It appears our, Washington Post’s, CNN, and New York Times’ reporting on plummeting ticket sales at the Kennedy Center is starting to get under the skin of Ric Grenell and KC leadership. We used to be able to look at the ticket booking portal on the Kennedy Center website and assess how many unsold tickets were available for each level in the opera house, concert hall, etc. It still took time, but the total available seats for each level were tallied. (See image from the Nutcracker).
I guess, when you are publicly humiliated by your less-than-stellar ticket sales, you start to take action to obfuscate your ticket sales slump. First, you stop distributing the internal ticket sales reports; then you disable the function in your booking portal so people cannot see tallies of the total number of unsold tickets for each level in the opera house. (see Image below)
Don’t fret. We here at Pack the House PURPLE are diligent bean counters, and we can still count the orange dots that denote available seats.
According to information we learned, a week before the Center’s much-publicized Noel Jesus is Born Christmas performance, they have only sold about 15% of the seats. 389 tickets have actually been sold and 129 have been comped. That means that in a house that holds 2,347. The house will be virtually empty. There is definitely room at the inn on the Kennedy Center stage. So much for programming things that people really want to see. I would bet an all lesbian production of Othello would have more tickets sold than Grenell’s folly.
I guess live asses on stage can’t even pack the house. (no, not that orange-faced one from last week’s honors). Perhaps sales would increase if Grenell dressed as a clown and scooped poop backstage.
Don’t worry, Ric, we will continue to count empty seats to illustrate that your leadership has yet to bear the fruit that you announced- namely that you are producing shows that people want to see. We can see the empty seats, and you, Trump, and the board are more of a liability for the center’s future success than you are an ingredient for success.
If you are sick and tired of Ric Grenell and Trump’s board sinking the Kennedy Center into the Potomac, sign our petition and join us as we Pack the House PURPLE and protest the incompetent leadership at the Kennedy Center. We will be planning more protests and direct actions in the new year.
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