The Kennedy Center canceled all its ‘woke’ programming — so why is this Jewish musical ok?
The Tony Award-winning musical ‘Parade,’ which tells the story of a Jewish man’s lynching, arrives at the Kennedy Center
President Donald Trump speaks during the unveiling of the Kennedy Center Honors nominees, Aug. 13. Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
By Nora Berman August 20, 2025
When President Donald Trump took over the board of the Kennedy Center and installed himself as chairman early in his second term, reaction was swift. Comedian and actor Issa Rae, musician Rhiannon Giddens and the producers of the touring production of Hamilton voluntarily withdrew from planned performances. Many artists, however, were not given a choice.
A Vietnamese American playwright and producer was told to remove a “drag-adjacent” component from her cabaret show. When she refused, the show was cancelled.
The venue also cancelled the tour of the children’s musical Finn for “financial reasons,” despite the fact that the Kennedy Center had commissioned and sold out the show the previous year, because its story could be perceived as a metaphor for LGBTQ+ acceptance.
There is one particular community who, it seems, has escaped the purge of “woke programming” as Trump’s interim director of the Kennedy Center, Richard Grenell, described its previous choices. The Tony Award-winning musical Parade, which tells the story of Leo Frank, an Atlanta Jewish resident who was lynched in 1915, opened this week at the Kennedy Center. Its composer, Jason Robert Brown, wrote on X after Trump’s takeover in February that “PARADE is playing the Kennedy Center in August and we’re not changing ONE WORD.”
As of now, Parade is the only culturally specific show about a marginalized group that remains on the Kennedy Center docket. The shows that remain for the rest of the Center’s 2025 theater season include a whodunit play (“where the clues change at each performance!”), two different improv comedy shows, a magic show called Champions of Magic: A Holiday Spectacular, an Irish singing group’s Christmas revue (“Shamrock Tenors: A Christmas in Belfast”) and the Monty Python musical Spamalot.
To be sure, theater is not only meant to challenge, but to entertain. There is nothing wrong with producing family-friendly plays or performances of Christmas music. But in an environment where the current administration has declared war on diversity, equity and inclusion, defunded the National Endowment for the Arts and instituted hostile takeovers of cultural institutions like the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian, it is notable that Parade passes their litmus test.
If the Trump administration is dictating that there is a “right” and “wrong” kind of art, there’s something deeply uncomfortable about the fact that a story of a Jewish victim of antisemitism is deemed acceptable. Increasingly, the administration is placing Jews in a position where they are the only victims of bigotry in this country, seemingly prioritizing our safety at the expense of all other marginalized people. If Jews are fixed in the cultural imagination solely as the perpetual powerless victim, this static position profoundly distorts our ability to tell stories that reflect our full humanity and to ally with other minorities who are subject to discrimination.
Officials at the Kennedy Center did not return requests for comment on Parade’s inclusion, but in April, the Center’s interim director did respond to another artist about the changes in its programming. Yasmin Williams, a Black guitarist who has performed many times at the Kennedy Center, emailed Richard Grenell with her concerns about artists canceling shows at the Center, and asked if it had changed its hiring or performance booking practices.
In a heated exchange that Williams posted on her social media, Grenell said that artists had pulled out of the Kennedy Center performances not because of Trump’s takeover of the board, but because they didn’t want to perform for Republican audiences. He said that “The programs are so woke they haven’t made money,” and “Yes, I cut the DEI bullshit.” Grenell went on to allege that “Yes, we are doing programming for the masses in order to pay our bills.”
Parade was a Tony Award-winning show on Broadway, so one could absolutely argue that it is “programming for the masses.” Yet I can’t help but wonder if shows where Jews are not powerless victims would be as well received by the new board of the Kennedy Center. Would The Lehman Trilogy, an epic play by Stefano Massini about the rise of German Jewish immigrant brothers who founded the eponymous investment firm that spectacularly collapsed be welcome? Or The Producers, where Jewish Broadway producers conspire to defraud their investors?
In People Love Dead Jews, Dara Horn writes about how Western societies are fascinated by stories of murdered Jews, but show little interest in understanding or engaging with the complexity of living Jews. “The Jews are a symbol,” she said in an interview with K. magazine about the book. “They become people who have been killed to teach us something.”
Horn’s analysis aptly informs the current administration’s overwhelming focus on weaponizing antisemitism in order to gain power over higher education and restrict First Amendment rights. Trump and his allies do not really care about Jewish lives. Manipulating historic fears for Jewish safety are a useful tool for them.
When Parade’s revival opened on Broadway in 2023, I attended a preview to prepare for a profile I was writing about Micaela Diamond, who played Leo Frank’s wife, Lucille. In the closing scene, the audience stirred as Leo Frank was dragged from his jail cell and strung up on a tree. When the noose was placed around his neck, however, the audience was completely silent. We held our breath as Ben Platt, in character, stopped struggling and resigned himself to his fate.
Even though we were in a theater on West 45th Street, there was a palpable hushed horror: we were about to witness a man being lynched. As Platt opened his mouth and sang out the Shema, one of the most important prayers in Judaism that is traditionally recited before dying, a tectonic wave of emotion went through the crowd. In that moment, Platt was not just playing Leo Frank, but standing in for the thousands of Jews who had called out this same prayer while facing their death. I glanced down my row and saw faces glistening with tears. I realized my own cheeks were wet too.
It was one of the most transcendent moments I’ve ever experienced in theater. And yet, I wondered whether, in some audience member’s hearts, they felt a sense of comfort watching Frank go to his death because it affirmed their preconceptions of stories about Jews. I can’t help but worry that for the Kennedy Center in 2025, the power of Parade is tempered by its very inclusion in a program designed to avoid challenging the audience. After all, Jews are victims, and dying is what victims do.
