How's it going America,
Check out our latest episode of The Pod Millennial! I sit down with legendary Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan for a wide-ranging conversation that touches on creativity, cancellation, and the state of modern entertainment. Graham opens up about his experience being ostracized from the UK comedy world for speaking out against gender ideology, the personal toll of losing lifelong friends, and his testimony before Congress. Listen, rate (5 stars, of course!), and subscribe!
Let's get into it:
On Monday, Trump sat down with the Board of the Trump Kennedy Center, where they voted to shut down the building for two years for renovations. As he discussed the closure of Washington, DC's art center, he talked about the problems he saw with it in its current iteration, and as he did so, he broke my little heart.
"It's the Trump Kennedy Center," Trump said. "Over the past year, we've made incredible strides to restore the true purpose and prestige of this revered institution. Together, we're going to ensure it remains the finest performing arts facility of its kind anywhere in the world.
"And I don't know that it ever really reached that stage, but it will over uh a period of time. We're rebuilding it. It's in very, very bad condition. It's been let it's it's been it's been somewhat of a disaster to be
honest with you. It's been let go to hell. That's what they've done. They did a poor job.
"They spent money in the wrong places. They built some theaters underneath that nobody uses, little ones, tiny theaters that cost like $300 million." That was the heartbreaker. That was the comment that really sank into my stomach and made me realize that while Trump is all for the palaces of art, he doesn't know how work gets to those stages.
Big Broadway shows don't start out as big Broadway shows; they start off as little play readings for 10, 20, 100 people. They start out in little theaters that don't cost much to rent, with actors who do the part for love, not for profit. If there was any problem with those little theaters in the basement, it would be that artists didn't know about them, didn't know how to access them, and perhaps weren't invited in to use them to incubate their next great masterpieces.
In New York, good plays come up from downtown. Hadestown, a big Broadway smash, was directed by a woman who spent at least a decade doing experimental theater projects in little, underground, out-of-the-way spaces. Projects routinely come up from The Public, which has its own palaces, sure but where artists work in small spaces for limited audiences while they work out their ideas.
And here's the thing: the left KNOWS this, they NURTURE it, they feed it lots of cash and make sure that they are tapping into the future cultural zeitgeist on the ground floor. That's how the left maintains cultural dominance. They don't just look at the big new spectacle that costs millions to produce, they look for the little, tiny spark in the little, tiny theaters, where true artistic heart—not money or prestige—take top billing.
If the Trump Kennedy Center Board is not aware of that, they should put in place someone who does, someone who can bring new works from the edges of culture into the warm embrace of a tiny little space where the artists can know they can try things out, make mistakes, and don't have to lick the boots of the leftist ideologues while they're at it.
"And the money was spent incorrectly, wrong," Trump went on to say. "We're dealing with some networks on the possibility of renting those little theaters. Nobody's going to use them. They want the big halls. The halls are the halls are going to be incredible. They're in bad shape, but when they're completed, the bones are potentially uh something that could be unbelievable."
When I was coming up in theater with my friends and fellow artists, we didn't want the big halls; we wanted the little theaters. And we went to work in them. My fondest memories are in those tiny, little spaces where in the great darkness of the universe, we felt as integral and essential as the spark of new life.
Libby