Former Kennedy Center Employee Speaks Out Against Organization

Joseph described the Center's current atmosphere as full of "toxicity" and marked by a feeling of "imminent danger"

The spoken-word poet, dancer, playwright, actor, and arts administrator Marc Bamuthi Joseph, who was recently fired from his role as Artistic Director of Social Impact at the Kennedy Center, has spoken publicly about the effects that the Trump administration's takeover of the Center has had on programs and staff morale.

Joseph and six other staff members — the majority of the Social Impact team — were fired at just one day's notice, according to an interview that Joseph gave to MSN News.

As Joseph tells it, a directive went out from Ric Grenell that the Center should begin dismantling social impact programs. The Social Impact team scrambled to make contingency plans, knowing that it was obliged to honor existing contracts and thinking it would have at least a week to come up with a transition plan.

This was not the case, however: according to Joseph, the very next day, seven team members were laid off.

Joseph described the atmosphere of the Center under the Trump administration as being imbued with "toxicity" and a feeling of "imminent danger...a sense of moral injury within the building."

"The Kennedy Center, like any other performing arts institution, thrives when artists feel safe," Joseph said. "I would say that the general attitude, or the kind of general feeling is one of vulnerability and impending violence within a landscape that is supposed to be a sanctuary for free thought and expression."

"It will be, I think, harder and harder for organizations to sustain themselves in this environment if the economic impacts of a kind of monocultural perspective continue to announce themselves in this way," he added. "Not because audiences aren’t hungry for this work, not because artists aren’t creating, but in a broader atmosphere of a narrowing cultural vision as part of the national agenda and stated agenda and the siphoning of funds from creative people. It will be harder and harder to actually make the work that draws audience and communities to arts centers."