American College Theatre Festival Cuts Ties With Kennedy Center
“our affiliation with the Kennedy Center is no longer viable”
They don’t come right out and say why this is happening, but we all know it.
Deadline reports:
American College Theatre Festival Severs Affiliation With Kennedy Center After 58 Years
After an affiliation that’s lasted nearly 60 years, the American College Theatre Festival is suspending its partnership with The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
The affiliation, according to an ACTF statement post on Facebook, is “no longer viable” due to “circumstances and decisions that do not align with our organization’s values.”
The theater festival involves collegiate theater students from across the United States, and includes eight regional competitions that have long culminated in a week-long national festival, including the awarding of scholarships and other honors, at the Kennedy Center.
The regional conferences, which operate under a nonprofit entity separate from the National Committee, will continue independently as planned for 2026.
The Kennedy Center has been the subject of ongoing controversy since President Donald Trump assumed control of the arts organization last January. Most recently, the center’s Trump-appointed board voted to rename the venue The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, a move that Democrats, Kennedy family members and others say only Congress can authorize.
In its statement on Facebook, the ACTF National Committee writes, “For 58 years, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has been an integral and vital partner in advancing the work of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF)…Unfortunately, our affiliation with the Kennedy Center is no longer viable. Due to circumstances and decisions that do not align with our organization’s values, the National Committee, which includes regional leadership (regional chairs, regional playwriting chairs, regional design, technology, and management chairs, and the building opportunity through leadership and development chairs) has voted to suspend our affiliation with the Kennedy Center.
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Comments
There is no reason for the American College Theatre Festival to have anything other than an arms length relationship with its venue organization. If the Board of Directors of the American College Theatre Festival were to honor its fiduciary duty, it would conduct an RFP every three to five years to hold a competition for a venue under the terms most favorable to its organization. There are many venues that can host its events. Venues should be selected based upon merit and pricing and not based upon which President or President(s) are in the venue’s name.
That is just bad business and does not serve the students that this program is designed to advance.
Does ACT receive any federal funds? If so, stop them immediately and claw back and money already provided. Their values are obviously out of alignment with those of the country and there is no reason for us to fund them.
The Center will be just fine without little nose-pickers staging their insufferable student plays there. In fact, it just got more classy.
I was not aware that the people who use the center were so un-American.