Benedict Cumberbatch in rehearsal for Hamlet

Four years ago, I pondered whether, in this age of social media and vastly accelerated information distribution online, “Will The Embargo Hold?” I was referring to the long-accepted practice by which theatrical productions designated a preview period, during which the production would be refined and altered, in view of the public, but with the critical press waiting until the defined opening night to render their verdicts.

The Benedict Cumberbatch Hamlet, now in previews at The Barbican in London, has been perhaps the highest profile test of the arts embargo, with several outlets sending critics and reporters to the very first performance. Some wrote out and out reviews, some claimed they were simply reporting on it, but nonetheless, the production was described with specificity and opinions were rendered. A wave of commentary on the breach of the embargo ensued.

A report in The Daily Beast on Monday, elaborated upon in The Telegraph yesterday, added a new twist to the conversation. According to the Beast, Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy, which had been relocated to the very start of the play in early previews, was now back in its original place in Shakespeare’s script.

There’s no question that the director’s early vision regarding one of the most famous speeches in theatrical history was a surprise, and you may have your own views about whether such a change is advisable. But Hamlet is in the public domain, as are all Shakespeare’s works, which means they can be manipulated, reworked, transformed and pillaged as artists see fit. Director Lyndsey Turner had every right to try this approach.

But because of the reporting on those very early previews, Turner’s directorial decision was subjected not only to scrutiny, but to scorn from some quarters. As a result, we don’t know whether the restoration of the speech to its original place in the script was driven by critical, academic and public outcry, or simply because Turner (and perhaps Cumberbatch) decided it wasn’t working. Deprived of the opportunity to experiment and explore a bit without critical judgment, I expect that even the reviews of the final version will still opine about the placement of the speech, even though it’s back where it began and many critics never even saw the initial, atypical version.

The press’s near-obsession with the Cumberbatch Hamlet is quite extraordinary. It seems that there are news stories almost daily, whether about the production itself, about Cumberbatch’s request that audience members don’t shoot video of it, and so on. It’s not entirely unexpected for a show which sold out its run a year in advance, but surely bigger stars have taken to the stage before; perhaps this is the first UK social media theatre blockbuster and it has forced the mainstream media to struggle to keep up.

While I was fully aware of the increasing permeability of the arts embargo, I’m still troubled by what’s happened with this Hamlet. Has the exceptionally early appearance of reviews and “reports,” which gave other outlets the right to report on that coverage even if they elected not to review the production themselves, had a fundamental effect on the production? Has Lyndsey Turner directly or indirectly been forced to alter her production, in part because the shock impact of reworking the text has been eliminated by the press, and because of criticism of the approach?

While I suspect the slow crumbling of the embargo has been accelerated by Cumbermania, it may last in general use for a while yet. Theatres will likely cling to their stated openings for as long as possible, even when media outlets make their voices heard somewhat prematurely, in the eyes of the producers and artists involved. But it’s possible that, especially for productions with major stars, this may force shows back towards more limited previews, lest the press be allowed to start playing show doctor (or dictator) at their own discretion. And if that’s the case, are artists – regardless of whether they’re working in a commercial or not-for-profit settings – losing out? And ultimately, are audiences losing out as well?

Synetic Theater’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Seemingly out of nowhere, The Wall Street Journal published a column yesterday, “A Silenced Shakespeare in Washington: Shakespeare without puns is like French cooking without butter,” which slams the work of Washington D.C.’s Synetic Theater for their movement-based productions of Shakespeare, productions which have garnered critical and popular acclaim for more than a decade. What’s curious about this op-ed cum review, written by a contributor who is not a member of the paper’s arts staff, and certainly not their widely-traveled critic Terry Teachout, is that not only does it seek to demolish Synetic’s work, but to trash anyone who might enjoy or support that work. The author is James Bovard, identified as “the author of ‘Public Policy Hooligan’ and a member of the USA Today Editorial Page Board of Contributors.”

Here’s a few samples:

The latest Shakespeare fashion, at least in the Washington area, is to invite people to a feast of language and serve nothing but grunts, grimaces and grins—with a few gyrations thrown in for dessert…

The company has received numerous grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and its state affiliate, the Virginia Commission for the Arts. Synetic is known for high-energy performances relying on acrobatics, pantomime and special effects. But flips and twists cannot suffice for nouns and verbs….

Silent Shakespeare is akin to mental nouveau cuisine with more flourishes than calories. The fact that many Washingtonians consider Silent Shakespeare an improvement rather than an oxymoron reflects unkindly on the capital’s cultural pretensions. But perhaps we should not be surprised that the city that pioneered obfuscation is now exalting expunging English altogether.

Synetic responded to Bovard’s assault on a blog, but inevitably that will be seen by fewer people than those who read the Journal, one of the country’s largest newspapers in print and online. Here’s a bit of their riposte:

It is unclear to us from The Wall Street Journal’s latest opinion piece whether or not the writer James Bovard has seen a Synetic production, or whether his opinion has been formed from YouTube videos and editorial content from other publications….

Synetic’s wordless Shakespeare has never been recommended as improving upon or replacing his plays produced in the traditional way, focusing on and emphasizing the richness of the prose and poetry as it appears in English (however many a mewling schoolboy would contest that Shakespeare’s language is not English). At Synetic, his words are translated into physical language and visual poetry, just as they have been translated into countless other languages and art forms throughout history….

Perhaps the most contradictory paragraph involves Mr. Bovard’s comparison to Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. He states, “…that presentation succeeds thanks to magnificent music and viewers’ familiarity with the characters and storyline.” None of those elements are absent from Synetic productions as audiences at Synetic are just as familiar with Shakespeare’s characters and story lines…

On reading Bovard’s piece, it was unclear to me as well as to whether he had actually seen the work itself (incidentally, I haven’t, which is why I offer no opinion of it). To that point, it’s worth noting that while Bovard took to his blog to write about the responses to his piece, and to take on certain points in Synetic’s response, he was mum on the issue of whether he has ever attended a show by the company.

Synetic Theater’s Much Ado About Nothing

As always, I believe critics are entitled to their opinion. However, if the editors at the Journal have given Bovard a platform to opine about the idea of Synetic’s work, rather than the work itself, they have abdicated basic journalism tenets, even for opinion pieces. That Bovard fails to understand that in decrying “wordless Shakespeare,” yet appreciating Shakespearean ballet, he’s really just taking issue with nomenclature, not art form, rather amuses me, as it should anyone taking him too seriously.

On his blog, Bovard even tries to take apart Synetic’s response, as if his broadside in the Journal was insufficient. I wonder, however, if in calling Synetic’s mention of their work’s accessibility to the Deaf and hard of hearing “patronizing,” he understands that while sign language interpretation has indeed been provided for theatrical productions for years, American Sign Language is not English, but its own language with its own unique syntax. This means that ASL has already shifted Shakespeare’s language into a new form, altered from the words that Bovard holds dear – and that ASL is in and of itself a visually based form, one with a particular beauty of its own, even to those who don’t know it.

If it is becoming the Journal’s policy to allow contributors to randomly allow contributors to slam the work of art, artists and companies they don’t like, I trust they will also begin publishing pieces on work that contributors particularly enjoy, even if both seem to supersede the purview of their own critics. That said, I suspect the WSJ critics and arts writers might have their own feeling about such usurpers, and the editors might reconsider such pieces in the future.

From this single essay, which serves as my introduction to Bovard’s writing and thinking, I make the assumption that he is a Shakespeare purist. He’s welcome to that view of works which I too enjoy enormously, though I happen to think they can be performed, interpreted, altered and reconstructed in countless worthwhile ways while never harming the original texts, remaining available to all who seek them or stage them. In fact, just last night I saw the Druid Theatre’s radically cut versions of Richard II and Henry IV, Part i, in which both Henry IV and Prince Hal were played by women, which might also make Bovard apoplectic.

In Bovard’s slash and burn approach to Synetic, I can only imagine that, metaphorically, the theater company somehow killed his father and married his mother, and after interminable dithering, he decided to seek revenge. As we all know, that doesn’t work out too well for all concerned.

“You can’t draw sweet water from a foul well,” critic Brooks Atkinson wrote of his initial reaction to the musical Pal Joey. I don’t know whether Christopher Hart of The Sunday Times in London knows this famous quote, but it certainly seems to summarize his approach to reviewing the London premiere of Stephen Adly Guirgis’s The Motherfucker With The Hat, which one can safely say is light years more profane than the Rodgers and Hart musical.

Alec Newman, Ricardo Chavira & Yul Vázquez in The Motherfucker With The Hat at the National Theatre

“A desperately boring play,” “an absolute stinker of a play,” “untrammelled by such boring bourgeois virtues as self-restraint or good manners,” “turgid tripe,” and “a pile of steaming offal,” are among the phrases Hart deploys about Guirgis’s Hat. While I happen to not agree with him (and admittedly I saw the Broadway production, not the one on at the National Theatre), he is entitled to these opinions. It may not be particularly nuanced criticism, but it’s his reaction. There are other British critics with opposing views (The Guardian and The Independent), and some who agree (Daily Mail), so there’s no consensus among his colleagues. But within his flaying of the play, Hart reveals classist, racist and nationalist sentiments that, however honestly he may be expressing them, prove why he is unable to assess the play on its own terms, empathizing with its flawed characters, as any good critic should endeavor to do.

Take this example: “Like the white working class in this country, the PRs in America have picked up a lot of black patois.” Even allowing for differences in language between England and the U.S., referring to residents of Puerto Rico and “the PRs” is patently offensive, and also hopelessly out of date, all at once. The statement also suggests that Puerto Ricans are in some way foreign, when the island itself has been part of America for more than a century; it’s perhaps akin to saying “the Welsh in Great Britain” as if they’re alien. When he parses “black patois” as the difference between saying “ax instead of ask,” Hart presents himself as Henry Higgins of American pronunciations, which I strongly suspect he picked up from watching American television and film, without any real understanding of racial culture or linguistics here – and he generalizes condescendingly about a huge swath of the British populace for good measure.

Hart also refers to the “very brief entertainment to be had in trying to work out” the ethnic background of the character Veronica, first musing that she might be “mixed race African American” but acknowledging her as Puerto Rican “when her boyfriend calls her his ‘little taino mamacita’.” I don’t know why he was fixated on this issue, presumably based on a parsing of the skin color of the actress in the role, especially since the play provided him with the answer (though the same problem has afflicted U.S. critics encountering Puerto Rican characters as well). Would that he were more focused on the character and story. He briefly describes the plot as being about “one Veronica, who lives in a scuzzy apartment off Times Square, snorts coke and sleeps around. Oh, and she shouts a lot.” In point of the fact, the play is an ensemble piece, and if any one character dominates, it’s Jackie, the ex-con struggling to fight his addictions and set his life straight.

After going off on a tear about the play’s profanity, Hart makes a comment about the play’s dialogue, saying, “A lot of it is ass-centred, in that distinctive American way.” As an American, I have to say that I’m unfamiliar with our bum-centric obsession, outside of certain pop and rap songs, even if Meghan Trainor is all about that bass. But hey, I’ve only lived here my whole life, and spent 13 of those years living and working in New York, a melting pot of culture and idiom. What do I know?

I don’t happen to read Hart with any regularity, but my colleague at The Stage, Mark Shenton, has noted his tendency to antagonistic hyperbole in the past, having called Hart out for separate reviews of Cabaret and Bent which both seem puritanical and, in the latter case, homophobic. While I peruse a number of UK papers online, both via subscription and free access, even my limited exposure to Hart’s rhetoric suggests that The Sunday Times is an outlet whose paywall I shall happily leave unbreached.

I was actually going to shrug off the ugliness of the Hat review, but only about an hour after I read it, I came across some letters to the editor in The Boston Globe, responding to a review of A. Rey Pamatmat’s Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them at Company One Theatre. While I don’t think the critic in this case, Jeffrey Gantz, was trying to be inflammatory (as I’m fairly certain Hart was), he revealed his own biases in seemingly casual remarks. Noting that two of the characters are Filipino-American, he wrote:

They make the occasional reference to their favorite Filipino dishes, but I wish more of their culture was on display, and it seems odd that they have no racial problems at school.

Maria Jan Carreon and Gideon Bautista in Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them at Company One Theatre

Not every character with a specific racial or ethnic origin need demonstrate it for our consumption on stage; it may not be germane to the play or perhaps the characters created by Pamatmat are more steeped in American culture than Filipino. The statement is the equivalent of saying about me, were I a character, that though I mention matzoh ball soup and pastrami, it would be nice if I spoke more Yiddish, wore a yarmulke, or waxed rhapsodic about my bar mitzvah. My grandparents were all immigrants to the U.S., so I’m only second generation American, not so far removed from another culture and schooled at length in my religion, but I don’t constantly remind people of those facts.

As for not experiencing intolerance at school, Gantz must have a singular idea of what every young person who is not white experiences on a daily basis. That’s not to say that there isn’t ugliness and ignorance directed at people of color far too regularly at every level of American life, but perhaps that isn’t germane to the story Pamatmat wants to tell or part of the personal experience he draws upon (he’s from Michigan, incidentally). It’s not as if “racial problems” for students of color are an absolute rule of dramaturgy that must be obeyed.

That said, it’s ironic that Gantz criticizes the play for taking on “easy targets, notably bigotry and bad parents.” The fraught relationship between parents and children has been the fodder of drama since the Greeks, and it seems an endlessly revelatory subject; as for bigotry, if it is perceived as an “easy” subject, then perhaps Gantz, despite wishing “racial problems” on the characters, has no real understanding of the complexity of race in America and the many forms bigotry can take, enough to fuel 1,000 plays and playwrights or more. But he’s complaining that Pamatmat hasn’t written the play that Gantz wants to see, rather than assessing the one that was written.

I can’t speak to the general editorial slant of The Sunday Times, so while Hart’s recent rant may be in keeping with the paper’s character, I don’t think the implicit racial commentary of Gantz’s review is consistent with the social perspective of The Boston Globe. That leads me to wonder, as I have before, what role editors play when racial bias appears in reviews, such as in a Chicago Sun-Times review that appeared to endorse racial profiling. Yes, these reviews are each expressions of one person’s opinion, but they are also, by default, opinions which are tacitly endorsed by the paper itself. Reading these reviews just after following reports from the Americans in the Arts and Theatre Communications Group conferences, which demonstrated a genuine desire on the part of arts institutions to address diversity and inclusion, I worry that if the arbiters of art continue to judge work based on retrograde social views, it will only slow progress in the field that, as it is, has already been too long in coming.

 Howard Sherman is director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School College of Performing Arts School of Drama and senior strategy consultant at the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts.

‘You give us $150 dollars and we’ll review your show.’ It sounds like a bizarro-world version of ‘You give us 22 minutes, we’ll give you the world.’

But that is, boiled to its essence, what the Los Angeles theatre website Bitter Lemons has just proposed to the southern California theatre community. Citing the general reduction in theatre reviews both nationally and locally, the site has laid out a plan whereby theatres (or individuals) can pay $150 and be assured of a review of at least 300 words, but one which is wholly independent and will be solely the opinion of the site’s critics, not a pandering paean to whatever show or patron has ponied up the bucks.

While I’m prepared to take Bitter Lemons at their word about protecting the independence of their critics [full disclosure: I know one of their critics, Katie Buenneke, largely from Twitter], the optics of this proposal, as well as many practical elements, seem hugely problematic. The moment money changes hands between a producer (or producing organization) and a media outlet (be it vast or grass-roots), the necessary divide between both parties starts to break down. No matter how strong any “walls” may be, when editorial choices are determined by outside dollars, and when the economic viability of a media outlet may be dependent upon those covered, the opportunities for ethical compromise are rife.

Bitter Lemons became almost compulsory reading for me this year as the site was a central disseminator of information, inquiry and invective during the heated debate over Actors Equity Association’s promulgation of new guidelines for the 99 seat and under plan that had been used in Los Angeles over the past 25 years. In passionate and at times exhaustive detail, Bitter Lemons has been a champion of retaining the 99-seat plan as is, and I fully expect the site to continue to fight for that cause so long as supporters in the Los Angeles AEA community seek to make their case.

That’s why I bring up the optics: here is a theatre site, arguing for the right of union actors to work for notably less than AEA actors elsewhere in the country, that is saying their theatre coverage is dependent on being paid to cover that same community. To be sure, there are some apples to oranges issues in this comparison, but as I say, I’m referring simply to how it looks, not the particulars.

So let’s go to practical issues. “The Bitter Lemons Imperative,” as it’s called, suggests that it’s easy for companies to shoulder the expense. “Most producing companies already have it in their budgets, if they have any budget at all.” While I cannot be definitive, I strongly doubt that’s an accurate statement; I’m unfamiliar with any theatre company that has a budget line for reviews. What they may have, as the policy statement on Bitter Lemons sets out a bit further on, is “thousands of dollars for mailings, postcards, advertising, many companies even pay anywhere from $500 to $2k for a publicist.” But equating marketing with criticism is a comparison with which I suspect few critics would feel comfortable. When a company pays for an ad or a brochure, it explicitly controls the content; when it pays for a publicist, it’s engaging someone to work with the media, but in a manner where there’s no quid pro quo, explicit or implied.

I find myself wondering about where this plan might leave the very newest theatre companies in Los Angeles, which may have budgets so low that the $150 fee to Bitter Lemons is beyond thinly stretched means, and which are already providing (presumably) a pair of complimentary tickets as well, which have their own dollar value. Does this mean that they will go unnoticed by Bitter Lemons? I fear this will only reinforce an economic stratification insofar as the site’s coverage goes, where only companies with sufficient means become worthy of the site’s attention, instead of decisions being made according to editorial choices and interests. If Bitter Lemons learns of an intriguing show that doesn’t write a check, will that show in essence be the proverbial tree falling in an empty lemon grove?

There’s no question that theatre coverage, arts coverage and frankly all manner of paid journalism are under vast pressure right now (take note of an impending newswriters’ strike in Philadelphia or the new round of buyouts at The Denver Post). But those who have set out to offer independent arts coverage have done so by soliciting general support that isn’t tied to an editorial imperative (you pay us, we cover you). Their efforts are more akin to public radio and television campaigns; offhand I think of campaigns by The Arts Fuse in Boston and New York’s The Clyde Fitch Report. Ad sales, already in evidence on Bitter Lemons, are another revenue source; if the site incorporates as a not-for-profit (if it isn’t already), contributions may be further advantaged, particularly with foundations that support new media journalism and the arts, separately or together.

I’ll say again that I’ve found Bitter Lemons invaluable in my education about the 99 seat debate. I am also repeatedly on record as arguing on behalf of paying arts writers and reporters for their work and I applaud new models for sustaining them (and worry about others). But linking coverage to cash on the barrelhead smacks too much of payola, of pay for play, even if it’s out in the open. I think it can only serve to diminish the site’s credibility, and may well, in the long run, result in a diminished Bitter Lemons, which would be a shame. After all, can this model hold up if paying companies start receiving blistering pans, or simply indifference?

As someone who believes deeply in theatre and in theatre journalism, I have to say that if I had to choose where to allocate $150 in the Los Angeles theatre community right now, I’d probably use it to pay an actor before a critic. No bitterness intended or implied.

Update: June 5, 4:45 pm: In writing this post early this morning, I hadn’t yet seen a corollary piece by Colin Mitchell of Bitter Lemons about the early response to the Bitter Lemons Imperative. It reads, in part:

“On the eve of opening night for previews at the 2015 Hollywood Fringe Festival, Bitter Lemons has over 30 exclusive Bitter Lemons Reviews ordered and purchased – that’s right pre-purchased – and those top quality works of theater criticism will be rolling out over the next couple of weeks. . .

We offered a deeply discounted 50% off our regular price of $150 just because we love the Fringe community so much and understand how important it is for them to get quality coverage from a truly experienced, savvy, historian of the ephemeral arts, plus we saw this as the perfect opportunity to introduce the Los Angeles Theater Community to our new business model for theater criticism.”

Is this an arts journalism post or a post about Bitter Lemons’s own business acumen, one that that also essentially functions as a sales tool? The lines seems to be blurring very fast.

Update: June 6, 5:15 pm: In expressing my concerns about the “pay for review” practice at Bitter Lemons, I attempted to address the issue with respect for the site and and shared concern over the dire economic models for arts journalism. Some responded saying it should be given a chance, and time will tell. So now that I’ve seen one of the “paid for” reviews on the site, I want to share with you a bit of what one fringe production has gotten for their $150:

I don’t know about the rest of you people, but if someone pays me to write about them, I suck them off with such vigor that their ejaculate explodes into the back of my skull with such force that I feel like the bells of Notre Dame pounded by Quasimodo on a Keith Moon bender.

So, since I’m only in this for the money, and the bloodthirsty mercenary in me trumps any pretense of integrity and balance, the rest of what follows in this review of Scott Claus’ “Sin: A Pop Opera,” at the iconic Three Clubs bar—a review he or someone else associated with him paid for—will be a bunch of positive, compromised hokum.

Perhaps this is merely showing off in the wake of comments and blog posts about the new policy, or perhaps as Isaac Butler posited in his post “Startling Chutzpah In The 99-Seat Arena,” we’re all just being punked. But regardless of Bitter Lemons’s motivation and intent, I think they’re doing serious damage to their credibility. I would really urge all makers of theatre in Los Angeles to put their money back in their pockets and, if they paid by check, they might want to stop payment now.

Update: June 12, 6:00 pm: The American Theatre Critics Association has issued a statement regarding the Bitter Lemons review policy. It reads:

The American Theatre Critics’ Association, the only national organization of professional theater critics, is concerned with the model started by Bitter Lemons. While it does not guarantee a favorable review or allow theater companies to choose the reviewer, this pay-for-play arrangement creates a clear appearance of a conflict of interest. That appearance, even if spurious, undermines the crucial credibility of not only Bitter Lemons’ critics, but all critics.

Our profession has fought for decades to preserve the image of independence. When our work is put out for sale to those we cover, we are concerned not just for the criticism itself but for the bypassing of editorial judgment in deciding what to cover and what not to cover.

Additionally, Steven Leigh Morris, editor of Stage Raw, another significant Los Angeles theatre site, made the following statement to me regarding his site’s selection of critics in the wake of the Bitter Lemons Imperative:

It is Stage Raw’s policy that any  reviewer who has accepted remuneration from a theater as quid pro quo for a review of that theater is ineligible to write reviews for Stage Raw.

Howard Sherman is the director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School for Drama.

“You know, if we all agreed to stop putting critics’ quotes in our ads, they’d lose their power over us, and we could just sell our shows on what we think is best about them.”

I will confess to having made that statement, or something along those lines, more than once when I was the public relations director at Hartford Stage. Thinking back on it now, I can attribute it to a) youth, b) feistiness and c) naïveté. Remember, of course, that this was the pre-internet era, when reviews didn’t linger forever online, but genuinely became inaccessible 24 hours after they appeared in print. And of course, there was no persuading absolutely every  other theatre in the area that this was viable, and without unanimity, it would fail.

No one took me terribly seriously (though at the time, I certainly did). At the same time that I was attempting to jumpstart my radical approach to arts marketing, I was also guilty of some exceptionally creative “Frankensteining” of words from reviews for the express purpose of trumpeting them in ads. Because that was what was expected, I freely engaged in hypocritical acts because, well…paycheck.

More than two decades later, it seems that Broadway marketers may be moving towards my way of thinking after all. As evidence, I give you three screen captures from video advertising for three current Broadway shows:

Finding Neverland ad on Times Square video screen

Screen grab of Curious Incident tv ad

Screen grab of Something Rotten! tv ad

Look, ma, no quotes! Apparently it’s now enough simply to plaster the logos of media outlets on an ad to suggest that their critics have been positively disposed towards the show being sold. I’d say the truth is more variable.

Without going back and rereading the coverage in every outlet represented in these images, I’m willing to give The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time the benefit of the doubt, because the reviews were, as I recall, pretty terrific, and because the show has given equal weight to each outlet it represents. There’s a certain understatement at work.

I give the Something Rotten! ad credit for some subtle humor, because while it offers up The New York Times logo, a bit of animation that lobs a tomato at it, and obscures it, because the Times wasn’t actually all that keen on the show.

The Finding Neverland logo parade seems fairly disingenuous, because its New York Times review wasn’t positive, yet it dominates to screen. Did the Times write about the show? It certainly did. Does the screen say that they liked the show? In point of fact no. But I suspect that they’re trading on the fact that the presence of the Times logo might fool some people into thinking the show was endorsed by the paper, which may not be an absolute ethical lapse, but it’s certainly willfully misleading.

This isn’t to say that quotes have disappeared from ads, and even the examples above pull out some specific quotes on their own, separate from these logo parades. In the case of Fun Home, their ad is almost entirely glowing and attributed review quotes, with some award nominations thrown in as well. What they’re avoiding is any mention of what the show is actually about, which is a shame, but a sign of our still unenlightened times, in which the content of the show may be perceived as possibly limiting its commercial appeal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlpNv60eGyU

I know of critics who will on occasion, when they think their writing has been inaccurately represented in ads, reach out to productions and make their feelings known. In such cases, especially with major critics, I would imagine those concerns receive due attention, since no one wants to be party to a souring relationship with a critic. But in these cases, the question is whether the folks who police trademark usage for each outlet have noticed these examples, and whether they are concerned enough to suggest – or enforce – that, in some cases, their logos may be getting used to imply an endorsement which doesn’t necessarily exist.

For those who decry the shrinking space for arts reviews, or who find star rating systems too reductive, it seems we’re in the process of moving on to the next iteration – exploring how to dispense with opinion entirely, in favor of implied endorsement, warranted or not. My youthful activism has come around to a more mature realism: we need as much writing as possible about the theatre, and that doesn’t mean just feature coverage, but criticism as well. If we work to marginalize critics through marketing, we may boost a show here or there, but at the end of the day we’ll be worse off for having done so.

Jerry MacKinnon in This Is Modern Art at Steppenwolf Theatre

If, like me, you’re connected to members of the Chicago theatre community on social media (I’m NYC based), you’ve certainly seen an outpouring of reaction to two major reviews of the new Steppenwolf for Young Adults show, This Is Modern Art (Based On True Events). Since all perception of what’s being said on any subject in social media is mediated by who you ‘follow’ and who you ‘friend’ and what you like and retweet, I can’t possibly tell you what the prevailing sentiments are overall, online or in Chicago theatre lobbies. But I will say this: my connections are very unhappy, and in some cases enraged. Among their charges are that the reviews are deeply insensitive to a story about young people of color, and by extension the lives of all people of color, and that they condescend to the work from a place of privilege.

Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune and Hedy Weiss of the Chicago Sun-Times both gave what I would characterize as predominantly negative reviews of the production. Both shared a common theme: that the play, about graffiti artists, celebrated their work without making sufficiently clear, to the critics’ minds, that the majority of graffiti art is also illegal vandalism. Jones calls graffiti “disrespectful”; Weiss calls the characters “urban terrorists.” The play is based upon a true incident in Chicago, when elaborate graffiti was created on the exterior of the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, so it summons shared Chicago memories, beyond the writers’, readers’ or audiences’ personal experiences.

From the reviews, I offer two excerpts (with links to the complete pieces):

“But here is what “This is Modern Art” barely even mentions: Graffiti comes at a price. It can be invasive, self-important and disrespectful of the property of others — and plenty of struggling folks have had to clean graffiti off something they own or love. Graffiti can be inartful, for goodness sake. More importantly yet, graffiti had the effect of making people feel unsafe in the city. It terrified people. It was only when public officials declared themselves determined to wipe it out that cities finally came back to life, with broad benefits.

You wanna go back to riding public transportation in New York or Chicago in the 1980s? I do not. You do not have to be conservative or somehow not down with youth to think it reprehensible that these issues do not have a place in a show for schools that is quite staggeringly one-sided.”  – Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

“To start, a hypothetical question addressed to the powers that be at Steppenwolf Theatre: How would you react were you to arrive at work one morning only to discover that the entire facade of your theater had been spray-painted with graffiti, and that the message left behind went like this: “All the world is OUR stage.”

I pose the question after having just seen “This Is Modern Art,” the wildly misguided new Steppenwolf for Young Adults production written by hip-hop artist Idris Goodwin and “Louder Than a Bomb” founder Kevin Coval, and directed by Lisa Portes.

Clearly the play is meant to be a provocation and a catalyst for controversy and discussion among the many high school groups that comprise the principal audience for this series. And no one would deny that in terms of its fine acting and knowingly “hip” writing and design this is an entertaining and “artful” production. But “This Is Modern Art” also sends out a slew of profoundly misguided messages to its impressionable viewers. And no politically correct review to rationalize it will appear here.”  – Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times

Now before I go on, I should point out that I write about this issue is as a middle-aged, Caucasian, cisgender, heterosexual Jewish male raised in and around New Haven, Connecticut. Many could say I write from a position of privilege as well; that’s their right. But I cannot be anyone but who I am and, as a longtime follower of theatre criticism, I would hope that all critics would write openly and honestly about their perceptions, with their biases out there for all to see and take into account. In the interest of full disclosure, I should also mention that I’ve known Chris Jones for more than a decade professionally; I’ve never had any occasion to meet or communicate with Hedy Weiss.

This Is Modern Art at Steppenwolf Theatre

With all of that out of the way, I have to say that I find both reviews limited. Not because I disagree with their opinions of the play – I’ve not seen it or read it, so I can’t – but because the reviews fail to give me sufficient information about the play that might allow me to draw any conclusions of my own. So much of the bodies of the two reviews are devoted to condemning graffiti and vandalism, and taking the play to task for not sharing that perspective, that it’s very difficult for me – and I would assume most readers – to assess whether the play might be something I want to see, which a daily review should do, even a negative one.

Presumably Chris and Hedy could have noted their displeasure with the play’s perspective while still attending more fully to the details of the play and the production, which they fleetingly praise. Subsequently, as senior critics, they could have easily then written separate essays in which they explored their political and personal reactions to graffiti as vandalism, and question Steppenwolf’s responsibility in presenting the work if they wished, instead of forcing such op-eds into the confines of a standard review.

Inevitably, some of the rhetoric surrounding these reviews has addressed the role of the critic, always a charged discussion but one that must be considered in the context of the diminishment of arts coverage in legacy mainstream media. Nationally, critics remain in their positions for as long as they’re able, even as positions are cut and newspapers constantly seek buyouts that target veteran employees (read older, better paid) in an economic version of Logan’s Run. But with limited alternatives, few critics are opting out voluntarily, and so it’s not entirely surprising to find that many “major” critics mirror the demographics that prevailed decades earlier: largely white and mostly male. That can set up a division with both artists and audiences who make up the more diverse America of today (though the field of theatre still has a great deal of work to do on diversity and equity in its own ranks as well), since they find work, often as not, being judged publicly by people who may not mirror them in any way or share or understand their experiences. When I started in theatre, for example, I wondered where the young critical voices were in the major media; remarkably, 30 years on, I still wonder (though I know I can find those voices online, in many cases working for free).

Kelly O’Sullivan and Jerry MacKinnon in This Is Modern Art at Steppenwolf Theatre

In the case of This Is Modern Art, a work explicitly created for teen audiences, I would suggest that the arts or features editors at the two Chicago papers missed an opportunity. While absolutely still affording Chris and Hedy their primacy as the papers’ critical voices, wasn’t this the moment to offer more diverse staffers the opportunity to weigh in? While This Is Modern Art does have evening performances for the public, the majority of the schedule is daytime shows, presumably for students and youth groups, and therefore deserving of viewpoints that might in some aspect approach greater commonality with the expressly targeted audience. Admittedly, it would be impossible to check off a series of demographic boxes on any critic that would fulfill the wishes of every reader and every artist on every show, but the paper might have made an effort when reviewing a show for youth to acknowledge that the seemingly monolithic role of critics doesn’t always serve readers, by adding diverse voices here (and, when appropriate, in the future). Op-ed pages have multiple voices, not just one.

In concluding her review, Hedy appears to try to trump any criticism of her perspective, as follows, “Really, what could Steppenwolf have been thinking? Now, I just hope local politicians will not jump on the bandwagon and, as the ultimate hypocrisy, make this play their ‘cause.’” She has presumptively critiqued those who might disagree with her, which strikes me as unfortunate. Professional critics have every right to state their opinion boldly, but preemptively challenging those with other opinions seems unnecessary.

In his review, Chris notes “the authority figures like police officers (mostly played by Chris Rickett) are either inept or bumbling or misunderstanding — certainly they never are allowed to make any kind of sympathetic point,” and later declares, “By all means, connect the city’s kids to this artistic tradition, but I say there is a moral obligation to make them think about the price we all pay.” I will only say that West Side Story also portrayed the police as ineffective and a source for ridicule (“Gee, Officer Krupke”) and that there are countless works of theatre that don’t pretend to balance – where, for example, in Grease do we find an appealing, highly respected honor student to counter the allure of Danny Zuko?

J. Salomé Martinez in This Is Modern Art at Steppenwolf Theatre

Mind you, like Chris and Hedy, I’m not saying that I want to see our cities riddled with graffiti the way they were in the 70s and 80s. But I am open to seeing a story that attempts to explore what might have motivated some of the people behind it, then or now. Both reviews assert that because the show is targeted at students it is therefore irresponsible in its sympathetic perspective. While I doubt any young person is unaware of the potential consequences for the defacement of public property, especially those being taken to the theatre by teachers or counselors, the Steppenwolf study guide (available to all online) spells it out:

“For these artists…their art form is worthy of the likes of Caravaggio and Escher, but to the city it is defined as “the criminal defacement of property with paint.” The consequences are severe: $750 to $1,500 in fines, felony charges and possibly prison time for the offenders. And it can mean a big bill for the city: Chicago has spent nearly $5 million dollars in graffiti removal in this year alone. Although the protagonist of our story, Seven, is motivated by a desire to gain recognition for his art and an evolution of what the public views as ‘high art, fine art, worthy of being in a museum’ the Art Institute bombing comes at a cost. Not only to the Institute, which had to remove the paint, but also for the artists who committed the crime and, who, nearly five years later, still face felony charges if their identities are revealed.”

And while I was unsuccessful in securing a copy of the play to read, the study guide suggests that the show’s protagonist does not get away consequence-free:

“As for Seven, at the end of the play, he is left grappling with whether or not what he did was worth it; after all, he now has no crew, no girlfriend, no graffiti.”

The experience of theatre for young people taken to it is rarely confined to just watching a play. It is typically contextualized through conversation, both before and after seeing a show, at the theatre and at schools and youth organizations. The evening performances reportedly had those same opportunities, although they’re certainly not compulsory. But for the ostensibly impressionable young seeing This Is Modern Art, the play is not presented in a vacuum, which these reviews seem to presume it is.

In reading commentary about the reviews on social media, I found the personal attacks on Chris and Hedy extremely distasteful; I applaud those who sought to temper that unacceptable rhetoric. The conversation now should be a greater one than simply these reviews and this play. Hopefully this incident will provoke some genuine consideration and conversation – which includes Chris and Hedy and some of the artists expressing concern about these reviews – about what voices are given the platform to judge work, the need for not just critics but their editors to open new avenues to diverse voices and critical responses, and the necessity for work to be judged on its own terms, not just on the basis of what others think it should be, whoever the work is “for.”

Howard Sherman is director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at the New School for Drama and Senior Strategy Director at the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts.

In a week when flaws in Rolling Stone’s reporting of a culture of rape on the University of Virginia campus created national headlines, the lapses of a single cultural reporter at the Wall Street Journal doesn’t seem to amount to a hill of beans. But it’s a story that is much buzzed about in theatrical circles, and perhaps throughout the field of the arts, with implications much greater than Joanne Kaufman’s self-appointed role as a serial “Broadway bolter,” who has accepted who knows how many complimentary tickets only to depart frequently at intermission.

In a column last week, Kaufman declared:

I’m embarrassed by how unembarrassed I am to admit that the very next night, I took early leave of “The Country House,” and the following night of “It’s Only a Play.” If only. Don’t ask me what happened during the second acts of “Matilda,” “Kinky Boots,” “Pippin” and, reaching back a few seasons, “Boeing-Boeing” and “Billy Elliott. ” Really, I have no idea. But I am nothing if not cosmopolitan in my tastes, or distastes—French farces, English musicals set in gritty industrial cities, and American entertainments involving Charlemagne ’s Frankish kin.

I happen to believe that, for the regular theatregoer, there’s nothing wrong with leaving a show at intermission. You paid for the right to be there and if you’re miserable, it’s probably to your benefit and the benefit of the rest of the audience if you depart. It’s your right (so long as it’s not done mid-scene, which is far too disruptive) and frankly the rest of the audience and the actors are probably better off without your repeated loud sighs, your ongoing dialogue with the person you came with, or your snoring.

But anyone who is attending in a professional capacity, let alone someone with complimentary tickets, has to stick it out – because it’s their job, or simply good manners as a guest. If not, the tickets have been accepted under false pretenses and the individual’s credibility is damaged, if not destroyed.

Now it’s important to note that in my circles, both personal and online, there seems to be little sympathy or tolerance for Kaufman’s recurring disappearing act. Other journalists have shot verbal arrows at her on Twitter, as have theatre professionals from every discipline in the field. She has been the subject of nothing less than ongoing ridicule, and she’s likely to be a longtime theatre punchline. Publicist Rick Miramontez (a friend and professional colleague) has had a blog post in which he calls out Kaufman go viral, in part because he lays bare her failings and also because many assume that p.r. people will kowtow to the media at all costs.

Miramontez wrote, as part of declaring that he would no longer invite Kaufman or provide her with complimentary tickets:

I couldn’t help but feel a bit like a chump for having accommodated the woman so many times over the years.  Certainly every audience member, paid or comped, has the right to form whatever opinions they might about any production they see, but I don’t think it’s too much to expect those who attend on press tickets stay for the duration.   Would a fine art writer only peer at half a canvas before deciding she’s bored and it’s time to move on?  Does a music reporter think he can make an informed decision on an album if he only listens to a couple of tracks?  Why would we accept such sheer laziness from our theatrical press?

Since others have effectively demolished Kaufman’s questionable professional ethics, I need not rehash them further. But let me go a step beyond.

Unlike bloggers with their own sites (say for example, me), journalists don’t simply write something and have it magically appear in print or online. There’s at least one editor and a copy editor who has seen the piece, and at a paper like the Wall Street Journal, probably more. So it’s important to note that Kaufman was not writing in a vacuum, but rather with the tacit approval of every staffer at the WSJ who got a glimpse of her piece. It’s more than a bit worrisome that no one at the paper apparently saw anything wrong with either Kaufman’s actions or her almost gleeful confession of her ethical gaffes. Frankly, why did this piece run at all?

While her piece was opinion rather than reportage, surely average readers may now wonder about the veracity of other WSJ writing – and that’s a shame, because I know many arts reporters at the paper and know them to operate with the highest integrity and profound respect for the arts. While I haven’t asked him, I can’t help but think that Kaufman’s actions are particularly galling to the WSJ’s drama critic Terry Teachout, especially as many accounts of the “Broadway bolter” incorrectly identified her as the WSJ’s theatre critic.

Should it be up to publicists to put Kaufman on the straight and narrow? Even if she does start paying for tickets, will her bosses only permit her to attend with a minder? Will she become a culture writer only on works of 90 minutes or less, since that’s all she can tolerate? Perhaps she’ll need an ankle bracelet so they can be certain that she stays for the duration.

In a moment of sympathy, I’m willing to suggest that perhaps Kaufman, and her editors, fell prey to aping the lingua franca of the internet: snark (see prior paragraph as an example). Maybe the flip, contrarian tone was an effort to mimic the style of bloggers and tweeters. But in the august, conservative WSJ, it stuck out like a sore thumb – and while it may well have tapped into a new audience, it did so only to be met by significant derision. It seems that, for all of the angst surrounding critical arts coverage in general, Kaufman had truly crossed a bridge too far by slamming work she hadn’t even bothered to assess in full. If anything, she proved that there is still a place and desire for arts journalism, but that she may have no place in it.

On the same subway ride during which I read Kaufman’s piece, I also read an essay by Tim Walker, who has recently been let go from his position as theatre critic for London’s Sunday Telegraph. Understandably troubled by the ongoing culling of arts critics in London (an issue in the U.S. as well, and a concern I share), he cites a conversation about criticism he recently had:

One leading impresario told me he looked around at the motley crowd that had turned up to sit in judgment on one of his productions and he realised he didn’t know a single one of them. “They were young, spotty, out of their comfort zones and clearly exhausted, having been diverted at the last minute from other tasks at their hard-pressed media organisations,” he lamented. “Honestly, after all the work we had put in on our side, and all the investment, it felt like a slap in the face.”

The conventional wisdom is that readers of theatre reviews are migrating – along with the advertising – to online, but who, honestly, can name an internet critic who has the authority of, say, the Guardian’s Michael Billington? Or – until he also joined the exodus – the Telegraph’s Charles Spencer?

While he has given himself the cover of quoting someone else, Walker seems to side with his unnamed commentator. He also mimics someone in a vastly more significant situation, namely the prosecutor in the Michael Brown case, who repeatedly spoke of the failings of social media before revealing the wholly inadequate results of the grand jury findings. Two decades after the advent of general internet use, nearly a decade after the advent of social media, one can no longer make the case for journalism, or any endeavor, by slamming the reality of how we communicate now and continuing to proclaim the superiority of the “mainstream media.” Walker’s legitimate concerns about the state of arts criticism are undone by condescension, just as Kaufman skewered herself with her own glee over her risable actions.

Arts journalism is no different from any other facet of journalism today in that many of the old structures are falling and the future is evolving at an exceptionally fast pace, chewing up both practices and people in the process. But the bottom line is that if you find the rug pulled out from under you, it won’t serve the field to have you bemoaning the new and ever-changing normal; if you still have a platform, use it to imagine a better, sustainable future. And by all means, if you have a platform, use it professionally and ethically, lest you go out on a limb and saw it off behind yourself.

I anticipate that this October will be the month of “freak,” and not because of Halloween. Though that won’t help.

Because the media can’t resist trend stories, and any three or more items with a common link can constitute a trend, the confluence of the AMC series Freakshow; the new season of American Horror Story, entitled “Freak Show”; and the Broadway musical Side Show, with its opening number inviting audiences to “Come Look at the Freaks,” will prove irresistible. However, they may also engender more frequent use of the word “freak” to apply to people with disabilities, bringing into vogue a term used far too often to marginalize those who don’t match up with what is far too often termed as “normal.” What, after all, is normal anyway?

“Freak” is a particularly ugly word when applied to a person with a disability, since it is not only designed to clearly label them as being something other than the prevailing “standard,” but it has been layered over centuries with implications of fear and horror and objectification. Many people went to see side shows in order to gaze with at best fascination, but often with superiority or revulsion at people who, in some cases, could find no other employment (and developed extraordinary skills to combat that) and for whom medical treatments and assistive tools were unavailable. That connotation lingers.

Part of the challenge that’s barreling towards us in the next month comes from how these works are advertised. The deeply unsettling ads for American Horror Story, whether in TV or on subway signage, are determined to link “freak” with “scary” and “strange.” In an effort to recall the very side shows in which John Merrick was displayed, the pending Broadway revival of The Elephant Man already has theatre signage imploring passers-by to “Behold an extraordinary freak of nature.” And how many people may come out of Side Show humming the often-sung and whispered, “Come look at the freaks/Come gape at the geeks/Come examine these aberrations/Their malformations/Grotesque physiques/Only pennies for peeks”? It’s quite possible that more people will see or hear the word “freak” than will actually see the shows that contain or employ them, reinsinuating the term back into common parlance, devoid of context or understanding.

Each of these examples may be very different works – one a reality TV show, one a fictional horror fantasy, one a Broadway musical – but they’re all rooted in the setting of a circus or carnival sideshow or, as they were often known, freak show. The side show has proven a rich location for tales of fiction and fact for many years, from William Lindsay Gresham’s noir Nightmare Alley to an early and rare Spalding Gray monologue In Search of The Monkey Girl to Katherine Dunn’s family saga Geek Love. The legacy of Tod Browning’s film Freaks lingers after 80 years, along with the debate over whether it was utter exploitation, or something more.

This is not to suggest that we can entirely eradicate “freak,” but that as these depictions proliferate, we should be thinking about the context in which they’re used. In the various accounts being told, it would be dishonest to pretend that “freak” was not a common term for people with disabilities. Within each work, it’s an accurate term (although in its out of town run at The Kennedy Center, I noticed Side Show’s careful use of “disabled” at one point, anachronistically but diplomatically), no different than the term “crippled” in Martin McDonough’s The Cripple of Inishmaan, which played on Broadway in the spring.

Daniel Radcliffe and Sarah Greene in The Cripple of Inishmaan

But Inishmaan is also the example that provokes my concern about “the fr-word” this fall. While in Ireland in the 1930s, no one was stopping to find a more proper term for the boy they all called, to his own frustration, “Cripple Billy.” But when the show was discussed or written about, the term was used over and over again, with some critics seemingly of the opinion that since it was spoken so often in the play, they could use it in their own writing. But those critics were writing in 2014, not 1934, and their language should not have been the language of the play except when making direct quotes.

Just like the language regarding race, the best term for discussing those who have disabilities has been evolving. Terms like “handicapped” and “differently abled,” which were seen as proper not so long ago, are now problematic; for comparison’s sake, think about how terms like “Oriental” or “Negro” seem today. Worth remembering is that the long-prevailing language was imposed upon minority groups without consultation or consent; now it’s incumbent upon us to employ the preferred terms that groups choose for their own self-definition.

That’s not to say the word is never to be uttered. Beginning in the 1960s, the counterculture embraced “freak” specifically to define themselves as outside of conventional society, but the term was usually dissociated from physical attributes and was more of a state of mind; we began to hear about “freak flags flying” from groups that assiduously wanted to be perceived as outside the mainstream. There are nouveau side shows in a number of places, including Coney Island and Venice Beach, but on recent looks, their bills of fare were just as apt to favor people who displayed outré body art or performed stunts than those with disabilities, and in every case the performers are there under their own agency.

Indeed, just as LGBTQ activists embraced the derogatory “queer” as an emblem of their own efforts at acceptance, and to confront those who sought to suppress them, there are those in the disability community who proudly call themselves “freaks” or “crips,” and those names are often claimed by performers with disabilities as well. But no differently than someone straight should call a member of the LGBTQ community “a queer,” no one should think that they have the right to label someone with a disability “a freak.” Those individuals can self-identify as such, but it doesn’t cut both ways.

As Christopher Shinn wrote so eloquently for The Atlantic, disability is not a metaphor. I would add to that sentiment that “freak,” when applied to a person, is not a title of mystery and wonder. It’s a slur. So see these shows according to your own taste. But think carefully about how you’re going to talk about them afterwards.

This essay appeared in a somewhat different form as part of The Guardian’s op-ed section, “Comment is Free.” Click here for that edited and condensed version.

I am going to take it for granted that, since you’ve opted to read this article, you care about the arts. I’m also going to save time and typing by assuming that you appreciate media coverage of the arts and that you realize that without the attention of the media, it will be ever harder for the arts to share their news, their work and their value locally, nationally and internationally.

Since we are agreed, I will proceed directly to my point.

If you want to see intelligent, comprehensive coverage of the arts – features and reviews alike – then you’ve got to start clicking. Journalism is well on its way to being a numbers game for most outlets. How many people clicked on a story or video, how many times was it liked or shared, how much time was spent looking at it? We are already seeing journalism sites paying writers base salaries with bumps or bonuses based on online metrics; outlets say they are dropping certain types of coverage because it’s simply not generating enough traffic. It’s not enough to be happy that arts coverage exists, you have to actually engage with it to insure its survival and the job survival of those who create it.

Clicks mean eyes and eyes mean advertisers. As print becomes an ever-harder sell, online advertising grows ever more important to outlets. Even back in the days pre-internet, I encountered cuts in arts coverage because the arts didn’t generate enough advertising revenue (whereas advertisers loved sports sections and we get regular features about new cars because auto dealers buy big ads). Even now, arts spending online is a small sliver of online advertising, so our best means of supporting arts coverage is by actually reading it.

Let’s face it: anyone with a WordPress blog knows how many people read each piece they post (yes, I’m watching you). But that’s amateur hour compared to the realtime and cumulative algorithms and analytics applied at big media outlets. There are teams of people looking at clicks, links and likes for every story, and media empires are being built on click-bait methodology (why, hello BuzzFeed). It’s running the show in many places and it can’t be ignored.

So here’s what I propose. Every morning, when you get online, go to the arts section of your local media outlets, seek out their arts and entertainment stories, and click of them. Don’t click on each in rapid succession, but spend 30 to 45 seconds on each one (remember your multiple browser windows). You have to wait a bit because one analytic is stickiness or hang-time or whatever it’s called now, namely whether people are really engaging with coverage. A click on and immediate click off looks like you got there by mistake. And needless to say, it certainly won’t hurt in the least if you actually read a story or watch a video while you’re at it.

I should also note that just liking or retweeting a story isn’t enough: you actually have to look at it. Sometimes you’re just liking a friend posting about a story, not the story or video itself, and that’s an important difference. There have been studies that show that many people retweet items without ever actually reading them, and anecdotally I know that to be true: I often see my own tweets with embedded links that have more retweets than clicks. You’ve got to stop and look. That said, on Facebook likes and shares feed into an algorithm that’s sure more people might see the post featured in their feed, and retweets do the same, so be liberal with those too.

You need to share this idea with your staffs, your audience, your donors. This can’t be an effort by a couple of thousand core die-hards; this has to be a movement and it has to be sustained. I do my part every day in curating the articles I share on my twitter feed. You don’t need to be as exhaustive as I am, but whether you seek out a story or if it comes across your social media feed, click on it (often click on opera and symphony stories even though I rarely attend them). If the arts generate eyes, if they generate numbers, you’re going to have a direct impact on how the arts are viewed by the media decision makers. Clicking on the occasional ad next to an arts story matters too.

I’d like to give this idea some snappy name that the field can adopt, but I’m only coming up with corny and possibly inexplicable ideas like “Click 10 For The Arts,” which in my mind is shorthand for remind you to click on 10 arts stories daily. I hope that if people buy into this idea, someone will come up with something clever.

But unlike the world of journalism 25 years ago, where outlets only knew how many papers they sold, it’s now exceedingly easy to know what gets traffic and what doesn’t. No need for audience surveys when our every move online is recorded. If we don’t actively work to pump up the stats for arts coverage, it’ll continue to erode.

To quote Joni Mitchell, “you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til its gone,” and we’ve lost too much already. So next time you want to take a quiz about what Shakespeare villain or what Sondheim character you are, at least spend the equivalent amount of time reading articles about Shakespeare plays or Sondheim shows. Because while the former may be fun, it’s the latter that will actually sustain arts journalism and sustain the arts.

P.S. Thanks for clicking on this story. Now would you be so kind to like it, favorite it, share it, retweet it and so on? And yes, I’ll know if you did.

Fact: America’s newspapers are locked in a struggle for survival, fighting for financial stability and relevance at a time when money and attention increasingly focuses on online and video outlets.

Fact: Philadelphia’s newspapers are locked in a singularly ugly battle for survival, because after several instances of ownership turnover in recent years, the Inquirer and Daily News are now owned by a partnership in which the partners are suing one another over control of the business.

Fact: While newsroom cuts are the norm at papers across the country, and arts positions are being lost everywhere, Philadelphia is the largest city in the country which does not have a full-time theatre critic on staff at its daily newspapers, despite an array of professional theatre production in the city and surrounding area.

I lay these items out as preface for consideration of a single theatre review (which I hope you’ll read in its entirety), Toby Zinman’s Inquirer critique of the Arden Theatre Company’s production of Water By The Spoonful by Quiara Alegría Hudes, the play which received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. This review has been the subject of a great deal of online comment as a result of a blog post on a site called “Who Criticizes The Critic?” The essay itself is “Critical Case Study #1: A Brutal Lack of Investment,” written by a pseudonymous author identified only as “criticcrusader.”

Armando Batista & Maia Desanti in Water By The Spoonful at Arden Theatre Company (Photo: Mark Garvin)

As the blog post circulated on Twitter and Facebook this past week – though it and the review are from late January – I saw a range of responses, from many who applauded the critique and from some who took issue with its legitimacy because of the anonymity of the author. I initially chose not to share it on social media because I’m troubled by criticism, let alone attacks, by unnamed voices on the internet. But I kept returning to the original review, and the critique of it, repeatedly. Then, by coincidence, I saw Hudes’ The Happiest Song Plays Last over the weekend at Second Stage, which brought the review to mind yet again; Song is the final piece in a trilogy of which Spoonful is part two.

I feel compelled to weigh in on Zinman’s review not because I make a habit of critiquing critics, but because I think her piece repeatedly crosses professional boundaries, in terms of what theatre, and all of the arts, should hope for from those who are paid to critique them, especially by major media outlets, even wounded ones. I know I’m echoing “Critical Case Study #1,” but I hope a bit more dispassionately. Those who discount “criticcrusader” for writing under an alias can make no such charge at me.

For transparency: though I went to college in Philly, I haven’t worked professionally in the city in 30 years, save for moderating some talks at the Philadelphia Theatre Company and doing some site visits for The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. I do not know Toby Zinman or her editor Rebecca Klock. I have never attended the Arden Theatre and so I did not see this production. I cannot recall having ever spoken with the company’s leaders, though it’s possible I did at some point in the past.

And so.

It seems that the least we can hope for from a critic, whether staff or freelance, whether well-compensated or paid the pittance that is the shameful norm for most freelancers, is an informed opinion. Since Spoonful has received one of the highest awards given in theatre, it is not unreasonable to expect a critic to have a basic knowledge of that pre-existing work before attending it. Zinman has a Ph.D. in theatre and has written several books on the subject; she also teaches English at Philadelphia’s School of the Arts. She is far from a novice. Yet of Water By The Spoonful, Zinman writes:

“I imagined it might be about the global water crisis:

Consider the recent chemical tainting of residential water in West Virginia. Consider the drought and raging wild fires in California. Consider that more than 1.2 billion people on earth now live without a reliable source of fresh water.”

Why is this in a review? Even if Zinman elected to remain wholly ignorant of the work, what is the relevance of her musings on the title? Our water crisis is a perfectly legitimate concern, but it has nothing to do with the play. Print space is limited in any paper, so why use precious column inches on an irrelevant topic? Her aside accounts for more than 10% of the word total of the review.

“This play is about a bunch of crack addicts who do awful things and are, with the exception of Hudes’ recurring character Elliot, utterly boring and unsympathetic characters.”

In only the second paragraph of the review, Zinman has dismissed several drug-addicted characters as unsympathetic, without making any effort to explain why. Are struggling drug addicts, in fiction or in life, merely to be written off for their failings? As a central element of the story, this deserves as least as much space as the world’s water problems.

“Presumably, part of the script’s interest for Philadelphia audiences would be the local place-references, but mentioning Jefferson Hospital doesn’t redeem the play for me.”

Sure, audience members at the Arden might experience the odd frisson over hearing the name of a place they know mentioned, but given the productions the play has received in other cities, its locale seems hardly central to its existence or any production. To suggest it is only produced in Philadelphia because of its Philadelphia ties is callously dismissive.

“Yazmin (Maia Desanti) is the sanctimonious rich white girl who is, in ways I couldn’t follow, Elliot’s cousin/romantic interest/best friend.”

Yazmin is very clearly a Latina character. Zinman’s definition of her as “white” involves judging her based solely on the skin tone of the actress playing the role, ignoring any context within the play. Does Zinman doubt that individuals of differing skin colors can be related?

As with any critic, Zinman has every right to dislike the play. She has every right to dislike the production. But the reader has the right to expect some level of rationale for each, or for that matter a distinction between the two. From the review, it is impossible to know the source of Zinman’s poor opinion, save for her calling out of two lines which we can infer she finds wanting, and her mention of a slow pace. She neglects any mention of the physical production. Reading the review gives me the impression that Zinman was annoyed by the whole experience of seeing this play, and made no effort to engage with the play on its own terms.

The Philadelphia theatre scene has increased enormously since my days as a Penn student, filled with theatres and options that didn’t exist 30 years ago. While I will be the first to say that critics have zero responsibility for promoting or selling work for theatres, I think, and I hope most critics would agree, that theatres are deserving of reviews and critiques that adhere to professional standards, regardless of the hardships of the professional outlets that publish them. In my estimation, this review by Zinman fails, but the failing is not hers alone. Did her editor ask her for clarification of her points or suggest excising the extraneous? While presumably copy editors aren’t acting as fact checkers, the erroneous assertion about a character’s race could have been easily clarified by numerous online sources, let alone the readily available script.

As a blogger, I have no editor, no copy editor, no fact checker. I am solely responsible for the accuracy of what I write, and my integrity rests on that. At a professional newspaper, there are ostensibly more checks and balances, but – in my opinion – they failed in this case, in a way that no mere correction can erase or excuse. It calls into serious question the accuracy and validity of this critic’s voice in this case; I do not believe that this is emblematic of the state of theatre criticism nationally, which I value as an arts professional. But The Arden and its production, as well as Hudes’s play, deserve better than they got in terms of fair consideration of their work, regardless of whether the show was liked or not.

On a final note: this review follows on the heels of a very thoughtful piece on the role of a theatre critic by another freelance Inquirer critic, Wendy Rosenfield, writing for the Broad Street Review, in which she speaks of her support for “Theater that widens and deepens the scope of our regional scene.” I applaud that sentiment, but would like to paraphrase it, because Philadelphia – and all communities – deserve journalism that widens and deepens the scope of the city’s arts scene too. The two go hand in hand.

Update March 4, 11:30 am: As this post has circulated online, Jason Zinoman of The New York Times expressed his feelings that if I claim to be someone who believes in mutual respect between arts organizations and arts critics, I had failed to demonstrate it in this piece, by not sufficiently disavowing the tone, language and certain sentiments employed by the anonymous “criticcrusader.” It was my intention that the tone and content of my piece represented my approach to such dialogue, but I was indeed not explicit. Should anyone doubt my commitment to mutually respectful dialogue, let me make clear that the piece by “criticcrusader” was harsh, hyperbolic and unnecessarily personal, hardly the tone to be adopted when attempting to lobby for more considered and accurate writing; the anonymity is counterproductive as well. The thoughts in my piece, which may overlap with the earlier essay, are my own and I stand by them; however, to have not acknowledged what prompted me to write would have been dishonest.