Two corporate sponsors have pulled their support for a controversial New York Public Theater production of Shakespeare\u2019s Julius Caesar that depicts Caesar as U.S. President Donald Trump. Delta Air Lines and Bank of America pulled their long-standing sponsorship of New York\u2019s Public Theater amid criticism the play crosses a line in its depiction of the grisly assassination of the Trump-Caesar character. \u201cNo matter what your political stance may be, the graphic staging of \u2018Julius Caesar\u2019 at this summer\u2019s Free Shakespeare in the Park does not reflect Delta Air Lines\u2019 values,\u201d the company said in a statement late Sunday. \u201cTheir artistic and creative direction crossed the line on the standards of good taste,\u201d the company continued. \u201cWe have notified them of our decision to end our sponsorship as the official airline of the Public Theater effective immediately.\u201d Soon after Delta\u2019s announcement, Bank of America, a sponsor for 11 years, pulled its financial support of the theater. \u201cThe Public Theater chose to present Julius Caesar in a way that was intended to provoke and offend,\u201d spokesman Susan Atran told the New York Times. \u201cHad this intention been made known to us, we would have decided not to sponsor it. We are withdrawing our funding for this production.\u201d The president\u2019s son, Donald Trump Jr., also weighed in on Twitter questioning how the Public Theater is funded. \u201cI wonder how much of this "art" is funded by taxpayers?\u201d he tweeted. \u201cSerious question, when does \u2018art\u2019 become political speech & does that change things?\u201d In addition to Caesar made to look like Trump, the play includes a character that resembles First Lady Melania Trump. The play is set to officially open Monday as part of the Public Theater\u2019s free Shakespeare in the Park festival. It has been running in previews since May 23. The controversy comes amid several scandals involving anti-Trump stunts, including comedian and CNN personality Kathy Griffin posing with a severed head that looked like Trump and a CNN contributor, Reza Aslan, using profanity to describe the president in a tweet. CNN severed ties with both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two corporate sponsors have pulled their support for a controversial New York Public Theater production of Shakespeare\u2019s Julius Caesar that depicts Caesar as U.S. President Donald Trump. Delta Air Lines and Bank of America pulled their long-standing sponsorship of New York\u2019s Public Theater amid criticism the play crosses a line in its depiction of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40241,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40240"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}