On Monday evening, I posted the first transcript of a Twitter conversation between Peter Marks (@petermarksdrama) of The Washington Post and me and, as the title indicated with “Part 1,” there would be a “Part 2.” This conversation took place 10 days after the one shared in my previous post, on November 11. It began with Peter throwing some snark in my direction, by merging Hugh Jackman’s Broadway show, which had officially opened the night before, and my blog post of last week, on showing our emotions when we attend the theatre.

In prepping this transcript for posting, I have to say I found it even more rewarding a read than the first, because so many more voices joined the conversation, and because we didn’t focus so much on the role of the critic, but rather on everyone’s shared reaction to theatre, which transcends boundaries such as professional and amateur.

As before, the transcript is in reverse chronological order, so you must go to the bottom of this post and scroll upwards to track the conversation as it happened. I have taken the liberty of cleaning up a few typos and replacing some Twitter shorthand with complete words, for ease of reading.

Peter and I will finally meet face to face in four days at Arena Stage; I’m eager to see how our conversation flows, freed from the strictures of Twitter. It will irrevocably alter our Twitter conversation thereafter, since we will have met corporeally; maybe it’ll lead to yet more conversations for us all, both online and off.

With that: go to the bottom of this post and start scrolling. Enjoy.

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reduced  12:36pm   @petermarksdrama @HESherman Also (again, IMHO) critics should use 1st person more in reviews. You ARE the story – it’s your opinion.

reduced  12:36pm   @petermarksdrama @HESherman IMHO, critics in an audience ARE part of the community. Leaving early during bows, screams ‘Look at me!’

petermarksdrama  12:13pm   @GwydionS @HESherman Agreed

GwydionS  12:12pm   @petermarksdrama @HESherman I think a critic needs to be both “of” and “outside” the audience.

MariselaTOrta  12:11pm   @dloehr @HESherman at my last reading the girlfriend of the actors couldn’t stop crying. Not quite my aim, but I want aud. to feel

petermarksdrama  12:11pm   @HESherman Since I only know you by tweets and tv guest starring roles, looking forward to meeting you next week, Howard.

petermarksdrama  12:09pm   YABBA DABBA DO @MT @HESherman You are not Fred Flintstone

MariselaTOrta  12:09pm   @petermarksdrama Thank you. I mainly write, well tragedies, I think there’s something to the crucible of pain, reveals our humanity

HESherman  12:07pm   @petermarksdrama You are not Fred Flintstone sliding down the back of the dino when the whistle blows. You’re part of audience.

HESherman12:07pm   @petermarksdrama That’s often apparent. But respect for those on stage? They see people running for the doors.

petermarksdrama  12:06pm  @HESherman You leave with that swipe about critics running out? We can’t even be the first out at quittin’ time?????

HESherman  12:06pm   @petermarksdrama I wonder what kind of crowd they thought was right specifically for you and that show. Very amused

Theatreontario  12:06pm   @petermarksdrama I guess it seems to me to be an effective journalist, you would have to be a member of the community

petermarksdrama  12:05pm   Howard–we r not there to send back waves of love. MT @HESherman I watched major critics rush out during applause for Hugh. Rude

HESherman  12:05pm   I’ve gotta sign off. Have a lunch in the wilds of Park Slope. If u don’t know, @petermarksdrama meet live next Sat @arenastage

Theatreontario  12:05pm   @petermarksdrama Not a member of the community? That idea surprises me – a different obligation doesn’t negate “membership”

petermarksdrama  12:04pm   @HESherman (They’d bussed in a group and comped them, clearly were expected to LOVE it for me.)

monicabyrne13  12:04pm   @ATPvporteous I disagree. I don’t write to get emotional reactions out of people. I write my truth; how they react is up to them.

petermarksdrama  12:03pm    @HESherman Another time, I left Promenade Theater during ovation. Guy w/head mike stopped me at door & said, “Get back up there and applaud”!

ATPvporteous  12:02pm   … & all we do is try 2 elicit specific emots/reacts from receivers. RT @monicabyrne13: …whether it gets an emotional reaction, up 2 receiver.

BrookeM1109  12:01pm    @HESherman hah I know! But I wouldn’t whisper anything into critics ears as @petermarksdrama said!

HESherman  12:01pm   @petermarksdrama SOUPY SALES!! Really? How subtle. Presumably for an O’Neill play.

petermarksdrama  12:01pm    @HESherman It was a Johnny Mercer revue, called DREAM. It was pretty awful.

HESherman  12:00pm   @brookem1109 Now you’ve blown it. You’re going to have to go to @woollymammothtc press nights in disguise! 😉

petermarksdrama  12:00pm   Most enthralling theater I’ve ever experienced was just watching her. MT @HESherman So your theatre was watching your child.

Sueyellen  11:59am    @HESherman @petermarksdrama @HughOnBroadway was 1 of the best theater experiences my 8 yr old has had in her short B’way life. Gr8 memory!!

monicabyrne13  11:59am   @HESherman Tell me about it. My emotions startle people. I try to warn them!

MrSamuelFrench  11:59am     Magic of the Theatre RT @petermarksdrama: Took my 6 year old daughter to Cathy Rigby’s PETER PAN & cried, just watching her watch the show

petermarksdrama  11:59am    @BrookeM1109 @HESherman On Bway, occasionally planted people next 2 me. Soupy Sales, once. Kept whispering 2 me isn’t this great?

HESherman  11:59am   @petermarksdrama So your theatre was watching your child. Cathy Rigby didn’t enter into your experience, except thru daughter.

sophieGG  11:58am  @petermarksdrama @HESherman I cried so hard in Ruined I couldn’t speak to my husband for an hour. That’s theater.

MrSamuelFrench  11:58am   @hesherman & so we call it “Cheesy” to guard against our true reaction? (Also I think I know the coffee commercial of which you speak.)

monicabyrne13  11:58am    @petermarksdrama @HESherman Last time I cried in theater: last line in VIBRATOR PLAY, woman to man, “You’re so beautiful.”

MrSamuelFrench  11:58am     @HESherman & so we call it “Cheesy” to guard against our true reaction? (Also I think I know the coffee comm. of which you speak.)

HESherman  11:58am   @monicabyrne13 That’s what I was told in my unsuccessfully dating days. But too much emotion can startle people.

KirstinFranko  11:58am  @HESherman @petermarksdrama I have to throw in a play like RUINED. It so strongly sent me on a roller coaster of emotions. Up & down

BrookeM1109  11:57am    @HESherman @petermarksdrama I sit a few rows back from critics to watch responses & also 2 c what rest of audience vibe is on press night

ATPvporteous  11:56am   I think opposite: ’emotionality’ not primary characteristic RT @monicabyrne13: I think it’s designed to BE an emotional expression…

HESherman  11:56am   @petermarksdrama Leadership thought that was the case. I quickly learned that a smile could mean thinking of a nasty phrase.

petermarksdrama  11:56am  @monicabyrne13 @HESherman Took my 6 year old daughter to Cathy Rigby’s PETER PAN year ago and cried, just watching her watch the show.

HESherman  11:56am   @mrsamuelfrench Or are we simply afraid to admit to others that we can be so affected by “entertainment”?

Bflood28  11:56am    @petermarksdrama @HESherman I’m still against that. I was still shocked when Bway theatres started doing that. Nederlander yes?

monicabyrne13  11:55am  @petermarksdrama @HESherman I think showing vulnerability is always wonderful. 🙂 Be proud.

MrSamuelFrench  11:55am   @HESherman @petermarksdrama Maybe we perceive it “cheesy” because it’s familiar. Universality & ability 2 relate drives emotion, no?

HESherman  11:55am   @petermarksdrama I watched Frank Rich be very moved by FALSETTOS @hartfordstage. He later wrote what show meant to him him.

petermarksdrama  11:55am  @HESherman Wait–watch 4 laughing or crying crix? And what would u report back: “She’s doubled over–we’re home free!”? @pmdhes

ArtHennessey  11:54am    RT @petermarksdrama: @HESherman @monicabyrne13 Always odd as critic to be crying as lights come up. Sometimes embarrassed; sometimes proud.

KirstinFranko  11:54am  @HESherman @petermarksdrama I know exactly that coffee commercial! It gets me too! But I’m a real emotional giver, so no surprise

HESherman  11:54am   @petermarksdrama In my p.r. days, I was sometimes assigned to watch important critics for emotional reaction.

petermarksdrama  11:54am    @HESherman Jackman belong on Bway? You bet. He’s earned his solo act. wish he’d taken more risks w/ it. He’s got wattage 2 do that

HESherman  11:53am   @petermarksdrama Going back to your opening salvo, did you think Hugh doesn’t belong on Broadway?

petermarksdrama  11:52am  @HESherman @monicabyrne13 Always odd as critic to be crying as lights come up. Sometimes embarrassed; sometimes proud.

Bflood28  11:52am  @HESherman @Cirque isn’t that part of equation however? Successful Vegas shows must be flashy/sexy/relatively brief

monicabyrne13  11:51am   @petermarksdrama @HESherman @GratuitousV In my opinion, no, but response is highly variable among individual recipients. I.e. “taste.”

HESherman  11:51am   @bflood28 We were speaking more of classic 60s Vegas and current @Cirque shows, not Broadway going to Vegas.

petermarksdrama  11:51am  @Bflood28 @HESherman And used to be only in Vegas you brought your drinks to your seat! (Theaters even have cup holders!) Bway nxt?

ATPvporteous  11:50am   Could think v nothing else 4 months. Interesting: saw it on TV. @kanessie Wept at RSC’s NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. Smike. Still choke up.

HESherman  11:50am   @petermarksdrama I was thinking about Richard Maxwell’s work, but I’ve only read about, never seen (though I adore Jan).

Bflood28  11:50am  @HESherman @petermarksdrama true, but most broadway transfers to Vegas must be severely cut & shortened due to attention span deficit

petermarksdrama  11:49am    @monicabyrne13 @HESherman @GratuitousV Without emotional response, can piece be considered successful?

HESherman  11:49am   @petermarksdrama But if it hits something primal, why is it cheesy? There’s a coffee commercial every Xmas that gets to me.

petermarksdrama  11:49am   @HESherman Yes re draining emotion. And that can be effective, witty. See works of Richard Maxwell (brother of Jan)

iamJoePapp  11:48am   Boy, I hated the critics. I could have killed each and every one of them.

HESherman  11:48am   @petermarksdrama Aren’t there artists who drain emotion from work intentionally? Tho guess even that provokes emotion in auds

petermarksdrama  11:47am  @HESherman I write sparingly in first person. I think people think you’re making yourself the story.

monicabyrne13  11:47am  @HESherman @GratuitousV I think it’s designed to BE an emotional expression; whether it gets an emotional reaction is up to the receiver.

HESherman  11:46am   @petermarksdrama Do you ever speak of yourself in the first person when reviewing, and admit direct emotional impact?

petermarksdrama  11:46am  @HESherman One of hardest aspects of reviewing is examining own response: “Jeez, why am I crying? This scene is so cheesy!”

petermarksdrama  11:44am  @GratuitousV @dloehr @HESherman re all art manip. emotions. It’s not whole experience without.

petermarksdrama  11:44am   @HESherman @kanessie Wept at end of RSC’s NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. Smike. Still choke up.

HESherman  11:43am   @petermarksdrama I do wonder how show developed. Hugh spoke of how quickly it was put together for San Francisco.

Kanessie  11:42am   @petermarksdrama @HESherman Six Years by Shar White, wept openly and remembered why I love theatre.

HESherman  11:42am   @petermarksdrama I thought NEXT TO NORMAL grew enormously and I loved it when it returned to NYC, post @arenastage. But no tears.

Petermarksdrama  11:41am   @HESherman And I did see O. Fantastic.

HESherman  11:41am   @petermarksdrama When I 1st saw NEXT TO NORMAL in NY, thought about leaving at intermission. At that point, some was offensive

GratuitousV  11:41am   @petermarksdrama @dloehr @HESherman I think all art is manipulative, designed to provoke an emotional reaction. That’s the point, IMHO.

MrSamuelFrench  11:40am   @petermarksdrama But do you also enjoy those plays that aim to make you laugh and not wrench the old heart strings?

Petermarksdrama  11:40am   @HESherman Invoked Vegas cuz he resorts to such obvious material. “Over The Rainbow”? “Mack the Knife”? “Luck be a Lady” Come on!

HESherman  11:40am   @moorejohn Another critic joins us. John, can you convey to readers why they might value a difficult emotional experience?

Calindrome  11:40am   I am dead serious when I say @petermarksdrama and @HESherman should have their own show. They’re in fine form today. Follow

Petermarksdrama  11:39am   @HESherman sob every time I see NEXT TO NORMAL. Hits me in sensitive places. cry @ 110 IN SHADE ’cause I have daughter named Lizzie

HESherman  11:38am   @petermarksdrama Why did you invoke Vegas re Hugh Jackman. Even Vegas has great art now. Have u seen O or LOVE?

Moorejohn 11:38am   Makes me sad. RT @HESherman I think theaters are afraid of, and challenged by, deeply moving pieces. “Who wants to buy a ticket to be sad?”

HESherman  11:37am   @petermarksdrama It becomes a fine distinction. You must realize we’re try to “turn” you.

dloehr  11:37am   @HESherman Indeed. And pumped into the home, it can be revisited on demand. A life lived in the moment, in the room, not so much.

Petermarksdrama  11:36am   @HESherman re: presence on Twitter. No, don’t want to join community. Want to enjoy engaging with community.

HESherman  11:36am   @dloehr Emotion that comes into your living room free in very different than paying to go out in order to be shattered.

SMLois  11:36am   RT @petermarksdrama: God, they’re practically all that’s worth living for MT @HESherman I think theaters are afraid of deeply moving pieces.

Petermarksdrama  11:35am  God, they’re practically all that’s worth living for MT @HESherman I think theaters are afraid of deeply moving pieces.

HESherman  11:35am   @petermarksdrama Doesn’t your presence on Twitter suggest you want to be part of the theatre community? Isn’t isolation ending?

dloehr  11:34am   @HESherman There’s a quiet moment in the Twilight Zone episode, “In Praise of Pip,” where Jack Klugman rips my heart out.

HESherman  11:34am   @petermarksdrama I think theaters are afraid of, and challenged by, deeply moving pieces. “Who wants to buy a ticket to be sad?”

dloehr  11:33am   @HESherman Very much so. (Up till then, only Snoopy Came Home & Jim Henson’s memorial had such a powerful effect on me.)

HESherman  11:33am   @petermarksdrama You think the comedy and tragedy masks have currency today? Not vestigial?

Petermarksdrama  11:33am  @HESherman Ah because when the seams show, you feel compelled to point them out. We’re journalists, not members of theater community

dloehr  11:32am   @petermarksdrama @HESherman Plot involved the Joker kidnapping baby boys & threatening to kill them. Suddenly, that was high stakes for me.

HESherman  11:31am   @petermarksdrama Then why do critics focus on intellectual response or picking on “tribute to aboriginal culture” and just enjoy?

Petermarksdrama  11:31am    @HESherman “Play me didgeridoo, Lou…”

dloehr  11:31am   @petermarksdrama @HESherman Though, after my 1st son was born, I did start crying reading a Batman novel. I kid you not. (cont’d)

HESherman  11:30am   @dloehr I teared up writing my blog. The question is not what we evoke in ourselves, but in others.

dloehr  11:30am    @petermarksdrama @HESherman Absolutely. It’s rare for other media to affect me like that. I think it’s the shared moment in the room.

Petermarksdrama  11:30am    @HESherman But I was unclear what you were saying to theaters–that they don’t market the “emotion” in their productions?

HESherman  11:29am    @petermarksdrama You’ll laugh, but during that segment, I was hoping he’d cover “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport.”

Petermarksdrama  11:28am   @dloehr @HESherman I think emotional content is whole point of theater–that’s why it’s represented by masks of laughter and grief

HESherman  11:28am   @petermarksdrama Yes I assess content, but I see my role in theatre ecosystem as evangelist, not critic

dloehr  11:27am   @petermarksdrama @HESherman There’s a scene in one of my scripts that always gets me, a story nearly verbatim from my grandfather.

Petermarksdrama  11:27am   @HESherman But don’t you assess the content? You bought the whole tribute to aboriginal culture?

HESherman  11:27am   @petermarksdrama I wasn’t writing advocacy piece for emotional epiphanies. But I do think profound emotion isn’t spoken of often

Petermarksdrama  11:26am    @HESherman Listen, I take your point–I cry more at theater than I do at weddings.

HESherman  11:25am   @petermarksdrama I’m not critic, so re @realhughjackman, I thought it was a terrif piece of entertainment, whatever the venue

HESherman  11:24am   @petermarksdrama I knew you would start in with me about the crying blog post, but isn’t cynicism where crix & auds diverge?

Petermarksdrama  11:23am  @HESherman So Howard — did you cry during Hugh Jackman’s show? The man’s irresistible, but wasn’t the whole thing a little bit Vegas?

Since you’re reading this blog post, you may be aware that over the past few months, Peter Marks of The Washington Post and I have struck up a series of impromptu, friendly debates on Twitter on a variety of theatrical topics, all in the limited forum that Twitter provides to explore any idea at length or in depth. I think these discussions take on a greater meaning in light of a Huffington Post blog from earlier today by Kennedy Center president Michael Kaiser, in which he bemoaned the fate of the professional critic and confessed to being scared of the cacophony of individual voices making their opinions known online.

I happen to think what has sprung up between Peter and me — and the various people who follow or join our conversation — is almost an ideal of what social media can achieve and proof that the barrier between critic and audience, amateur and professional need not be stringently maintained — as if it could be. Both sides benefit from the interaction, and I applaud not only @petermarksdrama, but also @terryteachout, @davidcote, @wendyrosenfield, @krisvire, @moorejohn, @jimhebert and other critics for their willingness to step off what once once a vigilantly guarded pedestal and enter the fray of theatrical discussion with working professionals and the general public alike.

While Peter and I will finally meet in person this weekend (at Arena Stage in Washington, and also online live at 5 pm eastern time via New Play TV), I thought more of the public — and with a little luck, Mr. Kaiser — might enjoy reading what has emerged on Twitter. I don’t suggest it’s an easy read, since there are frequent time lags between questions and answers, delays between thrusts and parries, but in this online improv, I think some worthwhile ideas emerge out of engagement, not Balkanization. This conversation, which revolved largely around the role of the critic, took place on November 1 (I will be posting a second transcript shortly).

Tips on reading this: the transcription is imperfect, so the occasional comment may have been lost; typos are endemic to this kind of typed rapid-fire conversation, and most importantly, you must start at the bottom of this post and scroll upward for the proper chronology. For those unused to Twitter, the convention is that the name in bold is the person “speaking”; names that follow are efforts to address specific people in the conversation. And in case you can’t guess, I am @hesherman. My thanks to those who joined the conversation and whose input is included here. Now go to the end and work backwards!

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LMDAmericas  12:50pm    @Dramaturgs @HESherman @seanjbryan Agreed. Difference between work in a journal and work on Page Six.

HESherman  12:50pm    @Dramaturgs Has that role changed? is it same as classic European model? Lloyd Richards said he introduced dramaturgy to US in the 60s.

seanjbryan  12:48pm    @Dramaturgs @HESherman yes that’s very true too. Should ‘critics’ thus now be referred to simply as ‘reviewers’ unless it’s true criticism?

LMDAmericas  12:48pm    @Dramaturgs @HESherman @petermarksdrama Love the conversation! don’t know how to join in… crix as tastemakers or prof. audience members?

Dramaturgs  12:47pm    @HESherman @seanjbryan There can be a substantial divide between #dramaturgical criticism (essentially analysis) & the typical connotation.

seanjbryan  12:45pm   @HESherman If now the critics role is only for the public, what’s the point? Listings and editorials could probably sell as many tix.

seanjbryan  12:43pm    @HESherman Ahh I see. Shame really. All should be working together to create better art. We all have our parts to play.

Dramaturgs  12:41pm    @LMDAmericas Doing quite well, thank you! There’s a lively discussion between @HESherman and @petermarksdrama you might want to check out.

seanjbryan  12:41pm    @HESherman or at least did, at some point in time.

HESherman  12:41pm    @seanjbryan Crix observe and do their own work based on what they see, but their writing is completely private from artists. Or was.

seanjbryan  12:39pm    @HESherman Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the O’Neill Centre bring in critics to assist the development process of new works?

petermarksdrama  12:39pm    @dloehr @HESherman It will ever be thus. I should start wearing an opera cape and a monocle.

dloehr  12:38pm    @petermarksdrama Great. @HESherman has me doubting my toys come to life when I’m not here. Thanks a lot.

petermarksdrama  12:38pm    @BurlingameT @HESherman Haha, I fell right into that one.

dloehr  12:37pm    @petermarksdrama @HESherman I wonder if that caricature made it more effective or less? Or if it was ok, ala shorthand of Wicked Witch, etc.

petermarksdrama  12:37pm    @HESherman @dloehr What a cynic!

dloehr  12:35pm    @HESherman Next thing, you’re going to tell me Bambi’s mother was asking for it…

petermarksdrama  12:35pm    @dloehr @HESherman Me, too, even if the cartoon figure of critic was caricature everyone carries around. (But O’Toole’s voice made up 4 it)

HESherman  12:32pm    @dloehr Two words: Fiction. Cartoon. (Just being glib after 45 minutes of furious typing.)

dloehr  12:31pm    @petermarksdrama @HESherman One thing I loved about “Ratatouille” was the end, w/ the critic’s rave, the joy & wonder in sharing like that.

BurlingameT  12:30pm    many of us do. 😉 “@petermarksdrama: @HESherman We should make this a regular gathering place.”

BurlingameT  12:30pm    Thank you @HESherman for engaging such an interesting convo and @petermarksdrama for such candor. #theatre

petermarksdrama  12:29pm    @HESherman  We should make this a regular gathering place.

HESherman  12:29pm   @petermarksdrama Yes, practice not blinking for 5-10 seconds at a time, so you don’t miss me. That’s going to be key. Thanks for the convo.

seanjbryan  12:29pm    Love opinionated theatrical discussion! (Like that with @HESherman and @petermarksdrama I just had) This is what the arts are all about!

petermarksdrama  12:28pm    @HESherman (And the good ones CAN be fun.)

TOFUCHITLINS  12:28pm    @Dramaturgs @HESherman Thanks! This was interesting.

corteseatwork  12:27pm    @petermarksdrama @HESherman @dloehr I’ll admit to enjoying a well-written pan of a piece that isn’t stage-worthy…provided I’m not in it…

HESherman  12:27pm    @petermarksdrama It’s the idea that pans can be fun that always worries me. Why can’t the good ones be fun?

petermarksdrama  12:27pm    @HESherman We’ll discuss this further, HS. In meantime, I’ve got LAW ORDER SVU-watching preparations to make.

dloehr  12:26pm    @petermarksdrama @HESherman @corteseatwork I can imagine.

HESherman  12:26pm    @petermarksdrama I think you can express displeasure without making it an attack. I’m not naive and I have my own strong opinions.

HESherman  12:25pm   @petermarksdrama Vile is in the eye of the beholder. Critical opinion and public opinion often wildly divergent.

petermarksdrama  12:25pm    @HESherman @corteseatwork @dloehr Just for record, some pans — Dance of the Vampires, e.g.–are fun to write. Others disturb your sleep.

HESherman  12:24pm    @petermarksdrama I’m going to have to wrap up. Didn’t mean to provoke dissection of critics. Wish more were open to this discussion like u.

T_Gibby  12:23pm    @HESherman @petermarksdrama THAT I’d buy a ticket to.

petermarksdrama  12:23pm    @HESherman No, not attack when you can. But when something is vile, many–not you, apparently–want you to tell it like it is.

petermarksdrama  12:22pm    @HESherman re monolithic of outlet like WP. I think that’s absolutely true. No one remembers which critic at a paper wrote review.

corteseatwork  12:22pm    @HESherman @petermarksdrama Believe me, I always give it a good “Yale stretch” before I open my mouth…

HESherman  12:22pm    @T_Gibby @petermarksdrama That’s another whole area. Want to save that for when Peter and I are face to face.

HESherman  12:22pm    @petermarksdrama Who demands? And so do you intentionally attack when you can? Is the writing more important than reasoned judgment?

petermarksdrama  12:21pm    @corteseatwork @HESherman Ahaha. In vino veritas!

petermarksdrama  12:20pm    @HESherman And you are a serious Kool Aid drinker if you think everyone doesn’t demand from you a delicious pan now and again

HESherman  12:20pm    @corteseatwork @petermarksdrama I take it you don’t observe the “three-block rule”? You never know who’ll overhear you

HESherman  12:20pm    @petermarksdrama But crix aren’t seen as “one person.” Seen more as “The Washington Post” for example, not a byline…

seanjbryan  12:19pm    @HESherman @petermarksdrama when you create you’re in a bubble, sometimes for years, you grow attached to a piece, you don’t see it’s faults

T_Gibby  12:19pm    @petermarksdrama @HESherman I agree but I think that moves into ticket price. “If Isherwood likes it……”

corteseatwork  12:18pm    @petermarksdrama @HESherman I was always under the impression that what we say at the bar, post-show, was off-the-record!

petermarksdrama  12:18pm    @HESherman I’ve always said that if they let actors review plays, there’d be no theater left.

HESherman  12:18pm    @seanjbryan @petermarksdrama Criticism is part of creative process? Perhaps in classical dramaturg role, but why must artists accept crix?

dloehr  12:17pm    @HESherman @petermarksdrama It’s not different from other audience, only in that their opinion will be broadcast more loudly.

petermarksdrama  12:17pm    @HESherman Oh, come on! Have you ever heard a playwright or actor discuss another’s work? Would make Simon blush!

petermarksdrama  12:16pm    @HESherman @T_Gibby re imo: isn’t that self evident? I’m ALWAYS amazed people make their theater choices on basis of what one person says

T_Gibby  12:16pm    @HESherman @petermarksdrama exactly.

HESherman  12:16pm    @petermarksdrama Using a word like bullets, even as metaphor, is why many theatre artists so dislike critics.

HESherman  12:16pm    @T_Gibby @petermarksdrama Crix scoff at this, but most newspaper readers can’t distinguish between reportage and criticism.

HESherman  12:15pm    @T_Gibby @petermarksdrama I used to dream that all criticism would be legally required to begin, “In my opinion.”

seanjbryan  12:14pm    @petermarksdrama @HESherman criticism should definitely be part of that creative process, that’s what I was taught in theatre school.

T_Gibby  12:14pm    @HESherman @petermarksdrama I agree re. strong opinions if presented as opinion.

HESherman  12:14pm    @petermarksdrama Or use sufficiently short words. He is a many of many syllables.

petermarksdrama  12:13pm    @HESherman re tempering opinion. Times crop up when you want to, in Frank Rich’s great advice, save your bullets.

HESherman 12:13pm    @dloehr @petermarksdrama How is that different from any audience member. Notion of critical impartiality, dispassion is a myth.

petermarksdrama  12:12pm    @HESherman And Simon would no doubt be hoot on Twitter. If he could take the heat.

dloehr  12:12pm    @petermarksdrama @HESherman …and it came out in her review. But I do see ways to improve that script that incidentally address it a bit.

HESherman  12:12pm    @petermarksdrama That’s one of the more unique positions about downside of awards I’ve ever heard – that they draw too much attention

dloehr  12:11pm    @petermarksdrama @HESherman Full story when I’m in town, but I’d overheard the critic pre-show, knew she was in the wrong mood/mindset…

HESherman  12:11pm    @petermarksdrama I took course in criticism from late Philly critic, C. Lee. He said critics 1st responsibility was 2 b interesting read.

petermarksdrama  12:11pm    @corteseatwork @HESherman Don’t get me wrong. I don’t blame writers for earning decent living. Just sayin’ awards don’t keep ’em in theater

petermarksdrama  12:09pm    @HESherman But the issue was arrogance, a sense that the critic held some secret, special knowledge. Usually best crix just write well.

HESherman  12:09pm    @petermarksdrama Most people didn’t like John’s harshest words, for good reason, but his praise sent them running to buy tix

HESherman  12:09pm    @petermarksdrama Per my earlier comment, you could read John and decide whether or not his opinion was worthy of your attention.

HESherman  12:08pm    @petermarksdrama I know many critics who temper their personal opinions, because public might not find them palatable.

HESherman  12:08pm    @petermarksdrama I’ll put in a word on John Simon’s behalf. Say what you will, but what he writes is exactly what he thinks.

corteseatwork  12:08pm    @HESherman @petermarksdrama on one level, it’s simple math…I have classmates that make more $ for 1 episode of TV than I make in a year…

petermarksdrama  12:07pm    @dloehr @HESherman I’ve heard that before, that really harsh reviews do get metabolized in a diff way.

HESherman  12:07pm    @T_Gibby @petermarksdrama Arrogance a very strong word. I’ve worked with many crix & like most. Strong opinions necessary, not superiority.

petermarksdrama  12:06pm   @HESherman The recognition that awards confer is not only noted in theater world. The renown gets leveraged, esp for TV.

petermarksdrama  12:05pm    @T_Gibby @HESherman re arrogance: You’d think, but it really ain’t so. In past gens, the Simonses might fit template, but no more.

HESherman  12:05pm   @petermarksdrama You really think cash awards to artists causes them to shift to other media? Isn’t whole point to keep them in theatre?

petermarksdrama  12:04pm    @HESherman Great questions, Mr. S! As a rule, I don’t read reviews be4. Afraid someone else’s thought will stick in my head inadvertently

T_Gibby  12:04pm    @HESherman @petermarksdrama Critics who make themselves available are by nature more open, but arrogance seems like a job requirement.

dloehr  12:03pm    @petermarksdrama @HESherman That said, I’ll admit, I did get something out of the worst, most scathing, most dismissable review I’ve gotten.

petermarksdrama  12:03pm    @HESherman re prizes. The more money given to playwrights, the better! Downside: Inevitably tho award winners migrate to other forms.

petermarksdrama  12:02pm    @seanjbryan @HESherman That’s heartening observation, Sean. I guess my perspective is hope I’m not breaking down someone’s creative process

HESherman  12:02pm    @petermarksdrama Do you read reviews from other cities, esp. if play is coming to DC?

HESherman  12:01pm    @petermarksdrama Whats your opinion of theatrical prizes (vs. awards), say the Steinberg Awards for playwriting?

petermarksdrama  12:00pm    @T_Gibby @HESherman I do think crix are often too defensive. U get a lot of nasty sent ur way Twitter has helped me greatly in this regard.

HESherman  12:00pm    @petermarksdrama But he was careful to praise value of critics in helping art. Maybe you have a fan.

seanjbryan  12:00pm    @HESherman @petermarksdrama critics have a place in the art world. I think if you have the ego to not listen to criticism you’re a fool.

dloehr  12:00pm    @HESherman @petermarksdrama I’m only talking about critics in relation to my own work. In general, I do have voices I trust.

_plainKate_  12:00pm    @dloehr @petermarksdrama @HESherman I love that it is becoming more of a dialogue.

dloehr  11:59am    @petermarksdrama @HESherman Exactly. It’s more of an “even playing field” in a sense. You know where I’m coming from & vice-versa.

HESherman  11:59am    @T_Gibby @petermarksdrama Broad statement, but not necessarily to pervading truth. Do you feel differently with folks online like Peter?

petermarksdrama  11:59am    @_plainKate_ @HESherman & that is y crix in place like Chi and SF ARE influential–they’re canaries in the mines.

_plainKate_  11:59am    @petermarksdrama @HESherman I would concur that praise is more impactful, unless it is a pan in the Times, for instance.

_plainKate_  11:58am    @HESherman Because Artistic Directors cannot always see work first-hand, they may look to reviews to be surrogate. / @petermarksdrama

HESherman  11:58am    @dloehr @petermarksdrama Most people never meet or communicate with crix. But for film, I’ve grown to appreciate certain critical voices.

petermarksdrama  11:58am    @dloehr @HESherman That makes a lot of sense from artist’s pov. Someone whose voice you trust enuf to let it affect your work in some way

dloehr  11:58am    @petermarksdrama @HESherman Have. Have interacted with.

T_Gibby  11:57am    @HESherman @petermarksdrama Except critics don’t like their opinions challenged and dismiss as uninformed any dissent.

dloehr  11:57am    @HESherman @petermarksdrama I will say, the only critics I pay attention to with my own work are the ones I know & interacted with.

HESherman  11:56am    @petermarksdrama Could influence be restored by more critics entering into dialogue and not handing down judgments? It couldn’t hurt.

petermarksdrama  11:56am    @HESherman @_plainKate_ I think the praise by critics has more impact on a director’s career, e.g. than does negative assessment.

petermarksdrama  11:55am    @HESherman @seanjbryan Maybe sean is being ironic.

HESherman  11:55am    @seanjbryan “instant perfection” from @petermarksdrama? You genuinely feel that way?

HESherman  11:54am    @petermarksdrama I share your distrust of praise, and extremism in all forms ticks me off, but constructive criticism…

seanjbryan  11:53am    @HESherman I only wish I could achieve the instant perfection in my work that @petermarksdrama must have. Criticism helps art grow.

HESherman  11:53am    @_plainKate_ @petermarksdrama So here we have an example of how reviews directly impact artists livelihoods.

petermarksdrama  11:53am    @HESherman And at the same time, “influence” of crix is waning. Is there a connection?

_plainKate_  11:52am    @petermarksdrama @HESherman (And yet, as a director, I am dependent upon those reviews to open doors to future gigs.)

HESherman  11:52am    @petermarksdrama Or should I say…accountable?

HESherman  11:52am    @petermarksdrama Conversation ”with” is fairly new. Used to be one-way street. And many critics are still not accessible to artists, public

HESherman  11:51am    I ask about “top lists” because journos create them, yet are quick to bash awards processes. Have been on receiving end of this.

petermarksdrama  11:51am    @HESherman Do you like reading about yourself? I sure don’t. Harsh words depress me and praise makes me suspicious!

petermarksdrama  11:50am    @HESherman There are a few things crix can help with — too long, e.g. By and large, we are writing for conversation with everyone else

HESherman  11:49am    @petermarksdrama So are you writing solely for audience? So many crix seem to want to speak directly to artists, esp. when they don’t enjoy

HESherman  11:48am    You heard it here 1st, folks! RT @petermarksdrama: Artists are well advised to ignore crix. Reviews are for everyone else. #2amt

petermarksdrama  11:48am    @HESherman Artists are well advised to ignore crix. Reviews are for everyone else.

HESherman  11:47am    @petermarksdrama What’s the internal rationale, not that’s it’s in any way unique to @awshingtonpost. Is this just “same old, same old”?

HESherman  11:47am    @petermarksdrama But the question is who is influenced. Public, perhaps? But do we know that artists are influenced most by major outlets?

petermarksdrama  11:46am    @HESherman Yup, we do the top 10 DC productions or whatever. I loathe list-making.

HESherman  11:46am    @petermarksdrama What is the journalistic fascination with lists? Everything is the top 10 this, the top 25 that. Do u do this at year end?

petermarksdrama  11:46am    @HESherman People read that as something to be congratulated for. I thought list was pretty self evident w/ one or two omissions

petermarksdrama  11:45am    @HESherman Haha. I think actually @DavidCote was id’ing most influential crix in the entire solar system. It was vehicle for making list

HESherman  11:44am    @petermarksdrama However, if you’d like to be set upon by fighting dogs, I’m sure it could be arranged (if it weren’t illegal)

HESherman  11:44am    @petermarksdrama I didn’t say baiting, I was merely speaking of rousing you from critical torpor, since Mondays are usually dark nights

HESherman  11:42am    @petermarksdrama So now that you’ve been named one of the country’s most influential critics, should we all be more impressed by you?

HESherman  11:10am    If you’ve never read @petermarksdrama & me debating on twitter, I’m planning to “poke the bear with a stick” soon. Follow him as well to see

Anyone recall the phrase “on hiatus”?

It was a very popular euphemism in the television industry for shows that were taken off the air shortly after their debuts (in most cases), and likely never to be seen again (in all but a few instances). I haven’t heard the “on hiatus” spin in a while in regards to television; now shows are merely “yanked” off the schedule and everyone quickly admits they’re cancelled (except, oddly enough, for Rules of Engagement, which keeps getting resuscitated). It’s harsh, perhaps, but it’s accurate, and doesn’t leave the folks associated with the series tied up contractually and anxious or unduly hopeful about their fate.

I was pondering “on hiatus” because theatre seems to have developed its own euphemism: “indefinitely postponed.” In the past week or so, it has appeared in connection with two productions that were announced, then yanked. I’m speaking of the new Edward Albee play Laying An Egg at Signature Theatre Company and the revival of Funny Girl. Now I bear none of the artists or producers involved with these shows any ill will. There are any number of factors which may have derailed these shows, all valid. Producer Bob Boyett spoke openly with The New York Times about the Funny Girl decision, and perhaps Edward Albee was simply at work on a play that he decided wasn’t ready for prime time. Theatre requires both artistic and business decisions and, difficult as they are to make, the better part of valor is to pull the plug rather than waste people’s time and money.

But what of “indefinitely postponed”? “Postponed” on its own means delayed, and usually carries the implication that whatever has been put off will eventually occur. This can be reinforced with “postponed until” which can be date specific, season specific, or an amorphous “the future.” But “indefinitely postponed” seems a cop out, especially when there’s no language associated with it to give hope.

Now it may well be that Mr. Albee will continue to work on Laying An Egg and will sustain his lengthy relationship with Signature by insuring it premieres there. It’s likely that Bob Boyett retains the first-class production rights to Funny Girl for some period of time and that if there’s to be a production, it will be under his auspices.  But the funny thing is, no rhetoric suggesting those scenarios was employed, and none has leaked out.

That the press is adopting the spin of “indefinitely postponed” is rather startling to me, since this language has inspired a more than healthy skepticism in anyone with whom I’ve discussed it. The sad truth is that these shows are off, likely not to be seen in any time period that we would accept as part of a postponement. Might they eventually reach the stage? Well surely someone will revive Funny Girl at some point and, if Mr. Albee completes a play entitled Laying An Egg, it will surely be produced. But for now, who’s buying this phrasing?

But having written just yesterday about the value of emotional truth on our stages and in our marketing, I can only recommend the same in our public relations. We are not dissembling politicians, whose actions are often derisively labeled as theatre. The creation of art, under commercial or not-for-profit auspices, requires risk, and there really is no shame if things don’t come off – especially when people are smart enough to put on the brakes before things go too far.  For smaller companies, for younger artists, for students – it’s not such a bad thing to learn that theatre is unpredictable and at times goes awry. So perhaps it’s time to put “indefinitely postponed” on hiatus.

Marketing. Advertising. Community Outreach. Audience engagement. Audience Development. Social Networking. Targeted Pitches. And so on.

This litany of phrases are among the buzzwords common to anyone who spends their time focused on attracting audiences to the theatre. They appear in the fire hose spray of blogs and tweets that consume my days and those of other like-minded individuals, as everyone tries to build a better mousetrap to lure theatregoers, and then generously or boastfully (or both) shares their experience and perspective with others.

Allow me a second short list.

Thrilling. Moving. Provocative. Hilarious. Insightful. Affecting. Witty. Stimulating. Shocking. Definitive. Wonderful. Imaginative. Spectacular. Thought-provoking. Intimate. Sensuous.

These are, of course, adjectives, a handful of examples of the language employed by theatres in the efforts listed above, as well as by critics to describe work which meets their favor. These are the words that course through subscription brochures, direct mail pitches and quote ads, perhaps so often that they are robbed of their meaning. They are meant to be motivational, but from overuse, they are rendered impotent.

I have undertaken this exercise because for all of the valuable advice and worthy dialogue that are part of my daily conversation about theatre, there’s one thing I never hear discussed:  tears. Not the verb, but the noun.

Certain films are often described as “tear-jerkers,” a phrase of condescension or disdain. In a continued show of sexism, modern tear-jerkers are usually thought of as being for women, save for the rare male “weepie,” such as Brian’s Song or Field of Dreams (and note how those both are counter-balanced by being set in the masculine world of sports). But we never speak of tears in the theatre, as if admitting to that level of emotional connection is somehow beneath the form’s intellectual and cultural aspirations. Yet three of the most personally important experiences I’ve had at the theatre in recent years have been at shows which provoked me to tears.  Indulge me as I identify each.

My first significant bout with tears at the theatre came during Signature Theater Company’s production of Horton Foote’s The Trip to Bountiful featuring Lois Smith in the central role. In contrast to motion picture tears, which are usually evoked at the climax of the film (Elliot saying goodbye to E.T. perhaps) or at a key plot point (the death of Bambi’s mother), my tears at Bountiful came somewhere in the middle of Act II, as Carrie Watts spoke so plaintively of her desire to return to her longtime home, and plunged into the journey which gives the play its name. She was seeking a past to which she could never return, the comfort of loved ones and surroundings gone or decaying. In her despair, I thought of my widowed father, living in an “independent living facility,” without the wife with whom, among other endearments, he had shared a single beverage glass at meals throughout their decades together. I could keep in touch with him frequently, as could my siblings,  but we could not bring back my mother or restore my father’s true independence ever again, and tears streamed down my face as I recognized in Miss Watts what the word “bereft” must mean, and that this may well be my father’s perpetual state too. The tears – no sobs, not cries, just salty streaks – flowed for a good ten minutes.

I next came to tears at the long-running revival of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, directed by David Cromer. They began almost immediately at the start of the third act and continued unstaunched for the duration. I was bewildered by my reaction, because when this occurred, it was my second time seeing the production, and although I thought Cromer’s interpretation to be revelatory, I had not been moved as much the first time. Even as my eyes welled up and liquid dripped down my cheeks and off my chin, I was hyper-aware of the fact that the show’s Stage Manager, played by Michael McKean, who I knew casually, was sitting perhaps five feet from me; would he think me in distress, or perhaps be disturbed himself at this disproportionate display (when I saw him a couple of days later, he said he hadn’t noticed me at all, by the way). What had changed between my visits? I had lost a good friend, suddenly, and too soon, just a few weeks before the second viewing. Wilder’s graveyard of the departed, talking about those still alive, had acquired a new inhabitant, who sat on that stage as surely as did any of the actors.

You might wish to suggest that my tears were a result of plays from a different time, since Our Town and The Trip to Bountiful were both more than 50 years old, the product of an earlier era in theatrical writing. But they sprang forth yet again at a new play, Richard Nelson’s Sweet and Sad, during its all-too-brief run at The Public Theater. This slice of life in the Apple family, reuniting the characters and cast of the previous year’s That Hopey Changey Thing, was timed to and set on the day of the 10^th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, though it carefully avoided confronting that horror and its aftermath head-on. My tears began late in this play, as the family uncle, an actor now struggling with what must surely be advancing Alzheimer’s, recited a Walt Whitman poem that he would later present at a local 9/11 memorial service. As it happened, thanks to the three-quarter thrust of the Anspacher, the uncle’s back was to me, but the other five actors in the show, playing his nieces, nephew and one spouse, were facing directly at me. I watched them as they watched him, their beloved uncle, fraying more each day, summon his powers of performance, remarkably, yet one more time. I was struck by the supreme beauty of the moment: the poem, the performance of it, the characters’ love for each other, the acting company’s bond built over two separate productions, the deep humanity on display so very close to me, and my tears came yet again, through the end of the play and the curtain call, and the emotion carried me throughout my subway ride home.

I do not regret these reactions, which is why I share them. I see now that their common bond was their exploration of mortality, something I understand in my late 40s far differently than I did when in my 20s. Were tears at these plays unique to me, because of what I brought to each play, because of what had occurred in my life and to those I love and loved? Perhaps. But these tears were cleansing, true and precious. These plays and productions had tapped something in me that arose too rarely, releasing emotions either repressed or until those moments, unformed.

At this point, you may not recall that I began this essay with marketing-speak and a litany of adjectives, but I call you back there because I think so many of those words and phrases, as I said, have been denatured, or used to intellectualize the theatrical experience. I am smart enough to know that few people will buy tickets for something that they are assured will make them cry, yet I think we fail to value and share theatre’s potential to evoke responses that delve into our individual essences, and are essential.

I go to the theatre for many reasons, and a good cry isn’t one of them, yet these evenings I have just described will stay with me for as long as I have memory. They have had the power to move me even through the act of describing them for you. As we analyze, market, raise money, program, produce, we must not abstract or disdain evoking deep emotion through our work, since I think it may be the finest marketing tool we have: truth.

And such a wall, as I would have you think,

That had in it a crannied hole or chink…

– A Midsummer Night’s Dream

 I would like to state unequivocally that I believe in a well-funded, independent press/media and that in order to insure it remains as a check against those in power who would like to control or alter the information we learn or receive, we must pay for it. The end.

Now I will proceed to, essentially, contradict my first paragraph. But as media evolves, it’s all very tricky.

I’ve been around long enough to remember the days when, if something was written in a local newspaper or broadcast on local media in a community in which you did not reside, you either had to get someone to send you a clipping or, beginning in the 1980s, send you a tape of a broadcast. That was, of course, the dark ages compared to today, when Google News, You Tube and online media outlets around the world make it possible to access the vast majority of what is said or written of note, no matter where you are. Indeed, using websites, companies can now create and disseminate their own media, freed from the arbiters of the mass media, although with something less than its reach.

The advent of social media only accelerated this process, since you could now send friends, followers, and the like a link that would give them immediate access to the same material you uncovered. Local material could quickly become amplified, with the most compelling, absurd, or amusing going viral in a matter of days or even hours.

This has altered the playing field for arts organizations considerably. Throughout my career, I have had conversations with peers at other arts groups who are seeking “national press,” specifically coverage which would be readily accessible to a readership or viewership across the country, far beyond the scope of local media. This was true of virtually every organization outside of New York, which as a media capital offered an access that wasn’t equaled elsewhere. Sure, if you were in Chicago you had Oprah dreams, and those in Washington DC had an easier time attraction NPR and CPB, but however powerful those outlets were, they stood relatively alone.

After a few years, I began to speak, emphatically, about what I called “the myth of national press.” I was referring to the fact that, as media outlets consolidated and arts reporting shrank, there were only a handful of outlets that were truly national, in either ambition or reach. Time and Newsweek weren’t traveling the country, USA Today was a national paper with east coast-centric arts coverage (not the case for film, sports, or music, of course), The New York Times seemed to travel less and onlyThe Wall Street Journal bucked the trend by expanding national arts coverage in recent years. I coached organizations to measure their expectations, since the opportunities were becoming ever rarer.

That’s why I’ve been such a proponent of social media: because it restores and even enhances a national conversation on the arts, often prompted by the established media but sustained on Facebook, Twitter and other sites and services. In fact, it allows for conversations far beyond what had occurred even when there was more of a national arts media, because everyone had a voice, but it is still based in the major media.

But now we’re hitting a wall. More precisely, a paywall.

More and more newspapers are making their content accessible only to those who pay a fee, be it monthly, weekly or per article. I have a hard time arguing against this strategy, for the very reasons stated in my first paragraph. Yet I regret it enormously, because it will have the effect of once again narrowing the national conversation about the arts if we can’t read what’s being written in other communities as fodder for our own conversations, tweets and blogs.  While I might not miss either of these particular conversations, imagine if paywalls had prevented us from reading Stephen Sondheim’s letter about the new production of Porgy and Bess back in August, or if the argument over Shakespeare’s authorship prompted by the film Anonymous hadn’t elicited so many different views? What if reviews couldn’t be aggregated and linked, so that we were truly restricted to a handful of opinions? Even as we mourn for the decline of newspapers, it’s impossible now to think of being blocked from access to any news outlet we like, whenever we like. For those of us who have become curators of coverage, the vistas we pass on to our readers and followers will become ever narrower.

Yes, there are chinks in the wall, as Shakespeare provided for his comic lovers Pyramus and Thisbe. The adept can clear histories, remove cookies and avail themselves of relatively easy workarounds, but many more will stop dead when told they need to enter their credit card number to read on.

I love engaging in conversation with both professionals and amateurs over issues in the arts and I applaud how the internet has democratized access to media, giving us all the possibility of becoming broadcasters. But I worry about losing the most powerful voices after having had them for less than a generation. Perhaps there could be an internet version of the sports blackout, where local games cannot be seen for free in local markets, in order not to undermine live attendance? Surely the technology exists. After all, the Minneapolis Star Tribune loses no business by letting me read it for free online, since I wouldn’t be buying it in the first place, even if it were available to me. Perhaps foundations dedicated to the arts could pay newspapers to keep those portions of their websites free? It’s a long shot, but not impossible. Maybe some papers, like The Washington Post, will master monetizing their websites without charging users for access.

Against all odds, there is still terrific arts writing, both critical and feature, in this country, and its has been a privilege for the past 15 years to read more of it than I ever had before. But we now have the quandary of our horizons shrinking in order to save the very media that we want to access, making conversation ever more local once again. I will read as much as I can for as long as I can, but every day, the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the Star-Tribune and their brethren…they place another brick in the wall. And the walls are closing in.

This post originally appeared on the 2amtheatre website.

An exaggerated example of a blue-haired senior, via “Are You Being Served?”

I suspect that, for many working in the arts, the weekday matinee is no man’s land.

I’m not suggesting that we don’t operate them, or deal with them, but I do wonder the last time any of you have had occasion to attend one as a member of the audience. After all, we’re usually too busy working in the arts to go to a Wednesday matinee, and it’s probably something we instinctively avoid, given the opportunity.

Why? I suspect it is because of our ingrained aversion to the blue hairs.

Now don’t pretend you don’t know the term. We’ve all used it. I can’t even remember how long I’ve known it, or where I learned it. But for those who are in denial, “blue hairs” refers to the senior audience that frequents matinees, named for a hair coloring with a bluish tinge popular a long time ago. I suspect that even the blue hairs look disparagingly at blue hair, and that the term is vestigial of an earlier time. But it is, no matter how you slice it, a form of disparagement, not endearment.

Over the past couple of months, I have had the occasion to attend two weekday matinees: one in New York, one at a regional theatre; one in the company of a senior citizen in his 80s, one by myself. Because of the ingrained prejudices, I expected an audience of candy-wrapper-crinkling, hearing-aid-feedbacking, loudly-speaking-during-the-show-so-they-could-be-heard-by-everyone patrons.  Isn’t that your image?

Well I can report that none of the above were true, at least no more so than at any other performance I’ve attended lately. What did not happen, I should report, is that no one’s cell phone rang during the show, and certainly no one initiated or accepted a call at any time during the performance.

Now in some quarters, the weekday matinee is a thing of the past. The rise of the working woman in the 70s dissipated one of the core constituencies for these performances, leaving retirees and student groups (which makes for a fascinating mix when equally balanced, with revelatory post-show discussions). Many shows both commercial and non-profit opt for two-show days on Saturdays and Sundays in order to bypass the weekday matinee. But they persist – and so do their loyal audiences.

So why are these performances merely tolerated by those on the inside? Yes, it’s an audience that may be less computer and internet savvy than others; they still need to speak to a human being to buy their tickets. Yes, they may move more slowly than other audiences, but that’s a physical issue, not an intentional one. Is their pre-show chatter louder than some audiences? Sure, but that’s because hearing loss is a natural progression in our lives, not some voluntary game played by the old upon the young for sport.

My recent matinee attendance was eye-opening precisely because I haven’t had the experience in so very long (weekday matinees were staples of school vacations in high school and college, but that’s almost three decades ago) and because the experience was only marginally different than any other performance I ever attend (save, indeed, for the hair coloring, which tends to white, or baldness, where I fit right in). Adding to my sensitivity is the fact that I had, unusually for someone my age, cataract surgery on both eyes in May, and because my wife and I both suffer from chronic neck and shoulder pain which can make sitting in the theatre profoundly uncomfortable. And surely this is just a taste of things to come.

I have every intention of going to the theatre as long as I am able (perhaps another three or four decades if I’m lucky) and as I find myself poised between theatergoing novice and lifelong veteran, I know that I may someday be relegated to the ranks of the once blue-haired, perhaps by virtue of failing eyesight (making it difficult to drive or even be out at night), reliance on civic or private transportation when I can no longer drive myself, or even the tyranny of the early dinner schedule at an assisted living facility. But so long as I’m breathing and mobile, I’ll go to theatre.

Will I deserve anyone’s condescension, let alone scorn, at that point in my life? Surely not. Will my wide-ranging aesthetic suddenly lapse into “just wanting to be entertained,” causing me to seek less challenging work? I hope not, and I doubt it. Might I need a larger print program, or be challenged by steps, or even need audio amplification or audio described performances? It’s entirely possible, and I certainly hope they’ll be available to me without stigma.

I write of these issues because in this era of voluminous blogs about audience development and the cultivation of new audiences, our senior audience seems to be absent. Let me make absolutely clear: the necessity of finding new theatergoers and insuring the long-term health of the form is essential, as is arts education in our schools; nothing in this essay should suggest otherwise. But I fear that an important constituency is being largely ignored, at least in our rhetoric these days, and that we do so out of short-sightedness.

Those who attend our weekday matinees (and often make up a significant percentage of weekend matinee audiences as well) are the same people who have been attending and supporting theatre throughout their lives. They do not suddenly appear at our box offices at age 70 simply because they have nothing else to do, but rather because they value what we do. Indeed, they may have vast knowledge of theatrical work dating back a half-century or more. Instead of being vestiges themselves, they may in fact be untapped resources, not simply fans to be shunted into our volunteer usher or docent corps. And to be perfectly honest, if we have and continue to play meaningful roles in their lives, we may receive their support even after they can no longer sit in our seats.

While I suspect that those inside theatres are indulgent of their senior audiences even when such indulgence might drift into being patronizing, I see evidence of this arts ageism in my forays on the web. Not long ago, one Twitter wit asked where theatre today would be without Social Security, only to have another wag double down by making the jibe specific to a particular theatre here in New York. A British website focused on “A Younger Theatre” questioned the repertoire at one of that country’s subsidized theatres for one work which was deemed insufficiently appealing to, well, a younger audience. In Washington DC, discounting tickets for seniors (and students) is under investigation for being a discriminatory practice.

In the creation of art, we celebrate and support the new, the different, the challenging, the innovative. But let’s remember that it was ever thus, and the audience that frequents our matinees may have once been early supporters of the theatres they attend, or the audience for fringe theatre before even such a term was common, whether in Greenwich Village or Seattle.

As someone who has begun to mark my life by how many revivals I now see of work which I saw in its premiere, as I prepare to leave the demographic designated by ratings services and ad agencies as desirable, as I move from the era of weddings and births to, sadly, the era of funerals, theatre will remain my joy and my refuge, and I believe it should be that for every patron. We need to nurture and support all of our audiences for the many things that we can bring to them and they can bring to us, including standing by us when some would marginalize our importance and even our existence in an ever-changing economic and social reality.

Because, dammit, I expect theatre to be there for me in another quarter century, and whatever my falterings and failings, I want to be part of an audience, and not as a special interest to be tolerated. Or else I will truly be blue.

This post originally appeared on the 2amtheatre website.

They come, with startling regularity, on Monday and Tuesday each week. “The Grosses.” The Broadway League aggregates and releases the gross sales and attendance for every Broadway show on Monday afternoons (Tuesdays when there’s been a holiday), and a wide range of outlets dutifully report on the biggest hits, the biggest losers, and prognosticate on a show’s future based on their own analyses, some informed, some less so. For a few thousand people who work in professional theatre, this is valuable information  (I touched upon this earlier this year in another post, “Scoring“). For most people, however, The Grosses have become the new arbiter of quality, since a review runs but once, while The Grosses appear week in and week out.

The Grosses are followed, and sometimes preceded, by a bevy of press releases from individual shows announcing their most recent box office achievements: “Highest grossing week ever in x theatre,” “Highest grossing week for x show,” “Biggest one day box office gross at x theatre,” and so on. Because there is now an industry of websites and bloggers who regurgitate this information largely unremarked-upon, this has become the new currency of achievement on Broadway. “SRO” just doesn’t mean the same thing as “$$$.”

What no one stops to point out is that these ever-higher box office achievements are taking place with the same number of seats in each theatre, meaning only one thing: people are paying more and more for tickets, or records wouldn’t be set. Since the introduction of premium seats 10 years ago, the pace has accelerated; the ability of shows to put tickets at the TKTS booth at varying discount rates has also allowed seats to be filled more strategically, so shows with excess inventory at the last minute need not be bound to a 50% discount, but can use a sliding scale. Box office prices are not even fixed any longer; displayed on video screens in lobbies, I am told they can be adjusted a couple of times each week based on demand.

So the fact is, yes, Broadway is setting records, but it’s doing so by generating more money per seat, or in layman’s terms, raising prices. If you thought it odd when Broadway shows said they were playing to 101.6% of capacity (meaning they’re selling standing room), now we can marvel at how shows can gross hundreds of thousands of dollars more than their declared weekly potential.

Before you start shouting “Occupy Broadway” and running with your hastily but tastefully made signage to camp out in Shubert Alley, let’s take a breath.

The majority of productions on Broadway are commercial enterprises. Each show is its own corporation and it has a responsibility, like any business, to maximize its revenue. Famously, only one in five shows supposedly turns a profit; many of the limited runs on Broadway are fortunate to simply return their capitalization.  Finding investors is difficult, costs are escalating from a variety of sources (labor, advertising rates, etc.) and the entire business model is called into question by many. Can we blame producers for seeking to keep Broadway alive, and shouldn’t we accept that the hits need to be ever more remunerative in order to keep more investors interested in participating in Broadway shows and mitigating their losses elsewhere? I think these are all valid considerations and should not be ignored in favor of simple populist rhetoric.

But at what point do we reach, or have we passed, the tipping point where, to echo some of the Occupy Wall Street rhetoric, the top 1% of the country’s theatregoers can afford and secure 99% of the tickets, and every effort to popularize theatre and insure future audiences is negated by economic reality? Just as people have begun to ask about banks and brokerages, is it possibly unethical to make “too much money” with the arts, whether commercial or non-profit?

Yes, I know that many people don’t pay the “rack rate” for Broadway. There’s the aforementioned TKTS booth, the wide range of discounting practiced by all but the most successful shows, the $20 lotteries for front row seats held at 6 pm nightly in front of many theatres. Frankly, Broadway has developed a balkanized pricing system, with the hit shows charging ever higher amounts while shows with less broad-based appeal forced into a cycle of discounting from which they can rarely escape. But the rack rate keeps increasing, so even the discount seats increase in price.

I shouldn’t pick on Broadway alone, as recent news reports have indicated that premium pricing has infiltrated Off-Broadway, both commercial and non-profit. One New York non-profit that famously gives away tickets to several productions for free each year will also let you acquire reserved seats for a pre-set donation amount, perhaps the most pronounced example of price disparity that allows the “haves” to simply pay in advance for what others must seek out for free at the expense of considerable waiting time. Also, while Off-Broadway’s rack rate may be half of that on Broadway, the Broadway discounts equalize the prices – forcing Off-Broadway to then discount its own seats to a point where the production can’t meet its weekly costs, giving rise, in part, to the reduction in commercial activity Off-Broadway in recent years.

“Load management,” pioneered by the airlines, is the original term for what the arts now politely call “dynamic pricing” and it’s not just a New York phenomenon, as both presenting houses around the country and resident theatres attempt to maximize revenue, although perhaps in a less pronounced manner than what we’ve seen thus far in New York. In the case of airlines, they actually can control seating capacity by running greater or fewer flights on various routes, sometimes limiting seating to maximize the price per seat. Theatre doesn’t have this option, but even as one who years ago pondered how to adopt load management at a not-for-profit, I now look to the public’s low opinion of airlines and air travel and worry that the arts could drive themselves into a similarly unpopular consensus. To top things off, this comes at a time when a recent report has informed us that charitable giving to the arts disproportionately benefits the upper echelons of arts audiences.

There is a theatrical ecosystem and it includes professional theatres from small communities to Broadway; I am sure the same is true for symphonies, museums and all of the arts as well. There is absolutely a case of trickle-down economics, but not in any positive way: it is the negative of the upward price and expense cycle that rolls downhill to everyone’s detriment, but most especially to undermine everyone’s supposed shared goal of attracting new audiences and introducing future generations to the arts, if not out of altruism, then out of self-preservation.

Do we need a movement? Perhaps not yet. But do we need pronounced change we can believe in when it comes to access and pricing for the arts? Absolutely. Otherwise, things will just get grosser.

This post originally appeared on the 2amtheatre website.

Tweets, blogs and other manners of Internet posting have been aflame since this morning, when Charles Isherwood of The New York Times declared online that he wished to forego having to review any further plays by Adam Rapp.  In the ensuing hours, Isherwood has been chastised for the tone of his piece and for seemingly abandoning his post as a major theatre critic with regard to this particular playwright.  I have a number of reactions and would like to tease out the separate strands of this decidedly inside-theatre story.

First, I would like to praise Charles for his honesty. He is willing to admit that he  simply does not connect with Adam’s work after seeing a great deal of it. He wishes to recuse himself from offering his opinion publicly any longer, believing that it would be better for him and, he suspects, for Adam. I praise Charles in this because he could continue to bash the prolific Rapp endlessly, which does them both a disservice. Christopher Durang has spoken of how he could never get a good review from Frank Rich during the latter’s tenure. While I take Chris at his word and have not done my own assessment of those reviews, it’s pretty clear that Durang would have welcomed such a recusal all those years ago.

I might feel differently about this if New York was a one-newspaper town, or if Charles were the Times’ only theatre critic. Especially if the latter case prevailed, such a recusal could be tantamount to ignoring the work of a playwright and the theatres that produce him, but The Times does have the resources, either staff or freelance, to insure that Adam’s work will still be covered.

That said, I don’t believe that Charles should be relieved of the responsibility of seeing Adam’s plays. If he is to remain an authoritative voice on theatre in this city, or nationally, he cannot be excused from remaining knowledgeable about any playwright who so many feel is talented and worthy. When working critics get to selectively cease learning about and understanding new work, they are not recusing themselves, but abdicating. Whether they write about it is another story, no pun intended.

I have no idea what Adam may feel about today’s piece by Charles, although others have been quick to cite his own  past comments and writing about critics, both pro and con. I doubt that any of those statements precipitated this action, and frankly value the idea that artists can speak freely about the impact of critics upon their work. Too many shy away, ceding the conversation wholly to the media, and theatre is, after all, about dialogue. Unfortunately, personal reactions to being reviewed  negatively often makes it impossible for any such dialogue to be productive.

What does trouble me greatly about today’s “Theater Talkback” is the way in which The Times has milked this issue for attention. What should have been an internal discussion between journalist and editor(s) has been instead brought out in public precisely to generate the kind of brouhaha that quickly ensued in admittedly narrow circles (and to which I now add my own voice sustaining it, dammit). Having just panned Adam’s newest play, the most recent in a long line of negative reviews, why did Charles feel the need – and why was he afforded the opportunity – to air his negative opinions yet again, especially when he suggests his editor will not necessarily allow him to do as he wishes? Why, if permitted, couldn’t he have simply stopped reviewing Adam’s shows and, if some overzealous press agent questioned it in the future, been told that theTimes’ assignment policies are its own business (as I so often was told in my press agent days).

In the wake of the Porgy and Bess imbroglio, which the paper exploited by releasing Stephen Sondheim’s letter to them days before it saw print, has the Times decided that this level of debate should be promoted, in order to drive readership, whether online or off? Must they be sending tweets repeatedly urging people to read not only Charles’ piece, as well as the many responses to it? I cannot help but feel that this is a form of intellectual hucksterism that ill suits the Times and does the theatre no good.  At the core of the issue is a worthwhile discussion, but so long as it comes at the potential expense of a specific artist’s reputation, it is a case of power being wielded unfairly. Names did not need to be named, and people could have inferred what they wished, guessing at the artist or artists in question.

In smaller towns, or one newspaper cities, theatres can be subject to the singular opinion of a particular critics writing for the only major media outlet that covers theatre. That influence can be wielded for decades at a time, outlasting playwrights and artistic leadership. Energies should be expended addressing how to remedy that monopolization, not debating the pros and cons of one critic at an outlet with multiple voices, in a city with many critics, who admits he just doesn’t share one playwright’s aesthetic.

P.S. Since it’s on my mind, for further debate about criticism unrelated to the specifics of the above, let’s also focus our energies on the ongoing issue of why theatre criticism remains dominated by white males, when gender and racial diversity would give rise, presumably, to more diverse theatre. To be continued.

This post originally appeared on the 2amtheatre website.

“Everyone,” I wrote in a tweet to promote my previous blog post, “enjoys a good blurbing now and again.” Although I didn’t mind if someone read some perverse double entendre into “blurbing,” it was neither euphemism nor metaphor. I was referring to the time-honored and oft-criticized practice of skillfully extracting positive phrases from arts reportage or critique in order to employ them in service of marketing a show. As a former “flack” (if we’re going with slang, I’m going all the way), I gave good blurb; it was part of my job. When I left Hartford Stage, the graphic designer who did our print ads presented me with a framed “Ellipsis Award,” for the most skillful use of those three dots, which could cover a multitude of sins and through which one could, if they chose, drive a figurative truck.

I have not personally practiced the dark arts of blurbing, nor craftily employed the ellipsis, professionally for almost 20 years. Yet just as many came before me, others have followed, and publicists and marketers still employ “pull quotes” for press releases, ads, brochures, and the like with skill and abandon, all to pull in the rubes (that’s carny slang for marketing).

I have watched the quotes themselves grow larger as attributions grow smaller; in some cases ads are designed to appear as if the uniformly glowing words at the top are quotes, when in fact they carry neither the necessary punctuation or any source. The pinnacle (or nadir) of this practice came when a Hollywood studio was revealed to have invented both a critic and a press outlet solely for the purpose of manufacturing positive blurbs.

Several decades ago, those of us inside Hartford Stage would have philosophical discussions about the use of blurbs, as well as my artful insertion of ellipses that turned positive words into enthusiastic ones. Wouldn’t the people who saw the ads realize the quote had been subtly manipulated? No, we decided, since no one was likely to have saved the original copy  (remember, pre-internet). Wasn’t the ellipsis itself tipping people off? No, because frankly most people didn’t study them them as we did (and besides, to use an excuse popular in so many situations, everyone else was doing it). Wasn’t using quotes reinforcing the importance of critics, when we wanted audiences to decide for themselves?

To that last question, the answer, to our own chagrin, was yes. We were emphasizing critical opinion for our marketing needs. We had to. Why? Well here it is again: because everyone else was. Blurbs, pull quotes, what have you – they were a necessity. We believed that if a show had opened and we couldn’t feature at last one positive quote from a prominent media outlet in our advertising, the audience would be convinced the show was a dog. Even after the show had closed, we used those blurbs again: in subscription brochures, in grant applications, in annual reports. Blurbs were crack and we were hooked.

25 years later, little has changed, even if the media has. Despite the ability of anyone with a computer to locate a complete review, blurbs, be they accurate or artful, proliferate. The brevity of Twitter facilitates such practice. Even though the original context can be quickly recalled on Google, we still cling to quotes in our marketing, embracing reviews even as (and thus was also always the case) we often vilify the source, namely the critic.

This paradox is at the center of arts marketing. We do everything we can to make our productions critic-proof, yet we throw our arms wide open the moment a critic, any critic, praises the work.  If we bitch about critical power, why do we reinforce it? In brainstorming sessions, over drinks, we dream of cutting the cord, going cold turkey and abandoning quotes in our ads, but we can’t do it. We need our fix and seem convinced that our audiences do as well. As subscription rates have, overall, declined, blurb-laden ads are perhaps more needed (we think) than ever, since single ticket sales have reasserted themselves in our economic models (as they have always done in the case of commercial work).

I will paraphrase the producer Kevin McCollum here, only because I’m not positive I recall this comment precisely: “We are the only business that decides what to do tomorrow based on how we did it yesterday.” And indeed, we in the age of the internet deploy blurbs just as they were used by hucksters a century ago, locked in a perpetual cycle of believing that outside affirmation is the best, and perhaps only, means of assigning value to our work in order to lure audiences.

I’m not raising the paradox to pan critics; in fact I think we must do all we can to insure that full-length reviews written with intelligence and care remain part of the arts landscape. However, the attention span of both editors and consumers seem to favor ever briefer consideration of the arts – which are then further reduced to a ranking of so many stars on a scale, or a subjective, simplistic thumbs up/thumbs down summary by third party aggregators. Arts writing is coming to us pre-blurbed.

In a world of new and ever-evolving media, we are mired in an archaic marketing technique which has, to my knowledge, no empirical proof that it even works. Blurb if you must, but can’t we do better? Or are we just a …. bunch of … addicts?

This post originally appeared on the 2amtheatre website.

Dear @Resident Theatre Company or @Individual Show:

You know I love you and so I’m sorry to do this impersonally. But we have to talk. I know it’s hard to hear those words, because they always lead to the same thing. And to be perfectly honest, this time, it’s not me, it is you.

When we started this relationship on Twitter, it was filled with the blush of first love. For the first time, you could talk to me and I could talk to you. You would know my innermost theatergoing thoughts and I would always know what you were up to, where I might see you, how I could learn more about all of the great things you’re doing. Those were heady days back in 2009, made all the more exciting by the fact that we didn’t have to be exclusive to each other; we were part of something bigger than ourselves, freed from the usual strictures that society and technology had placed upon us.

But instead of growing together, I’m feeling let down by you.

There’s a group of you that’s very shy. While that’s enticing at first, I don’t know why you’re in this game if I never hear from you. Sure, you may read about me, but I don’t know what’s going on in your world. At some point, you just have to get past your uncertainty and meet me halfway. I can’t take the silence, the lurking.

On the other hand, more of you are unbelievably self-obsessed. I understood there would be inevitable narcissism, so I don’t resent that. In fact, I want to read articles about you; I want to know when you’re on TV, on radio, on blogs – that’s why I got into this. That allowed me to break up with Google and its random, sometimes meaningless flings in search of a single shred of information. With you and Twitter (and Facebook and perhaps even Google+), I could keep abreast of what’s going on at each stage of your life, while remaining open to others.

But now you just keep flaunting others at me. You retweet this stray person who liked your show and that nameless egg-head who liked your performance; every night between 10 and 11 pm, or first thing in the morning when you rise, it’s the same thing. You’re cool, you’re mind-blowing, I’ve got to run and see what you’re doing. It’s boring. And let me let you in on a little secret: I know you’re being selective and if I feel like it, I can find all of those negative tweets you never seem to mention. How do you feel about that, huh? The same goes for reviews, and while I appreciate the opportunity to read thoughtful, in-depth appraisals of your work, I can go back to my ex, Google News, and find all of the reviews as well, not just the cosmetically chosen ones that play up your best features. You’re not fooling anyone.

Plus, let’s face it, I know you’re a person behind a façade. You shield yourself with a company name or show name. But I sussed out a long time ago there’s not a whole company pushing the buttons, just one person. Just like me. You need to remember that too, because I find it hard to believe that your façade is out drinking with friends – it’s just not that mobile. And surely you’re not so gauche as to root for particular sports teams under a broad pseudonym, at the risk of sharing stuff that some of us really don’t want to know.

So I have to ask myself, should I keep following you if our relationship is so unrewarding? Not to throw others in your face, but Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company tantalized me with messages about its audiences’ deepest fantasies during their run of In The Next Room. Next to Normal snuggled up to me (and a million others) by letting me contribute to a new song related to the show. The New Victory is letting me assemble a video of things we have to look forward to together, with our kids (how can you forget the kids) and displaying them for all the world to see on YouTube. 2amtheatre constantly offers me something both attractive and profound to chew on. A few of you have even dropped the curtain that often separates us and I can hear directly what your leader is thinking, like the newbie Robert Falls of the Goodman or Kwami Kwei Armah of Centerstage. For my part, when you let slip an interesting bit of insight into what makes you tick, or even what simply interests you, I retweet you with abandon, sometimes four, five, six times in an hour. It’s tiring, but worth it.

This thing we’re in – it’s called social media. It can’t be one sided and you can’t constantly remind me that all you really care about is filling your seats. That’s awfully crude and while it may be good for you, it’s unsatisfying to me.  I want more of you, but all facets of you. Don’t reduce what we have to a transaction-based thing, like I was someone to whom you merely want to advertise your wares. It makes me feel cheap.

Oh, wait. No, stop. Don’t cry. I hate that.

You say you can change? I’m willing to give you another chance. Calm down – I won’t drop you, even though I can do it anytime with the merest press of my finger. I’m sorry, that was cruel.

So I’ll hear more from you? You’ll give me real insight, not just blurbs (not that I don’t enjoy a good blurbing every so often)? I won’t have to endure the clutter of your various partners telling me how wonderful you are every night? O.K. then, so we’ll stay mutual followers. I really want this to work, for you, me and our thousands of partners.

You’re blushing. Now that’s endearing. Come here and let me give you a digital hug.

Love,

@hesherman

This post originally appeared on the 2amtheatre website.