeting, the 'Finn' creative team received a phone call from the center telling them the tour was canceled because 'the financials weren't working out,' Kooman said. 'It's hard to ignore the circumstances in which the cancellation of the tour is happening,' he added. In a statement, the union Actors' Equity Association said they were 'outraged' at the cancellation. 'It is disturbing to see the new leadership of this institution move so swiftly to suppress viewpoints they do not agree with,' they wrote, adding the union intends to enforce its contracts with the center. 'A Peacock Among Pigeons,' an NSO concert billed as a 'celebration of love, diversity, and the vibrant spirit of the LGBTQ+ community' and scheduled to take place during World Pride 2025, has been removed from the website. The Washington Post has not been able to confirm if it has been canceled. Trump's unprecedented takeover has deeply rattled the Kennedy Center's staff and leaders across the cultural sector. The institution, billed as the nation's cultural center and a 'living' memorial to President John F. Kennedy, is historically nonpartisan, best known as a hub for stately classical performances, opera and theater. Its presidential appointees tend not to directly manage the roughly 2,000 events it runs for some 2 million visitors a year. Trump signaled he was interested in changing its programs, pointing to drag performances, which last year made up a tiny portion of its show calendar. Several Kennedy Center staffers, who spoke with The Post on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, described a week of chaos, fear and confusion under the new leadership. Trump's comments 'collapsed all the nuance of what we do,' said one staffer, who described the work as more than a job or a passion. 'My identity is caught up in this place,' the staffer said. And now, 'I don't feel safe.' A former staffer with knowledge of Trump's interactions with the center during his first term said he previously showed little interest in the arts institution. 'It's concerning he would want to exert this much power over a nonprofit,' the former staffer said. '... The people whose lives he's throwing into chaos aren't government employees. They're arts administrators.' Some welcomed the changes. Marc Rotterman, a political commentator who lived in Washington for decades and worked in the Reagan administration, feels that over the past decade, the programming at the center has become prohibitively expensive and the offerings have become too reliant on Hollywood celebrities. He'd like to see more country artists, Southern rock and bluegrass and is hopeful the new regime can bring more of that programming to the center. 'It doesn't all have to be bow tie and chardonnay and cheese,' Rotterman said. 'Maybe the blue-collar crowd with a Budweiser could appear one in a while.' A few blocks from the Kennedy Center, local advocacy organizations rallied dozens of residents for a transgender and queer dance party and protest in Washington Circle on Thursday evening. Shuttles to the Kennedy Center were lined up and sitting empty at the nearby Foggy Bottom Metro stop just before 6:30 p.m. Two drag performers, decked out in wigs and slimming dresses, stood out among a crowd bundled up for warmth during the blustery night. Organizers blared music as attendees swayed along and some held up signs, one which read: 'There is no art without drag.' The White House officially released a full list of Trump's new appointees on Thursday. They are as follows: Hau Chu contributed to this report.
