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Comedian Dave Chappelle surprisingly announced that the student theater at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in northwest Washington will not bear his name.
Chappelle, one of the school’s most famous alumni, was in town Monday night for an inauguration ceremony for the venue.
Instead, it will be called Theater for Artistic Freedom and Artistic Expression.
The inauguration was initially postponed last November after critics branded the comedian’s high-profile Netflix special The Closer as transphobic. Students from Ellington also expressed concerns. Chappelle told the audience on Monday that while he felt the backlash against him was nuanced and not about his work, he didn’t want a theater bearing his name to distract from students who were doing it focus on the meaning of their art.
At the time of the controversy last year, Duke Ellington Principal Sandi Logan said she had had formal and informal meetings with students to discuss Chappelle’s comments, including a month of weekly meetings with an advisory committee of student leaders, the gender representative and the School members Alliance for Sexuality.
Duke Ellington School is delaying naming theater after Dave Chappelle until April
“Moving ahead with the event…without first addressing questions and concerns from members of the Ellington community would be a missed opportunity for an educational moment,” the school wrote in a statement.
Duke Ellington was founded in 1974 with the goal of providing a free, world-class arts education to children in the nation’s capital. It attracts students from across the city and is one of the few art schools in the area that educates a predominantly black student body.
Chappelle, who pledged to donate $100,000 to the school’s theater, said last October that having the theater named after him was “the greatest honor of my life.”
“I used to skip school. I hid there when I skipped class. Who would have thought that one day this theater would be named after me?” Chappelle, speaking to donors, said they should raise money for Ellington ahead of a screening of “The Closer” at the Angelica Pop-Up Theater in Union Market. “But I get it because sometimes when you love things, they love you back. And I loved this school.”