Soraya Nadia Mcdonald Brooklyn, New York Culture critic, The Undefeated Soraya Nadia McDonald This has been an incredible year for you professionally, capped off with a Pulitzer finalist citation in May. As we approach the end of 2020, have you been able to sit down and reflect on what...
Cristina Pla-Guzman Miami-area critic, drama teacher, actress, director Outlets: American Theatre, Broadway World (BWW Review) Cristina Pla-Guzman What drew you to criticism? I have been acting for 20-something years and I’ve been teaching high school-aged students for almost as long. I have an absolute passion for everything theater. I had never thought...
Janice L. Franklin Professor of Humanities and Music at Mountain View College in Dallas, Texas Outlets: Theater Jones Janice L. Franklin You have unique training for a critic. What drew you to theater criticism? I fell in love with theater and have almost 40 years of experience. Most of...
Sheri Flanders Chicago critic, improv performer and teacher at Second CityOutlets: Freelance; her work has appeared in Chicagoland Musical Theatre, Chicago Reader, Chicago Sun-Times, Rescripted, New City and Windy City Times. Sheri Flanders What drew you to criticism?When the Hedy Weiss story happened with Pass Over, the Chicago Theater Accountability Coalition called...
By Maren Scriven Swensen Charles Busch and Wendy Rosenfield at Sardi’s NEW YORK — More than 60 members of ATCA gathered at the new MCC Theater complex on West 52nd Street Friday, Nov. 1, to Sunday, Nov. 3 to engage with the best and the brightest in the...
by Lauren Van HemertPhotos by Martha Wade Steketee and Jay Handelman This summer, the top black theater companies from around the world convened in Winston-Salem, N.C. for the 16th National Black Theatre Festival. Along with them was a small contingent of American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) members to cover...
Who is the longest-serving theater critic? Queried in March by Ada Tseng of the LA Times, we replied that ATCA doesn’t keep statistics, but we cited Michael Billington, who’s been reviewing for The Guardian in England for 48 years and reviewed for smaller papers for 10 years before that...
Every year the Broadway League conducts a survey of Broadway audiences to determine, among other things, what motivates individual audience members to attend a particular show. They don’t ask the question the same way each year and respondents can choose more than one reason. Statisticians...
Kirill Serebrennikov The Russian Theatre Critics Association, ATCA’s co-member in the International Association of Theatre Critics, has denounced the arrest of controversial Russian stage/film/opera director Kirill Serebrennikov. Described as “always fresh, unconventional, and truly innovative,” he has been selected to receive the New Theatrical Reality prize this December by...
Hedy Weiss (Photo by Rich Hein/Sun-Times) Long-time Chicago Sun-Times theater critic Hedy Weiss (ATCA’s 2015 Perspectives in Criticism speaker) has stirred up a hurricane (not for the first time) with a June 13 review of Antoinette Nwandu’s “Pass Over,” a re-write of “Waiting for Godot” featuring two young African-Americans, now at Steppenwolf...