Milestones | Weales Gross Maupin Papatola Hathaway and others

Milestones | Weales Gross Maupin Papatola Hathaway and others

Gerald Weales announced his retirement in the Fall, 2010 issue of The Georgia Review with an addendum to his annual “American Theater Watch” essay. His first review appeared in 1955 and he had regular gigs for The Reporter, Drama Survey and especially Commonweal (1968-93) and Georgia Review (1979-2010). He says, “Incidentally, just because I am giving up regular reviewing does not mean that I am giving up writing. As long as my mind and my typing fingers work, I’ll keep at it.” Click here for more.

Barbara Gross retired from the Federal Government Jan. 1, after more than 27 years. While employed most recently at the National Institutes of Health, she was Barbara: full-time writerrecognized for her outstanding contributions to the goal of “plain language in government communications.” She was the only non-scientist to serve on a committee which reviewed all materials disseminated to the public by the Department of Health and Human Services in the field of nutrition. Barbara is a veteran of the O’Neill Theatre Center’s National Critics Institute, class of 1992, and has been a member of ATCA since 1993. She served for a number of years on the New Play Awards Committee. She has contributed to such publications as Playbill and Playbill on Line, the Washington Post and Backstage and looks forward now to pursuing life as a full-time writer.

After 26Elizabeth Maupin Retires years, three months, two weeks and six days (but who’s counting), Elizabeth Maupin left her job as theater critic for the Orlando Sentinel on Feb. 26. She says she plans to read all the books on her bedside table, throw lots of clay and keep on reviewing theater online. She saw the writing on the wall last year when her arts editor left and was not replaced. Now she looks forward to a world with no bosses. Click for her final, characteristically no-nonsense blog.

(Betsey’s service to ATCA has been extensive, including a term as chair, 1996-99. She now serves on the New Plays Committee, which adjudicates the Steinberg/ATCA and Osborn awards.)

Dominic: handing out money nowOn January 15, Dominic Papatola, another former ATCA chair, left the critic’s post at the St. Paul Pioneer Press to become a program officer at the Otto Bremer Foundation. “The decade I’ve spent at the Pioneer Press has been one of the best of my life. My editors and colleagues at the paper have been supportive and willing to let me do things I doubt would have been possible at any other newspaper – how many theater critics were on the convention floor at the 2008 Republican National Convention? [covering it as theater]. I will continue to do periodic reviews for the Pioneer Press so that at least a little ink will still flow through my veins.” Dominic came to the Pioneer Press after covering entertainment for the Duluth News Tribune (“from ballet to tractor pulls”) and theater at the New Orleans Times-Picayune. And what other theater critic can brag that his theater community roasted him with a Fringe Festival show, Bring Me the Head of Dominic Papatola?

Brad: heading westOn Jan. 1, Brad Hathaway called it a wrap for the website Potomac Stages which, in its more than eight years, provided some 2,200 reviews, most of them Brad’s, of theater in Washington and near-by Maryland and Virginia. Characteristically, he closed the site (www.PotomacStages.com) with a celebrationof the highlights of the Potomac Region’s vibrant theatre community. An ATCA ExCom member who hosted ATCA’s 2008 conference in Washington and Northern Virginia, Brad continues to write for Capital Community News, the Virginia Connection Newspapers and others. He and his wife Teddie closed the website to free up time for major research projects prior to relocation in 2011 to California where they own a houseboat in Sausalito. ATCA member Tim Treanor wrote a testimonial to Hathaway’s Potomac Stages for DC Theatre Scene.

Recently retired: Joe Adcock, Seattle Post-Intelligencer (farewell column). Some recent buyouts: Peter Filichia, Newark Star Ledger (now blogging on TheaterMania); Damien Jaques, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (farewell column); Martin F. Kohn, Detroit Free Press; Christopher Rawson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (farewell column; Chris continues as part-time senior theater critic). And recent buyouts of former ATCA members: Michael Sommers, Newark Star Ledger; Anne Marie Welsh, San Diego Union Tribune.