President Donald Trump’s favorite musical is, famously, “Les Misérables,” but few fans have been storming the barricades to get into the Kennedy Center this season.
The Washington Post reports that sales for the current season of music, dance and theater at the Washington, D.C., cultural institution have declined dramatically since the president’s inauguration and his subsequent takeover of the Kennedy Center’s leadership.
The Post cites data showing the Kennedy Center has sold only 57% of its tickets from September to mid October, many of which are believed to be comped giveaways. That contrasts with a 93% ticket sale rate through the same period last year.
The venues surveyed include the Opera House, the Concert Hall and the Eisenhower Theater, with performances by the National Symphony Orchestra, touring Broadway musicals and dance troupes. Out of 143,000 possible seats for the current season, 53,000 have not yet sold. When fans have bought tickets, they’ve spent less than half as much money from September to the first half of October 2025 compared with the same time last year — the lowest total since 2018 other than the height of the 2020 pandemic.
After Trump’s election, he appointed Republican diplomat and former State Department spokesperson Richard Grenell to lead the Kennedy Center, whose board elected Trump as its president. The new leadership fired several longtime staffers, and prominent board members and leaders like Ben Folds left the organization.
“I couldn’t be a pawn in that,” Folds told the Los Angeles Times. “Was I supposed to call my homies like Sara Bareilles and say, ‘Hey, do you want to come play here?’”
Artists that do perform at the Kennedy Center have noted a change in the audience. Yasmin Williams, a singer-songwriter who performed in September after a contentious email exchange with Grennell, said that “During my Kennedy Center show on Thursday night, a group of Tr*mp supporters boo’d me when I mentioned Ric Grenell and seemed to be there to intimidate me,” yet “playing that Malcolm X video in that space and forcing this current administration to reckon with the damage they’ve caused, while also promoting joy and the power of music to the audience … this is why I do what I do.” (Kennedy Center spokesperson Roma Daravi told the Post that “This is an absolutely ridiculous claim.”)
Grennell, for his part, said on X that “We are doing the big things that people want to see. We are seeing a huge change because people are recognizing that they want to be a part of something that is common-sense programming.” In August, Trump announced his picks for Kennedy Center honors, including actor and filmmaker Sylvester Stallone, glam-rockers KISS, singer Gloria Gaynor, country music star George Strait and English actor and comedian Michael Crawford.
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