Critical kerfuffle greets Lily Janiak

Critical kerfuffle greets Lily Janiak

How a young critic on HowlRound wrote “Whose America? … Whose theater?,” a review/commentary on California Shakespeare Theatre — and great is the noise and commentary thereupon, touching on many issues of lively interest. It’s a good read. Lily Janiak

* Lily Janiak’s review/commentary with a zesty following string of comments. 

* Clayton Lord takes a hammer to a gnat, occasioning many rejoinders (wherein Lord writes another few yards of prose), many worth reading. My favorite is by Scott Walters.

* Then HowlRound editor Polly Carl writes an apology. Or is it an apology? Commentators differ — another thread to peruse.

* And George Hunka ties this in with Jason Zinoman’s Perspectives in Criticism talk at ATCA/CATF, here. (Jason’s speech is here; he’s also been tweeting on all this, which he calls a “depressing” affair, as you can see in the Twitter feed on our homepage.)

ALSO: George notes, “The keynote speech at the annual conference of the American Theatre Critics Association serves as a kind of ‘State of the Nation’ summation of the current condition of the art.” Couldn’t have said it better ourselves.