Whatever’s Next, I’m All In With Support for Western PA Duo Kooman and Dimond, the Musical Theater Team Behind ‘Finn’

By SHARON EBERSON

The dictatorial new wave at the Kennedy Center has hit home in the cancellation of a planned tour of the children’s musical Finn, which the performing arts institution commissioned and premiered in 2024.

Anyone who appreciates civilization’s connection to the arts and artists, in their infinite variety, should be outraged.

I am outraged, and I need to vent.

Actors Equity and The Dramatists Guild are among those who agree, releasing statements in support of the artists. Equity’s reads in part: 

“Since its founding, the Kennedy Center has represented the full breadth of American culture; it is disturbing to see the new leadership of this institution move so swiftly to suppress viewpoints they do not agree with. And it is beyond appalling that the art they find so dangerous is a joyful children’s musical encouraging young people to be true to themselves and follow their dreams.”

Two of the creators of Finn, Michael Kooman and Christopher Dimond, are Western Pennsylvania natives (Altoona and Thornburg, respectively) who met at Carnegie Mellon University; Dimond also is a graduate of Duquesne University. 

With co-creator Chris Nee (the award-winning animated series Doc McStuffins on Disney Junior), Kooman and Dimond released a joint statement on Instagram, saying: “While not a surprise given the events of the last week, it is a heartbreak. But we will not be silenced. And we will not abandon the kids we wrote this show for. They are already under attack from every side. We didn’t ask for this joy bomb of a show to be a part of the resistance, but here we are.”

This is the world we live in now. If the president doesn’t like a work of art, in any discipline, or his friends don’t like it, or it somehow offends their narrow sensibilities, then he and his cronies can judge it and dismiss it.

As I watch President Trump’s daily dismissal of hard-fought rights and protections of citizens, my mind can’t keep up. That’s obviously the strategy: Overwork his Sharpie with so many decrees, that those who disagree are stuck in the dizzying chaos of the administration’s purge. 

On a spin-the-wheel-of-outrages-to-my-soul, the partisan plunder of the Kennedy Center’s artistic integrity is where the spinning has stopped. At least for now.

The president took over the Kennedy Center on February 12, after firing more than a dozen board members and replacing them with loyalists, who appointed him chairman, “effective immediately.”

The move sparked celebrities such as Shonda Rhimes, Ben Folds and Indiana, PA, native Renee Fleming (she has a new role at Wolf Trap, btw) to resign from their positions at the Kennedy Center, and the actress, writer and producer Issa Rae has cancelled her upcoming appearance there, over what she called “an infringement of values.”

In announcing he was removing board chairman David Rubenstein and putting himself in charge, the president “falsely claimed that the center had hosted drag shows targeting young people. The context here is that conservatives obsessively complain about — and often have sought to ban — art and cultural institutions they don’t like. And drag shows, both real and imagined, have become a scapegoat for conservatives to promote their censorship efforts,” MSNBC reported.

The reality TV president was not always so conservative in his entertainment tastes. 

Mr. Trump regularly visited Broadway as a resident of New York City, and he was seen at openings such as the Green Day musical American Idiot. His partying days produced this image (below) from Studio 54, in which the divine queen Divine is staring disdainfully, with Trump and first wife, Ivana, in the background.

Mr. Trump had a falling out with Andy Warhol when he commissioned then rejected Warhol’s portraits of New York’s Trump Tower. However, he twice referenced a Warhol book quote in his own books: 

“Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art,” Warhol said. “Making money is art, and working is art, and good business is the best art.” 

Apparently, crushing art is now the business of Trump conservatives. 

The president, who ran partly on a platform of grievances and retribution, holds a grudge against the vast majority of artists who openly disdain him. He has in the past singled out the Kennedy Center Honors, which he never attended during his first four years as president, and where detractors such as the award-winning actor Robert De Niro are held in high esteem.

And now, like a cartoon villain who finally has his hands on a prized possession, the president is wielding his influence over a regal institution whose vision statement reads: “We are the nation’s beacon for the performing arts, engaging artists and audiences around the world to share, inspire and celebrate the cultural heritage by which a great society is defined and remembered.”

Finn fit that vision, but not the president’s or his cronies’.

The musical, which sold out during its initial run at the Kennedy Center, follows a young shark who realizes he may relate more to smaller, gentler fishes. He wants to live his truth, while still upholding family traditions.

A creator of the show told The Washington Post that “it could be read as a metaphor for LGBTQ+ experience, although there is nothing in the musical explicitly about that community.”

“We just really wanted to write a show that we wish we had 20 years ago,” Kooman told the Post. “A show that would make growing up a little bit easier for someone who feels like they’re different.”

The award-winning writing team (the 2010 Jonathan Larson Grant and the inaugural Lorenz Hart Award, among many) have premiered and workshopped various shows in Pittsburgh, including Dani Girl, a show that has played worldwide, about a 9-year-old girl who uses her spirit and imagination to cope with the effects of leukemia and cancer treatments. The story is loosely based on Dimond’s cousin, Danny Naccarelli of Carnegie, who died from leukemia at the age of 13.

In 2014, Kooman and Dimond’s Judge Jackie Justice: Trials of Love (now subtitled Disorder in the Court), a Pittsburgh CLO commission, debuted at the Greer Cabaret Theater.

 The duo also returned to Pittsburgh for A Holiday Homecoming! Featuring the music of Kooman & Dimond at City Theatre in 2018, and to accompany students performing their songs, in the 2022 Carnegie Mellon School of Drama’s annual cabaret.

I am hometown proud, of course, as any Pittsburgher should be. When their show was cancelled, one might have said, “What’s next, paving over the Rose Garden at the White House?”

He’s hoping to do that, too.

I DM’d Michael Kooman on Valentine’s Day, to add my voice to an outpouring of support, and he answered, “We are still wrapping our heads around everything, but we will likely have a plan in place next week.”

Whatever it is, count me in.

Categories: Arts and Ideas