Blythe’s living room isn’t big, but if she moves her red sectional to the hallway, there’s just enough room to dance.
She’s an artist living in D.C. and the host of a new, monthly DIY performance series in her home called The Yellow Room, named after the floor-length goldenrod-colored curtains framing her living space. It started partly as a response to the Trump administration’s cuts to the Kennedy Center and other venue closures, which have dried up opportunities for her and her contemporaries — and forced them to question whether Washington is the place for them to pursue a career in the arts.
“It’s really just gut-wrenchingly sad,” she said, describing a performance at the Kennedy Center as something that used to be a “feather in any choreographer’s cap,” especially for a local artist.
“In D.C., we’ve always had the Kennedy Center as like the top of that ladder, it’s sort of like, ‘You made it,’” Blythe, who has not yet performed at the storied D.C. venue, added. “Certainly The Yellow Room is not to replace a top spot on the ladder. I would argue that it’s filling in a missing piece at the middle of the ladder.”
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On a recent summer Saturday, ThimS Dance Company took over the space, turning it into a “funeral for their past selves.” The room was adorned with dark curtains and a jet-black casket, with pink flowers in the background. Audience members filed around the edges of the living room as mourners. Blythe acted as the funeral director, reading out the eulogy.
D.C.’s arts scene has always been political — artists here have long used music, theater and visual art to respond to the city’s power centers. But the Trump administration has pushed that dynamic into overdrive, putting the politics of art itself at the center of the fight. The Kennedy Center’s upheaval and changes to federal arts funding have made the stakes more immediate for artists across the DMV.
Blythe said performing at the Kennedy Center meant for artists that they “symbolically have made it.” Now that it’s been taken over by the Trump administration, many artists in D.C. are questioning their place in the city.
“It has thrown a lot of artists into really reconsidering if D.C. is the place that they ought to stay in, because, like, where if they stay in DC, where is the trajectory of their careers?” Blythe said. “We’re not getting more opportunities, certainly.”
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Luisa Lynch, a dance artist in the District who performed at The Yellow Room in March, said the changes at the Kennedy Center and the Trump administration’s broader approach to the arts have taken a toll on her and the local arts community.
“Fucking enraged,” she said when asked about how she felt about the administration’s effect on the arts community.
Susie DeFord, also known as Neon Grlz, has used footage from Kennedy Center events as backdrop media for her performances on stages across venues in the city. She said she was “heartbroken about the Kennedy Center.”
“The first time I went there, I was like, ‘This is the most beautiful place ever,’” she said, recalling several free events that put the diversity and talent in D.C.’s arts scene on display. Now, she worries about what comes next.
A former Kennedy Center employee, who spoke to The Washington Sun on the condition of anonymity, said that the center touched much of the local arts scene, specifically its social impact team, which coordinated local programs and the REACH expansion campus.
“It was incredible programming,” they said, “and when the takeover happened, the very first set of firings — after Deborah Rutter, of course, got fired — the next set of staff firings was that entire team, except for two people, were fired. So the social impact program was fully eliminated, and so with it, instantly, all of those programs were erased.”
Rutter, who had served as the president of the Kennedy Center since 2014, was ousted in February 2025 when the Trump administration started its shake-up of the institution’s leadership.
Further layoffs at the center led to the formation of Hands Off the Arts, a D.C.-based organization that advocates for the arts on a local and national level.
Dan Deutsch, an organizer for the group, said they held a vigil for John F. Kennedy’s 109th birthday — but the event ended up being much more. Many gathered around the center to mourn the institution, at least as they knew it. A wide swath of the D.C. arts community was in attendance, including decked-out drag queens and several demonstrators who donned the frog costumes that have become an unlikely symbol of anti-Trump resistance during the president’s second term.
The organization’s next event is set for Sept. 18, when they’re encouraging people from across the country to join hands in a massive demonstration they hope will wrap around the Kennedy Center building.
Across town in Columbia Heights, local punk legend Mark Andersen has been a staple of the city’s political life for decades. He co-founded Positive Force, a long-running activist collective and community organization. He has hosted a slew of anti-Trump shows, as well as benefit and mutual-aid shows to help local artists and the D.C. community.
On June 20, Positive Force hosted a “punk percussion protest” in front of the Russian Embassy during rush hour, protesting “Russia’s brutal invasion and Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine.” Attendees brought an array of items to make noise with.
On its face, the Kennedy Center has long been a symbol of the District’s high society. But even Andersen says the storied institution is a “really important symbol” to the entire local arts scene, and that its destruction is a scary indication of what’s to come.
“The vision that he [Trump] is putting forward is a scary one — it is a fascist vision,” Andersen said. “It’s celebrating something that is at odds with the best of the American experiment; it is in service for something that is at odds with democracy.”
“Donald Trump wouldn’t know art if it bit him on the behind,” he added.
The pressure on D.C. artists is also part of a broader national squeeze on federal arts funding. In 2025, the National Endowment for the Arts canceled or withdrew hundreds of grants after the Trump administration proposed eliminating the agency, affecting arts organizations across the country.
Annie Guske, a drummer for the punk band Mac N’ Toss — which counts itself as a member of the underground feminist subgenre “riot grrrl” — described what’s happening to the Kennedy Center as a “threat” to local artists.
“It’s kind of unsettling because now we’re starting to see it trickle down,” she said.
Her bandmates, bassist Mac Burgoyne and lead vocalist Devon Mullins, pointed to the struggles facing smaller DIY venues in and around D.C., including The Garage, Cat Gut and Potomac House, saying the spaces are either closed or no longer able to host shows because they lack the funding or personnel.
“Fascist governments love to shut down art and music,” Mullins said. “It is like the number one thing. Look at the Franco regime. Look at Nazi Germany. They love to shut down art and music and expression in every form.”
But even without institutional support, D.C. artists told The Sun they planned to continue creating.
Blythe and The Yellow Room are hosting monthly shows throughout the year, including a Sept. 25 performance by contemporary dancer and choreographer Safi Harriott — a mock birthday party celebrating queer and diaspora identity.
“Whatever happens, I do know that art will prevail,” Blythe said.
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