Don dodging honors for five great artists

Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. “We want to maintain the energy you feel in the room.

“Our approach is that we want to make each honoree into a character.”

With Lear, for instance, there will be verbal tributes from Chappelle and J.J. Abrams. The U.S. Air Force Singing Sergeants will belt out “America the Beautiful” and there will be “performance tributes” from five classic Lear TV shows.

Those will include Rob Reiner working from “All in the Family,” in which he starred. Rachel Bloom will handle the “Maude” tribute, writer/producer Kenya Barris will do “Good Times,” Anthony Anderson will do “The Jeffersons” and Rita Moreno will do “One Day At A Time.”

The show has been edited down to about 92 minutes of running time.

Both Weiss and Kirshner say they were most excited this year by the presence of Lavallade, 86, who is probably the least known of the honorees to the general public — and to the producers, who come from the rock ’n’ roll generation.

“We learned a lot about Carmen and what she does this year,” Kirshner says. “What she’s done in ballet, in opera, in pop music. By the time we’d finished with her story, which is remarkable, she felt like family.

“Hopefully, viewers will get the same sense we did.”

Weiss notes that he and Kirshner are not involved in selecting the honorees, only telling their stories. On one of the most heavily debated aspects of the awards, whether they should also honor deceased artists, Weiss says, “We haven’t talked about that, which isn’t to say that someday things might not change.”

For now, he says, they’re just trying to show why these artists deserve America’s most prestigious national arts honor.