If you’re looking for critical consensus, you won’t find much of it in the new book The Critics Say…: 57 Theater Reviewers in New York and Beyond Discuss Their Craft and Its Future (McFarland & Company, $35). That’s because the critics interviewed for the book by Matt Windman, himself a critic, have a wide variety of opinions about what it is they do, how they do it, why they do it and whether it will continue to be done.

Rather than devote a chapter to each critic, Windman organizes the book topically, so that even while the interviews were discrete, the critics’ thoughts begin to engage with one another on subjects from “Why We Exist” to “Regrets and Advice” through devised interplay. That’s useful, because transcribed speech often isn’t compelling to read, so by extracting themes, Windman is constantly changing up who is “speaking” at any given moment, creating rather more of a narrative than would otherwise be the case. Windman certainly threw out a wide net and reeled in many of the biggest fish, including both Ben Brantley and Charles Isherwood from The New York Times.

If you go looking for gossip and backbiting in the book, you won’t find a great deal of it. Yes, Isherwood chides “those crazy queens on All That Chat,” and Brantley, who doesn’t use social media opines that it is “largely about” self-promotion. But the book is much more concerned with a sober-sided consideration of the place of the critic in the arts and journalism culture of today, and it provides a strong primer in the thoughts of those who practice criticism – or at the least what they’re willing to share on the record. Oh, there is a brief chapter devoted entirely to Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, but even there, the critics use the show as a pretext for discussing the power of critics, or lack thereof, in today’s society.

The book contains countless revealing insights into the minds of the people who shape public opinion of theatre, available almost by opening the book randomly to any page at all. A few choice thoughts:

“The critic is part of the theatre community, but he is the annoying guy at the part who’s telling everybody, ‘You look like shit.’” – Rob Weinert-Kendt, editor of American Theatre

“I tell students it’s a marvelous hobby, but I do not encourage them to pursue it as a career.” – Alexis Soloski, The New York Times, on advice to aspiring critics

“When I was on the Obies committee, I was told (though I think this was tongue-in-cheek) that the standard for conflict of interest is whether you slept with the person. Mine is that I can’t have been invited to their birthday party.” – Helen Shaw, Time Out New York

“One of the hardest critical jobs is the correct appropriation of praise and blame. Did this actor do this? Was it a directing choice? Did this flow from the play? Was the director absolutely doing that? A critic does not see the production process. To some degree the critic is trying to imbue the process.” – Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

“If there weren’t critics, people would have to depend on advertising. And advertising, by definition, almost always lies…” – John Simon, Westchester Guardian

Having begun my career as a publicist, albeit one who worked mostly in Connecticut, which short stays in Philadelphia and New York, I’ve had the occasion to know a great many critics, and the majority of the individuals in the book I know at least from reading, many from professional interactions and a few I consider friends. I’ve had the chance to discuss, debate and sometimes profoundly disagree with some of the critics in the book. Consequently, I can say that they come across just as they have across telephone line, social media and even a dinner table. Because of the timing of the book in 2016, I do find myself missing the presence of some of the critics with whom I worked most directly, and spoke with most often, from whom I learned so much, all of whom have now passed away: Mel Gussow of The New York Times, Howard Kissel of the New York Daily News and Michael Kuchwara of the Associated Press.

While their absence is inevitable, there are a few major voices missing from the book, for reasons unknowable. While print may be shrinking or even dying, and online reviews are now widely accessible, making more criticism available to more readers than ever before, Mark Kennedy’s voice at the Associated Press has significant amplification and reach, through the many outlets that carry AP copy; he’s not in the book. On the west coast, which is generally underrepresented in the critical mix of the book, Charles McNulty at the Los Angeles Times is a major and influential writer about theatre not only in Los Angeles, but frequently in San Diego and New York as well. And Michael Feingold, the long-time – and once again – critic at the Village Voice has a historical perspective that is unfortunately not heard.

There’s one other voice I wish were included, that of Frank Rich, the former theatre critic of The New York Times, who is named multiple times in the book. Frank, unlike Gussow, Kissel and Kuchwara, is still with us, having gone on to write for the editorial pages of the Times and now as a political columnist for New York magazine (as well as being an executive producer of the TV series Veep). While his days as a designated critic may be gone, theatre has remained a part of Frank’s writing in the two decades since he left his post. His insight would have only added value to Windman’s book.

The book is not wholly New York-centric, with critics from the Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, Toronto Star and Austin Chronicle included, but it certainly skews to the America’s northeast. So while it’s problematic to draw any definitive conclusions about the critical community from the 57 critics represented, it’s worth noting that there are only nine female critics among the 57, and only two critics within – to the best of my knowledge – who are persons of color, highlighting the lack of gender and racial diversity in the critical ranks overall. The interviews don’t skirt this fact (though one critic mistakenly declares that Hilton Als is the only black theatre critic anywhere), but as an area of inquiry, discussion of how the lack diversity among critics affects audiences and artists is limited. It seems a missed opportunity.

Have I spent too much time talking about what I miss, rather than what’s in The Critics Say? I am perhaps guilty of doing so, but only because I have had the privilege of such conversations throughout my career and the book prompts me to want to ask yet more questions, both with the people in the book and those who aren’t. But that’s where Windman’s effort pays off, in assembling provocative conversations with people inaccessible to most readers and creating a strong platform for yet more discussion. In his preface, Windman cites two previous books that spoke with critics, from 1993 and 2004, but just as I miss hearing the opinions of those no longer with us and those who didn’t participate, perhaps this form of inquiry deserves to be undertaken once every decade or so, for the historical record, as criticism, theatre and the media continue to evolve.

Whatever the fate of theatre criticism is in the next ten years or the next hundred, The Critics Say is a worthy time capsule of where things are right now, and surely required reading in arts journalism and arts management classes. And for those you read theatre reviews and find yourself saying, “Who the hell wrote this?,” Windman’s book offers some answers about who did, and why.

A few weeks ago, the headline of a review rubbed me the wrong way.

I didn’t have an issue with the review itself, by Charles McNulty for The Los Angeles Times. But the headline for the piece, which covered the new Broadway productions of Old Times and Fool For Love, read as follows, “Clive Owen and Sam Rockwell hit Broadway in ‘Old Times’ and ‘Fool for Love’ with different results.”

Why was the headline only about men, I thought. Admittedly, I hadn’t seen either production at that point, but I was familiar with the plays, and knew that the character Rockwell plays in Fool is at least evenly matched with the role played by Nina Arianda, and Owen shares the stage in a triangle with characters played by Eve Best and Kelly Reilly. My theatre-centric brain took this headline as gender inequity.

Thinking on it, I can see why the men might have gotten the headline mentions, since both have done television and film work, with Owen currently in the second season of The Knick. But neither are exactly bankable stars who “open” movies. Best and Arianda are “only” Tony Award winners, which may mean less in the entertainment hierarchy these days than electronic media work, especially in the major paper of the city that is the center of television and film business.

That said, Best appeared in 51 episodes of Nurse Jackie, though she’s not the lead, as Owen is on The Knick, but she did that series for much longer on Showtime than Owen has been doctoring on Cinemax. Admittedly, Owen was making his Broadway debut, and Rockwell was only making his second appearance, making their gigs slightly rarer than Arianda and Best each taking their third Broadway turns. I decided this wasn’t a clear cut case of advancing men over women, despite my own perception of implied unequal worth among the players along gender lines.

But this male favoritism sprang to mind again just this morning, when I saw this headline on a theatre story on NorthJersey.com, a website that includes coverage from The Record and other New Jersey outlets: “The woman directing Al Pacino in David Mamet’s new play.”

Now I knew instantly that the piece was about Pam MacKinnon because it’s my business to know who’s working on what show, but also because Pam has quickly become one of New York’s most recognized female directors, for such works as Clybourne Park (for which she had received an Obie) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (for which she won a Tony). Yet the headline was all about the big, male names, even though neither of them had spoken to The Record’s Robert Feldberg. Only Pam had done so.

Pam MacKinnon

Sure, you can chalk it up to celebrity, to what might get the most clicks online, but once again it was a case of choosing male names over female, and in this case the article was about “the woman.” I don’t fault the writer, but an editor and perhaps someone at the copy desk, who figured they’d go with male fame, rather than the female subject of the story.

Obviously it’s not possible to say from the two headlines I’ve cited to say that there’s a widespread pattern here, but I would suggest to readers who care about this issue that they should be on the lookout for such casual disregard of women in the theatre and call it out (or let me know; I’m starting a list) whenever it appears. Yes, it’s a very small-bore, incremental game of standing vigilant, but if indeed there’s a pattern, then it has to be broken at every opportunity.

Before I wrote this post, I called out The Record on its headline on Twitter as follows, at 10:30 am:

Now I can’t know for certain there’s any cause and effect, but 25 minutes later, after multiple favorites and retweets of my message, The Record altered its headline to “Director’s hard work on ‘China Doll’ pays off.” It appears they got the message – though presumably the original headline is what’s in the print edition. It’s also worth noting that the headline was changed without any acknowledgement, so in the long memory of the internet, the male-centric headline never happened. That’s dishonest.

But even in an effort to ameliorate their insensitivity, it seems The Record still can’t bring itself to give the “Director” a name. So I’ll say it once again: it’s Pam MacKinnon. Remember it and use it, because without it, the record is incomplete and the paper’s bias is showing.

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

Deborah Puette in Tommy Smith’s “Ghost Light” at Echo Theater Company

“This is a community art, built only on the goodwill between artists, and there isn’t enough money to bring in lawyers.”

If you ask me, that quote in The Los Angeles Times, from playwright Tommy Smith, is a rather contradictory one. Referring to the playwright’s current dispute with the Echo Theatre Company in Los Angeles, it suggests magnanimity, but then says that’s the chosen path only because legal recourse is too expensive. If it’s about good will, why is it in the press?

In the September 30 article by David Ng, Smith charges the company with, among other things, producing his play Ghost Light without a contract and willfully excluding the author from rehearsals. Performances date back to early August.

If Smith’s account is accurate, the behavior of the company is unconscionable, violating pretty much every tenet of the playwright-producer relationship and amounting to outright theft of creative material. It is exactly the sort of treatment that prompted playwrights to react to the call for submissions by Words Players Theatre, an amateur youth troupe in Minnesota, rising to a level of vehemence that may have undermined some of the completely legitimate arguments. Is this in part a similar scenario, but at a professional level, exactly the sort of behavior that many wanted to be sure Words Players wasn’t instilling in young writers and directors?

Here’s the problem with calling for equally passionate reaction to what’s happened at Echo Theater: the theatre claims it has a signed contract and that the playwright was paid for performances. And while David Ng’s article carries the headline, “Why a playwright is urging L.A. theatergoers to boycott his latest,” the article states that all future performances have been canceled, negating any need for a boycott at least. What we have here is a “he said/they said” situation.

Now it’s important to note that Ng attempted to contact Smith’s agent, which Smith’s website indicates is Jessica Amato at The Gersh Agency in New York. He received no response according to his article, and my own inquiry, via e-mail, 24 hours ago, also yielded no reply. I have written to Smith on Twitter to try to engage with him directly, but have as of yet been unsuccessful (though I should note that I’m writing from London, and an eight-hour time difference might be a factor). Ng also said Echo Theatre didn’t respond when he asked for more information about the contract they say they have.

If indeed Echo Theater proffered a contract that proposed to give Chris Fields, the company’s artistic director “complete authorial control over the production,” then the situation is shameful. If the play was proposed as a workshop and produced without a valid production agreement in place, it’s actionable. I would refer Smith and Amato to the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund, who I believe would vigorously pursue such a claim, including identifying an attorney who might take on the case pro bono. No matter the size of the company, the length of the play or the dollars at stake, the rights of artists to control their work must be defended.

The LA Times report as it stands is unsatisfying, and not quite the basis for a public campaign just yet. Now that it’s out in the open, someone beyond Smith needs to fully open up, whether it’s Echo Theater, by producing an executed copy of the contract in question to prove their claim (although if it includes language about ceding authorial rights the issue won’t stop there), or Smith’s agent, to corroborate the scenario he laid out.

There’s more to this story for sure. But whatever’s happened in Los Angeles, the dispute about Ghost Light can’t be allowed to become a phantom, because there’s too much at stake that’s vital to all playwrights to let it simply disappear, echoing as it evanesces.

PART II, October 6, 2015

At the end of my original post, I had asked the parties involved in the dispute over the production of Ghost Light at Echo Theater to speak up and shed more light on the situation. One responded, one demurred, and one stayed silent.

Jessica Amato of The Gersh Agency, who represents Tommy Smith, had not responded to my e-mail last week, but took my phone call yesterday. She said that in regards to inquiries about Ghost Light at Echo Theater, only the playwright could address questions regarding the play’s production. She confirmed that the e-mail address I had found for Smith, through a mutual acquaintance, was indeed the correct one, and said that if he wished to make any statement or speak with me, a response would be at his discretion.

Smith, however, has not responded to my inquiries, either on Twitter, as I had attempted last week, or via e-mail, despite two attempts yesterday, with more than 24 hours now passed. After sending notices to the Los Angeles press with his charges against Echo Theater’s production of Ghost Light last week, and speaking with the Los Angeles Times for the story that ran on September 30, Smith did not take the opportunity to discuss the issue any further, at least not with me.

I did hear from Chris Fields, the artistic director of Echo Theater, first via e-mail and then in two phone calls, a brief conversation on Sunday and a longer interview yesterday. In between those two calls, Fields sent me a copy of the theatre’s June agreement with Tommy Smith for the production of 12 performances (not described as a workshop) of Ghost Light, as well as a canceled check in payment of an author’s fee for those performances. It was exceedingly brief, amounting to a single paragraph in a three paragraph letter. One other paragraph had been redacted, which Fields explained as pertaining to a separate production of a play by Smith; the payment amount was also redacted on the check, however the agreement’s first paragraph indicated that the subsequent paragraphs were terms for two purposes, only one being Ghost Light. Provided the redacted paragraph was as described by Fields, what I saw appears to corroborate the statement Fields made to David Ng at the Los Angeles Times last week and contradict Smith’s account of Ghost Light being produced without an agreement.

In our conversation, Fields spoke highly of Smith’s work and recounted Echo’s production history with his plays, including the successful August debut of Ghost Light. When asked about the discrepancy between the theatre’s position and Smith’s assertions, Fields indicated that it stemmed from conversations about a new author’s agreement that was being negotiated in early September, in response to Smith’s request for an increased author’s fee. He denied any effort to alter the play or its title without Smith’s consent, or asking for any form of authorial control.

“He asked for more money,” said Fields. “I forgot I’d contracted for 12 performances.” But saying that even once he realized that he was not averse to an increase, Fields prepared a revised agreement that he described as “acknowledging that earlier agreement is void and authorizing additional performances.”

According to Fields, Smith said that the new agreement was not sufficient and that his agent would not accept it, and they agreed that Smith would send revisions. Among other points raised in the Smith draft, Fields said, “He sent agreement with language insisting on meeting with marketing and publicity director. It was moot because marketing already existed and the image we used came from him.” Fields said there was also standard language about authorial approval and consultation, but that in this case the agreement pertained to an existing production, which had already opened and been reviewed, so there was some disagreement regarding reasonable approvals language. There were communications between Fields, Smith and Smith’s agent, but Fields said that conversations over the new agreement lapsed on September 9; the next performance of the play was to be September 26.

Without an updated agreement, the June agreement was still in force, and Echo gave its scheduled performance on September 26. In communications the next day between Fields and Smith, in which Smith expressed his displeasure with the performance going forward the night before, Fields said he ultimately informed Smith that the remaining two scheduled performances would be canceled. It seems that Smith began his efforts to contact the media the next day.

So what can we take from this falling out between a playwright and theatre company that had worked together several times previously?

First, this is an object lesson on the benefit of representation. It appears that the original agreement, which as I noted was quite brief, was executed directly between Smith and the theatre. With an agent or attorney negotiating it, or if it fully followed Dramatists Guild guidelines, Smith would have perhaps had the fee and protections that he apparently sought to address with a revised agreement, negating the need for another contract.

Second, while contracts can be superseded and negated with new agreements, old agreements don’t lapse as a result of negotiation, but only upon execution of the new agreement encompassing those terms. While the situation may not have been ideal for Echo to proceed with more performances after communications broke down in early September, it appears they were within their rights in giving more performances of the existing production.

Third, playing out a dispute in the media is very tricky. While Smith got very high profile press for his charges via the LA Times, and indeed benefited from a headline which even the story didn’t support, a careful reading of the article suggested that the situation was more complex than was portrayed in the piece. Echo Theater might have helped itself in the situation if they had released the canceled check and brief contract immediately to David Ng, to bolster their position. Recalling an edict from the Bill Clinton campaign, repeated charges not challenged become facts.

It’s clear that a previously fruitful relationship between Tommy Smith and the Echo Theater has gone sour in a dispute over the revision of contractual terms. However, in the absence of any statement or explanation from Smith or his agent beyond his initial claim, it seems that the original agreement was still in force and Echo Theater was producing the show under a valid agreement for which payment had been made and accepted months before.

Update, October 7, 9 pm: Reporting further on the dispute between Tommy Smith and the Echo Theater Company, David Ng’s follow-up story included a new statement from Smith:

“After taking the time to consult with legal representation, I am profusely apologizing for and retracting my statements about Echo Theater Company and its project Ghost Light,” he said.

Smith said he consulted with the Dramatists Guild, the New York-based professional association of playwrights, on the matter.

“I thank Echo for allowing me the time to fully understand my situation and consider this difficult admission,” the playwright said. “I am sorry that the public had to be involved at all.”

 

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

If you happen to know of any young people who you’re trying to dissuade from careers in the creative arts, you might want to casually leave around two new books for them to find. Scott Timberg’s Culture Crash: The Killing Of The Creative Class (Yale University Press, $26) and Michael M. Kaiser’s Curtains?: The Future Of The Arts In America (Brandeis University Press, $26.95) both paint dark pictures of the state of the creative arts and where they’re headed, enough to send one right into investment banking if it remains a choice.

Timberg, a former arts journalist at the Los Angeles Times who writes the “Culture Crash” blog for ArtsJournal, predominantly focuses on the music industry and the state of legacy media and journalism, with nods to architecture and literature, while Kaiser, former head of the Kennedy Center and now leader of the DeVos Institute of Arts Management, concentrates on the world of symphonies, opera and dance. As an avid consumer of music and journalism, my interests run closer to those explored by Timberg; professionally my background comes closer to the disciplines discussed by Kaiser, but (troublingly) neither book spends much time at all on theatre, my actual profession and leisure time avocation as well.

As a result, neither book reveals a great deal to me that I’ve not read about before, or experienced personally in some cases. But while both are published by academic presses (perhaps its own comment on broad-based interest, or lack thereof, in arts and culture), neither seems targeted at industry insiders. Instead, they are surveys of where we are now and how we got here, with a limited amount of prescriptive suggestions for how the tide that favors mass entertainment over the rarified or personal might be turned or at least survived in new forms. Both place a great deal of blame on technology for the woes they recount.

Of the two, I was more drawn to Timberg’s book, which, no doubt due to the author’s experience as a professional writer, is the more elegant, immersive read, peppered throughout with specific stories that support his thesis of cultural decline, a vision notably counterpointed with Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class (with a book cover designed to evoke that oft cited book). Timberg particularly worries about the loss of a wide range of social influencers who could guide existing and potential audiences to works that might interest them, from knowledgeable record store clerks to professional (paid) reporters and critics. While it’s a valid point, Timberg falls prey to making it seem, at times, as if he’s bemoaning his own employment status and that of his many colleagues who have been decimated by the contraction in print journalism, never more so than when he cites the decline in the popular portrayal of critics as having slid from George Sanders as Addison DeWitt in All About Eve in the 1950s to Jon Lovitz as Jay Sherman in the cartoon The Critic in the 1990s. That said, he does make strong points about the fracturing of a common culture even as a blockbuster mentality has overridden many creative industries, a seemingly oxymoronic concept. He also cites a wide array of sources, both from other writing and newly conducted interviews, and his fields of interest are admirably broad.

Kaiser’s book resembles a series of lectures about the state of the performing arts – a look at a golden era in the latter half of the 20^th century, where we are now, where we may be in 20 years time, and how we might make things better. Unfortunately, the lectures seem to spring wholly from Kaiser himself, as he quotes no experts, provides no data, and doesn’t include either an appendix or bibliography. It seems we are to take what Kaiser tells us simply on faith, even such sweeping statements as “While the outlook for the performing arts is dire, museums have better chances for survival” or “Theatre organizations should fare better than symphony orchestras.” In the case of the latter statement, much as I would dearly love it to be true, it flies in the face of recent studies from the National Endowment for the Arts, cited by Timberg but AWOL from Kaiser’s survey. Given how much of his brief book is taken up with prognostication, its unfortunate that Kaiser doesn’t extrapolate from existing data; in imagining 2035, it’s surprising that ongoing demographic shifts, especially in regards to race and ethnicity, in the country play so little role in his thinking. That’s not to say he doesn’t have some interesting observations, among them the thesis that while the end of Metropolitan Opera touring gave rise to more regional opera companies in the 80s, the success of the Met Live cinecasts may now be undermining those very troupes.

Reading the two books back to back, I was struck by the fact that both hit some similar themes (the loss of shared cultural language and experience, the impact of electronic media) yet diverge in their exemplars. While Kaiser’s book also doesn’t include an index, I did a fast pass through to see whether certain areas came up frequently, and found 14 references to The Kennedy Center and eight to the Alvin Ailey Dance Company (both of which Kaiser led) and a whopping 19 mentions of the Metropolitan Opera – all organizations which appear nowhere in Timberg’s index, which lists its greatest citations for areas of discipline rather than particular purveyors (the film industry, the economy, the indie music scene to name three). Both books may focus on the state of culture and its future, but their respective attentions are essentially balkanized.

If I were teaching a survey course in arts leadership, I might well assign both books early in the semester, albeit with a restorative break between them to replenish some sense of optimism. But both are merely starting points for a conversation, each in their own way raising areas of concern, yet stinting on any semblance of how those concerns can be addressed, battled or even embraced. To be fair, Timberg is a reporter, recording and interpreting, but Kaiser is training arts leaders, so its more incumbent upon him to offer something prescriptive. We can bemoan the fact that Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts are a thing of the past, or long for the one on one counsel of record and bookstore employees, but that’s not likely to bring them back. If our cultural appreciation and literacy has fallen, can it get back up – and if so how? That’s the book I need to read. Soon.