They knew it was coming, but the Kennedy Center board’s Tuesday vote to shut down the national performing arts center for two years still shocked the Maryland theater community.
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which opened in 1971, looms large in Maryland artists’ backyards.
The shuttering of the main building follows President Donald Trump’s replacement of the center’s board with his allies more than a year and a half ago, which prompted widespread performer and audience boycotts.
And the president’s repeated attempts to add his name to the building’s signage, which federal judges have repeatedly blocked, have interfered with its operations.
We asked six Marylanders about their connections to the Kennedy Center and their hopes for its future.
Anja Aniere, former ballet dancer
When Anja Aniere was growing up in Rockville, her mother would take her to the Kennedy Center for Kwanzaa programs and free shows at its Millennium Stage. A few years later, Aniere got to realize her dream on the Kennedy Center stage: dancing with The Joffrey Ballet.
The Joffrey had selected Aniere to appear in back-to-back annual productions of “The Nutcracker.”
“I learned that when I think something is impossible, I should never let it get to me,” Aniere wrote in a sixth grade class assignment soon after. “After all, it might not be true!”
She went on to a six-year residency with the Dance Theatre of Harlem in a program designed to “raise up a new generation of specifically Black female performers to teach them that they are valued in these predominantly white spaces.”
Aniere doesn’t dance much anymore, but the Kennedy Center, she said, has “always been a very important part” of her family’s story.
Ed Zakreski, former Kennedy Center fundraiser
Once an intern at the Kennedy Center, Ed Zakreski worked his way up to jobs in the education and development departments, including serving as director of individual campaigns.
Now the executive director of Bethesda’s Round House Theatre, he said the loss of the Kennedy Center reverberates.
“The arts are essential to a thriving community,” he said in a statement. “They create opportunities for people to gather, connect and engage with stories that deepen our understanding of each other.
“For generations, the Kennedy Center has played a vital role in fostering these experiences, and we can only hope that its doors will once again be opened to the artists, audiences and communities it has served for so long.”
Amy Austin, Theatre Washington president and CEO
Amy Austin has seen disillusioned Kennedy Center audiences gravitate to the dozens of Maryland theaters closer to home.
Still, she’s having a hard time accepting that the Kennedy Center has actually closed. Hundreds of artists and staff, she said, are out of jobs.
She’s hopeful that the Kennedy Center will eventually be restored to its former glory.
“It is much easier to destroy things than it is to build them back up,” she said. “I do think the Kennedy Center will come back, but I think it will be at a much slower pace than we’ve seen the way it was shut down.”
Austin added, “I think we haven’t really fully realized how big the loss is.”
Debbie Ellinghaus, Olney Theatre Center executive director
Debbie Ellinghaus’ first introduction to theater as a child was with her grandmother at a pre-Broadway production of “Annie” in 1977 at the Kennedy Center. It’s where, she said, she fell in love with the performing arts.
In the years that followed, she returned with her own children, hoping to spark the same love of theater in them.
“I’ve always felt so proud to be a native of this region, and having the Kennedy Center so accessible to us really helped center this pride I have in the DMV,” said Ellinghaus, executive director of the Olney Theatre Center.
“It’s a collective grief in our industry,” she said of the Kennedy Center’s closure. “We don’t rise and fall based on a name on a building or any one particular person. We rise because of the artists and the audience and the work that we share with the community.”
Steve Goldklang, Vagabond Players director and producer
Shortly after the Kennedy Center opened in 1971, Steve Goldklang attended the world premiere of Leonard Bernstein’s “MASS.”
“Walking into that building, which was pretty much brand new — it was just an awe-inspiring experience,” said Goldklang, a director and producer at Baltimore’s Vagabond Players theater.
He would continue to make the trip from Baltimore for many other productions over the years, including the Royal Shakespeare Company’s radical rendition of William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” He recalled returning to the Kennedy Center after a long break during the COVID-19 pandemic, wearing a mask. He said reuniting with the theater brought him and fellow theatergoers to tears.
“Appalled” to learn of its closure this week, he said he hopes the building won’t be torn down.
“This closure happened because important artists wouldn’t perform there,” he said. Once Trump is no longer in office, “I think that the artists will come back.”
Suzan E. Jenkins, Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County CEO
When Kennedy Center boycotts began, audiences, performers and arts education workshops flocked to other local theaters, including those in Montgomery County.
It’s not a silver lining, said Suzan E. Jenkins. But it has been heartening to see the local arts industry’s agility and strength.
“In the most difficult of situations, humanity turns to the arts, and that’s what has been happening in Montgomery County,” she said. “We get through it together. ... We can lift each other up during this time.”
Banner editor Lauren Markoe contributed to this story.
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