Washington's Kennedy Center is now selling tickets to the demonstrators standing outside it.
The Kennedy Center has placed the protest against its own demolition into its official season, with nineteen scheduled performances and an interval. Management says the demonstration outdrew its autumn slate. Protesters object to the ticketing but have accepted the lighting.
The Kennedy Center has added the protest outside its own front doors to its official season programme. The demonstration now appears between a chamber recital and a touring production of Guys and Dolls, under the heading "Civic Works".
Nineteen performances are scheduled through to the spring. Subscribers get priority on the marble steps, which offer the best sightlines of the placards and, weather permitting, the river.
Demonstrators assembled at the Washington venue after President Trump's stated intention to shut and demolish the place. The building's managers, faced with a crowd they could not disperse, did the only thing an arts institution knows how to do with an unsolicited event. They programmed it.
"We looked at the footfall and we looked at the passion, and frankly the passion was stronger than anything in our autumn slate," said Delphine Raskin-Moore, the centre's acting director of audience-adjacent activity. "The chanting is unamplified. That is rarer than people think."
She confirmed there is an interval. It lasts twenty minutes and the bars stay open.
Reviews have been mixed
Critics who attended the Sunday matinee found the material derivative. One noted that the banners were handsome but the second half sagged badly after the folk singer arrived.
The comparison writes itself, and 1871 wrote it first. The Communards pulled down the Vendôme Column, the government put it straight back up, and everyone involved gave interviews about permanence. Buildings are astonishingly hard to argue out of existence. Governments are astonishingly hard to argue out of announcing that they will try.
"We are not entertainment. We are a warning. Ushers will seat you between numbers."
That was Cordell Amaro of the Coalition to Keep the Roof On, who objects to the ticketing but has accepted a lighting rig. His group insists the protest is not a show, while conceding that the sound check improved things considerably.
The centre says demolition, if it comes, will be handled by a separate department. Raskin-Moore declined to say whether the wrecking equipment would be available for booking, describing that decision as "above my pay grade and below my dignity".
Merchandise is already moving. A tote bag bearing the outline of the building outsold the tote bag bearing the outline of the president by a margin nobody at the gift shop wished to discuss.
I have stood outside a lot of condemned buildings in a lot of capitals, holding a notebook and waiting for a bulldozer that never came. The crowd always sings. The politician always moves on to a different building. The venue survives, slightly shabbier, with better stories and a gift shop that has learned something.
