Ticket sales for the Kennedy Center’s annual performance of “The Nutcracker” have plummeted under the new leadership of President Donald Trump, who took over as the organization’s chairman earlier this year, CNN reported Saturday.
According to internal sales data obtained and reviewed by CNN, ticket sales for the Kennedy Center’s performance of “The Nutcracker” topped out at around 10,000 seats across the production’s seven performances, around a 33% drop off from the around 15,000 ticket sales for the production seen in 2001 through 2024.
A person with knowledge of the internal workings of the Kennedy Center told CNN that even if the performance of “The Nutcracker” were to have sold out this year, the costs for the performance would still outweigh the revenue from ticket sales.
“Selling every ticket to ‘The Nutcracker’ is absolutely not paying your bills,” the person told CNN on the condition of anonymity. “We have 19 unions here. The production costs are huge.”
Additionally, other performances have been cancelled due to both a new policy imposed on the center of requiring all performances to “break even,” and from artists resigning from their leadership roles or pulling out of previously scheduled events, such as the cancellation of a performance of the musical “Hamilton” that was planned for earlier this year.
“One of the financial lifelines of the center is Broadway,” said a former Kennedy Center employee, speaking with CNN on the condition of anonymity. “Broadway tours are looking at where they should be playing, and in many cases, they are choosing not the Kennedy Center.”
Under the Kennedy Center’s new Trump-approved board of trustees, performers had also been vetted for their gender identity, according to Marc Bamuthi Joseph, the former head of the center’s social impact team whose role was terminated after Trump was sworn into office.
“They would ask us specifically if any of the artists were trans,” Joseph told CNN. “They never explicitly said, ‘Don’t do that,’ but they would make the conditions impossible for trans artists and gay artists to safely come.’”