More important, production companies are still using their shows as a vehicle for progressive activism.
More important, production companies are still using their shows as a vehicle for progressive activism.
‘J ust last year, the Kennedy Center featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth — THIS WILL STOP,” Donald Trump wrote on social media in February. He, now the board chairman of the Kennedy Center, further promised us “a golden age in arts and culture.”
Well, now Trump is being accused of hypocrisy because the upcoming season at the Kennedy Center does include drag, or at least cross-dressing.
Next summer, the Kennedy Center will host Moulin Rouge! The Musical. On the Kennedy Center’s YouTube page, there is a short promotional video with snippets from the show. In just the first few seconds of the video, you can see a man dressed in burlesque-style clothes. Indeed, the production includes the drag-performer character titled “Baby Doll” that is performed by a male. The cast member who played “Baby Doll” in the Broadway tour said the following of the role in an interview last year: “It’s just so liberating. I mean to be a gay person and to be able to play a character that makes me feel so sexy and empowered and to stand so fully in my gayness is really liberating and exciting.” (Yes, the theater world is famously known for refusing to hire gay men.)
Another musical coming soon to the Kennedy Center is Chicago, which includes the character “Mary Sunshine.” It has been played by a male soprano since 1996, although the New York Times reported in 2022 that the Broadway production updated its job notice to welcome performers of “any age, any gender identity, any ethnicity” to audition. Apparently one drag character was insufficient for the Broadway production, since it also cast “Jinkx Monsoon,” two-time winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race, in the role “Matron ‘Mama’ Morton.”
The Daily Beast reports that “drag” appears in additional shows scheduled to run at the Kennedy Center next season, specifically Mrs. Doubtfire and Spamalot!, although I think that claim is misleading. It is true that the plot of Mrs. Doubtfire depends on a man pretending to be a woman, but it is very obvious that he is pretending. I don’t think Mrs. Doubtfire qualifies as “drag” because it isn’t sexualized. Yet even if we disregard the content of the show, the production itself has made its progressive commitments clear. The Mrs. Doubtfire Instagram account posted the following statement in 2020: “Mrs. Doubtfire firmly stands behind our Black company members. Black Lives Matter.” To become an “anti-racist production,” the production began requiring all of its employees to participate in “anti-racist and bias training,” and it gave donations to Black Lives Matter, the ACLU, and the NAACP, among others.
I haven’t seen Monty Python’s Spamalot!, but I reckon that what the New York Times called “drag bits” in the show are simply satirical; the entire production is a parody, and you’re probably not meant to take anything seriously, let alone perceive any grand moral lesson about acceptable lifestyles in the show. But more importantly, even the Daily Beast suggests that the production’s “drag” is more of a nod to the history of cross-dressing in medieval theater than “drag” per se.
In fairness to Trump and the Kennedy Center staff, three of these shows aren’t exactly “targeting our youth.” The Kennedy Center explicitly recommends Moulin Rouge! The Musical for ages 15+, Chicago for ages 13+, and Spamalot! for ages 12+. But even if there weren’t a single instance of “drag” in the upcoming season, the Kennedy Center is sadly continuing to support production companies that view the arts as a vehicle to promote an ideology and performers who see their roles as avatars for activism. Performing arts groups should just be focused on the quality of the show, not issuing statements that “condemn all forms of hate and racism,” as the Mrs. Doubtfire production has done, or posting images with “BLACK LIVES MATTER” in giant letters, as Moulin Rouge! on Broadway did. Unfortunately, I’ve mentioned only a few examples, and plenty of other forthcoming programs feature companies that have supported radical left-wing activism; the dancers with American Ballet Theatre, a company expressly committed to “investing in DEI across all aspects of our institution” and cultivating an “antiracist and anti-discriminatory community,” will appear onstage in February. Trump says the Kennedy Center is an “American Jewel,” but perhaps taxpayer money should stop funding the spectacles of “artists” who promote some of the worst excesses of progressivism and resent their fellow Americans who hold conservative values.