Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper led a one-night takeover of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Monday night to celebrate Pride month, in defiance of the Center’s move away from what President Trump has called "woke" programming.
The concert, titled "Love is Love," featured Broadway artists and was produced by Jeffrey Seller, who has been behind shows such as "Hamilton," "Avenue Q" and "Rent."
The event started when Hickenlooper reached out to Seller with what he described as a “goofy idea.”
“Taking songs from this arc of acceptance (of gay rights), so that we get to celebrate for a moment just how powerful our arts and culture is and how it's changed America and how better off we are,” explained Colorado’s junior senator.
Seller did not shoot down the idea, and instead started calling playwrights, performers, musical directors and more to get the lineup together.
Performers sang numbers from musicals ranging from "Oklahoma" to "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" and gave readings from playwrights like Tony Kushner and Harvey Fierstein.
Seller said the Kennedy Center belongs to all Americans, regardless of their political beliefs, but the Trump Administration “took it away when they fired the professional CEO. They took it away when they fired the nonpartisan chairman of the board” and cancelled LGBTQ-positive performances.
“Today, we are taking back a little bit of that, because that building belongs to all of us, and tonight, that building enables us to celebrate one of the greatest, fastest civil rights movements in the history of America, the gay civil rights movement, and we are going to do it through music, humor, inspiration and pride,” Seller said.
To put on the show, Hickenlooper and Democratic Sens. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Jacky Rosen of Nevada, Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts rented one of the center’s smaller venues without disclosing the true purpose of the event.
In February, President Donald Trump fired the Kennedy Center’s president and several board members appointed by former President Joe Biden, and took over as chair. At the time, he told reporters, “We don’t need ‘woke’ at the Kennedy Center.”
The president installed his envoy for special missions, Richard Grenell, who is gay, as interim executive director.
In a statement Monday, Grenell called the senators’ performance “a political stunt.”
“We welcome everyone who wants to celebrate the arts, including our compatriots on the other side of the political aisle. We especially welcome artists and audience members who come to the Kennedy Center not for partisan political pranks but to experience excellence in the performing arts,” Grenell said.
Hickenlooper said the two spoke over the phone hours before the performance.
“The arts have become embroiled in politics and that's something that the Kennedy Center is supposed to resolve,” Hickenlooper said.
A week’s worth of Pride events at the Kennedy Center were canceled earlier this spring, with some organizers telling CNN the center stopped working with them after the change in leadership.
Seller himself announced in March that Hamilton would cancel its 2026 performance at the Kennedy Center.
“The recent purge by the Trump Administration of both professional staff and performing arts events at or originally produced by the Kennedy Center flies in the face of everything this national cultural center represents,” Seller said in a lengthy statement. “Given these recent actions, our show simply cannot, in good conscience, participate and be a part of this new culture that is being imposed on the Kennedy Center.”
