Wicked Composer Pulls Out of Kennedy Center Appearance

Stephen Schwartz has taken his "Defying Gravity" ethos offstage and into Washington. The Wicked composer says he will not appear at the Kennedy Center after its board voted to add President Trump's name to the building, arguing the venue has abandoned the political neutrality it was created to embody. "It no longer represents the apolitical place for free artistic expression it was founded to be," Schwartz said in an email to Newsday. "There's no way I would set foot in it now." The center's website had promoted him as part of a Washington National Opera gala in May, but that listing disappeared Friday afternoon.

Kennedy Center board president Richard Grenell pushed back, insisting there was nothing to cancel. "He was never signed and I've never had a single conversation on him since arriving," Grenell wrote on X, calling reports of a cancellation "totally bogus" and noting Schwartz himself had said in February he hadn't heard anything about the event. Schwartz spokesman Michael Cole told CNN the composer had been in touch with someone connected to the Washington National Opera about "possible participation" in the May gala, last speaking in February 2025. After that, Schwartz assumed the event wasn't happening, Cole said, and only learned Thursday night it was still on—by which point he'd decided he wouldn't appear under the new naming arrangement.

The Kennedy Center, which opened in 1971 as a congressionally designated memorial to President John F. Kennedy, has been in turmoil since Trump replaced its board last year with allies who then cut staff, revisited programming, and, last month, voted to rename it The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. That move has triggered a wave of artist withdrawals, including New York dance company Doug Varone and Dancers, whose director said on CNN that canceling was a unanimous choice despite the financial hit: "I can't imagine any artist wanting to step through those doors right now with his name on that building." The center has threatened legal action against some artists backing out.