The Columbia Journalism Review has published a thought provoking piece by Boston’s Jeb Gottlieb, former music and theater writer for the Boston Herald. In a section he titled “the end of the age of the critic” Gottlieb provides statistics on the decline of full time...
“Everyone in this world has someone else whom he can look down on,” wrote George Orwell in 1946, “and I must say, from experience of both trades, that the book reviewer is better off than the film critic, who cannot even do his work at home.” Now, of...
“In reference to the recent Wooster Group/Harold Pinter situation in Los Angeles and scattered reports of troubling analogs around the country, the American Theatre Critics Association strongly reaffirms our bedrock tenet that arts criticism is journalism,” stated Wm. F. Hirschman, chair, ATCA executive committee. Harold Pinter (1930-2008): What...
Sometimes we post essays about criticism in the right-hand column. But this piece by Charles McNulty for the LA Times earrents the front page. Charles McNulty Nowadays, he says, “criticism isn’t always readily distinguishable from the salesmanship and hype that have corrupted not just our politics but the arts,...
The website Bitter Lemons now allows theaters to pay to be reviewed. You can get an overview on the commentary in the LA Times and an account in opposition in the LA Weekly. Speaking for the ATCA excom, chair Bill Hirschman has said: “The American Theatre Critics’ Association, the only national organization...
Sarasota’s Asolo Rep was slapped down by Brian Friel for making significant changes in “Philadelphia, Here I Come,” as reported by Jay Handelman (Sarasota Herald-Tribune). In “Who Thinks It’s OK to ‘Improve’ Playwrights’ Work?,” Howard Sherman points out the issues are legal as well as moral and aesthetic. In the debate over...
Sarasota’s Asolo Rep was slapped down by Brian Friel for making significant changes in “Philadelphia, Here I Come,” as reported by Jay Handelman (Sarasota Herald-Tribune). In “Who Thinks It’s OK to ‘Improve’ Playwrights’ Work?,” Howard Sherman points out the issues are legal as well as moral and aesthetic. In the debate over...
“Spotlight on Broadway” is an ambitious, fact- and people-filled website devoted to the history, architecture and much more of the 40 Broadway theaters. Executives, producers, designers, architects, historians and lots and lots of actors provide video background and anecdotes. Former ATCA chair Jeffrey Eric Jenkins provided historical...
Russell Warne recently launched a Twitter-quest to find out what U.S. cities still have at least one full-time (paid) theater critic working for print media. He came up with 10: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, San Francisco, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Miami, San Jose, Sarasota. Surely there...
It’s a paradigm: Michael Feingold, one of the very finest American theater critics (George Jean Nathan Award, twice a Pulitzer finalist) loses his tenured (one would have thought) seat at the Village Voice and reappears with a twice-monthly column in TheatreMania — print to web, the...