Joe Bannister & Leon Annor in As You Like It at the National Theatre (Photo: Johan Persson)

Four words. Why do four words bother me so much?

After all, they appear in one review of an As You Like It production at the National Theatre in London that I’m highly unlikely to ever see. So why are these four words – which appear in a parenthetical clause, by the way – still on my mind a week after the review, by Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph, was published? Well, I guess we should start with the four words in question.

“Man mountain black actor.”

Have I taken these words out of context, in order to emphasize them? I have certainly extracted them from a much longer sentence, but that’s because they are so fleeting in the overall review as to pass by unnoticed many readers. Here’s the full sentence:

“A match is set up for Orlando against the wrestler Charles (man-mountain black actor Leon Annor in shiny gold cape) – this test of mettle is conducted on crash-mats with lots of flashing lights, pounding rock-music and moronic chanting by the spectators.”

My first question is, simply, does the actor’s race matter? None of the other actors are identified by their race in the review, although there are other actors of color (or to cite the UK term, “BAME actors,” referring to Black, Asian and minority ethnic) in the production. Is there any legitimate reason for calling out this one actor’s race, since it is not being discussed as germane to any interpretation of the production or the particular scene. It is, so far as I can tell, casual and irrelevant. Which makes it stand out to me all the more.

Combined with “black,” does “man mountain” mean to imply that the character is in some way more dangerous or threatening? It could certainly be read that way. Would that have been mentioned if Annor was white? Of the more than a dozen reviews I read, many of which don’t mention Annor at all, his size is only mentioned by Matt Trueman for Whatsonstage.com, who simply notes that the actor is “large,” without any racial identification. Another critic, Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail, made note of a “plump shepherdess” in the production, which could prompt its own questions about whether size mattered at all in referring to an actress, but he didn’t see any need to point out that she is white. So I think it’s fair to say that Cavendish is alone in choosing to call Annor the equivalent of “a giant black man,” a construct which I would hope would set off alarms of caution to any writer or editor on either side of the Atlantic. Though in this case, it obviously didn’t.

Set on the path of investigation by these four words, I did find one other review that touched upon the race of the actors in this production. On Londonist.com, Franco Milazzo wrote, “The colourblind casting of Wringer is a masterstroke, his austere tone providing just the right level of gravity.” His reference is to Leo Wringer, a BAME actor, as Duke Frederick, and it’s fairly puzzling as well, even though it’s laudatory. After all, if Milazzo acknowledges the casting as colorblind, why bring it up at all, and why bring it up specifically when referring to a black actor, rather than a white one? Is it possible that when Milazzo speaks of “austere tone” he is referring to skin tone? That certainly seems to be part of the construct. But I hope it’s an accident.

In the examples I’ve cited, “austere tone” and “man mountain” might not be worth mentioning on their own, but when combined with the only references to race, both implied and explicit, they seem to me wholly gratuitous, even if they were done without any deep thought as to their implications. But it is the likelihood that they were casual statements by white critics about actors of color that I find so worrisome, since nowhere along the path from writer to editor to copy editor to publication did anyone apparently suggest that these mentions or constructions might be offensive, reinforcing racial division.

I think it’s important for me to note that I was questioned about my use of the phrase “female directors” just a week ago, when writing about the casual disregard of Pam MacKinnon in the headline of a story in which she was the main subject. It was raised because I made mention of MacKinnon as “one of New York’s most recognized female directors,” which wasn’t casual, yet even in the context of an essay about equality could give the impression of setting women apart from men in a subordinate way. In hindsight, perhaps it wasn’t a necessity that I address gender at that point, and it may well have undermined the main point I was discussing. I did not remove the reference because, even with a note about such an edit after the fact, I felt it would have been dishonest. But I acknowledge that my own intent may not have come across clearly, and therefore failed.

My exploration of racial references in reviews of As You Like It in the UK are in no way meant to be attacks on the British arts press or to suggest we don’t face the same problems in the US media. Cavendish’s review simply happened to say what in my opinion was the wrong thing at the right time. That is to say, I saw it at a moment when I am on ever more heightened alert to what some define as micro-aggressions by the members of the arts press, who are hardly alone in needing to grapple with their language choices surrounding the subjects of race, gender, and disability, to name but three. There are times, especially given the limited amount of space afforded to arts coverage, when mentioning race can be at best superfluous and at worst insidious.

I find myself reverting to a sentiment that I’ve expressed before about the arts, which is that we have the opportunity, and in my opinion the mandate, to model a better world on stage, on screen and behind the scenes. To achieve that, we also need those who cover the arts to be our partners in those efforts, so that there is consistent messaging not only within the work itself but in discussions, considerations and reporting on the work, writing which reflects equality and eradicates bias, be it subtle or overt, at every turn.

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

A great deal has been written about the diminishment of arts journalism in general, and criticism in particular. Editors want to focus more only on big name productions, or celebrities, as budgets are continually cut and positions and space are pared back.

So it’s really sad when you find a critic doing their utmost to diminish the perception of critics and criticism entirely of their own volition. While I wouldn’t suggest that this is a regular occurrence, a particularly egregious aberration has emerged out of Seattle in recent days. A critic has posted on Craig’s List about his regular availability of a spare ticket to the city’s many cultural venues, making the following offer:

I am compiling a list of people who would like to purchase these single great seats for the performances. I plan to sell the ticket, and the price will less than half of the face value. In addition, your input might well be reflected in my review.

He goes on to write:

If you’re interested in participating, respond with your name and email address. I will then reply with my blog address (to prove that this is a real offer and give you an idea of what I’ve reviewed in the past few months) and the first list of upcoming events.

Thanks for considering this proposition and helping me to keep these seats from being empty in the future.

While some commenters on Facebook have provided links to who they believe this critic is, I am holding back from linking because I haven’t got absolute proof. But whoever this guy is, he seems blithely unaware of – or unconcerned by – the ethical and possibly legal boundaries he has crossed.

Here’s the complete listing:

The profiteering critic

I could write at great length about why this is wrong, but I hope it would seem obvious. The short version is that this bozo is being afforded complimentary tickets for his use as a critic and if he doesn’t need more than a single seat, he simply shouldn’t take the second one. It is not his role to fill that second seat, and it’s certainly not his right to profit from selling that seat, even at a discount, regardless of whether he’s being paid to write or not. I have seen some critics offer their second ticket – gratis – to their readers on social media, which seems an inventive way of reaching out to their own audience and to audience members for the theatre. But no money changes hands.

So whoever this is, I hope that the theatre community in Seattle blackballs him. I hope he isn’t given tickets by anyone ever again. I hope the theatres don’t feel they somehow need him. If, as it appears, he writes for The Huffington Post, I hope they withdraw that platform from him, because even with the very broad range of unpaid writers at HuffPo (an ethical debate for another day), he’s not doing that site any favors in the credibility department either.

Dude, not that I have any authority here, but as a former publicist, general manager and executive director, I’d say you’ve forfeited your rights to complimentary tickets. If you want to write about theatre, then you can buy a seat. If there’s any justice, your free ride is over.

P.S. This “offer” is under “men seeking women,” so there may be even more to the deal than meets the eye. Maybe that’s why he’s always got an extra ticket, too.

Update, November 2, 6:15 pm: The Craig’s List posting was removed within one hour of this post going live.

Update, November 2, 7:30 pm: Seattle’s weekly The Stranger has written about this situation, insuring it will spread throughout the Seattle arts community.

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

A great deal has been written about the diminishment of arts journalism in general, and criticism in particular. Editors want to focus more only on big name productions, or celebrities, as budgets are continually cut and positions and space are pared back.

So it’s really sad when you find a critic doing their utmost to diminish the perception of critics and criticism entirely of their own volition. While I wouldn’t suggest that this is a regular occurrence, a particularly egregious aberration has emerged out of Seattle in recent days. A critic has posted on Craig’s List about his regular availability of a spare ticket to the city’s many cultural venues, making the following offer:

I am compiling a list of people who would like to purchase these single great seats for the performances. I plan to sell the ticket, and the price will less than half of the face value. In addition, your input might well be reflected in my review.

He goes on to write:

If you’re interested in participating, respond with your name and email address. I will then reply with my blog address (to prove that this is a real offer and give you an idea of what I’ve reviewed in the past few months) and the first list of upcoming events.

Thanks for considering this proposition and helping me to keep these seats from being empty in the future.

While some commenters on Facebook have provided links to who they believe this critic is, I am holding back from linking because I haven’t got absolute proof. But whoever this guy is, he seems blithely unaware of – or unconcerned by – the ethical and possibly legal boundaries he has crossed.

Here’s the complete listing:

I could write at great length about why this is wrong, but I hope it would seem obvious. The short version is that this bozo is being afforded complimentary tickets for his use as a critic and if he doesn’t need more than a single seat, he simply shouldn’t take the second one. It is not his role to fill that second seat, and it’s certainly not his right to profit from selling that seat, even at a discount, regardless of whether he’s being paid to write or not. I have seen some critics offer their second ticket – gratis – to their readers on social media, which seems an inventive way of reaching out to their own audience and to audience members for the theatre. But no money changes hands.

So whoever this is, I hope that the theatre community in Seattle blackballs him. I hope he isn’t given tickets by anyone ever again. I hope the theatres don’t feel they somehow need him. If, as it appears, he writes for The Huffington Post, I hope they withdraw that platform from him, because even with the very broad range of unpaid writers at HuffPo (an ethical debate for another day), he’s not doing that site any favors in the credibility department either.

Dude, not that I have any authority here, but as a former publicist, general manager and executive director, I’d say you’ve forfeited your rights to complimentary tickets. If you want to write about theatre, then you can buy a seat. If there’s any justice, your free ride is over.

P.S. This “offer” is under “men seeking women,” so there may be even more to the deal than meets the eye. Maybe that’s why he’s always got an extra ticket, too.

Update, November 2, 6:15 pm: The Craig’s List posting was removed within one hour of this post going live.

Update, November 2, 7:30 pm: Seattle’s weekly The Stranger has written about this situation, insuring it will spread throughout the Seattle arts community.

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.

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.