Over 430 critics gathered in Los Angeles May 26-28 for the historic, first National Critics Conference (NCC) bringing together the American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA), the Dance Critics Association (DCA), the International Association of Art Critics U. S. Chapter (AICA/USA), the Jazz Journalists Association (JJA) and the Music Critics Association of North America (MCANA). Organization of the NCC largely was spearheaded by ATCA emeritus chairman Michael Barnes (of the Austin Statesman), who built on a modest foundation laid in Chicago at the 2002 ATCA annual conference.

The line-up of panelists included Pulitzer Prize winners too numerous to mention, plus the Chicago Tribune’s arts editor Scott Powers and JJA president Howard Mandel, now a New Yorker but once firmly planted in Chicago. The keynote speaker was TV and film writer/producer Norman Lear, founder of the liberal political action group, People for the American Way.

Lear said the human impulse that animates criticism is as elemental and necessary as the one that animates art itself; that the critic speaks truth to power; that critics are more necessary than ever before. “For me, the real question is not the survival of arts criticism, but its moral passion and integrity,” Lear said. “Can it speak to contemporary politics and culture in a clear, compelling and authentic voice?” Great art, he explained, refuses to be inauthentic and thereby helps us understand ourselves and our culture. “With the help of the critic, we recover a sense of emotional and moral complexity in human affairs.”

Lear continued, “This is precisely what so many cultural conservatives are fearful of.  To them, the idea that a work of art may have multiple meanings or, heaven forefend, contradictory interpretations, is moral relativism—and we know what kind of a slippery slope that is! You are there to give us some perspective on how truthfully and skillfully creative works are speaking to power, and to point out when they are not.”

The central focus of the NCC was the relative power and accomplishment—or lack thereof—of arts criticism. As expressed in two articles in the Los Angeles Times, and generally accepted by all in attendance, the profession is ailing. Serious criticism seems on the decline. Certainly, the amount of space devoted to it has been drastically slashed in most daily papers and non-scholarly popular journals. The ability of people to access numerous views via print, TV and Internet undercuts the authority of the astute individual critical voice. Anyone with a blog and an opinion can set himself up as a critic.

But the NCC conference could do little more than scratch the surface of the topic in three days. Right here in Chicago, Ebert and Siskel and Roeper have demonstrated that criticism still can be potent and of national impact. It’s that iffy word “national” that gets in the way, in this writer’s opinion. Many attending the NCC decry the loss of music, theatre, dance and art criticism in national settings such as Newsweek and Time magazines. But the truth is, very little high art is national any more.

Just as there now are diverse centers of theatre production as important as New York, so culture everywhere has diversified. Almost all art—and almost all art criticism, therefore—is a local phenomenon. The exceptions are films, books and music that go into national release. But a concert, play, exhibition or club engagement is by definition local. The impact of critics, therefore, depends entirely on the level of interest and involvement of the local audience.

In Chicago, theatre flourishes as an industry, and so does theatre criticism, even though almost none of us—not even Hedy or Michael or Chris—gets 1,000 or 1,200 words per review the way Claudia Cassidy did. Most are lucky to have 400 words. What is healthy in Chicago is that there are so many critical voices, and that the large theatre-going public sustains and relishes the diversity.

Do we always fulfill Norman Lear’s mandate? No. And, sometimes it is because we just don’t have enough words to delve into ideas and still explain, say, the nuts and bolts of a new work. Still, the challenge now is to do better with what we have, rather than blame editors. When we’ve perfected ourselves, then we can blame them!

A second National Critics Conference was proposed for 2009, but the delegates overwhelmingly asked to meet again sooner. New York will host in 2007 if a plan can be put together on such short notice; otherwise it’s Austin, TX in 2009. The group also recommended formation of a permanent umbrella structure for arts critics, possibly as a political action committee, and the establishment of a separate membership association for architecture critics.

Another hot theatre story broke in Los Angeles the day I arrived. The new artistic director of the Mark Taper Forum, Michael Ritchie, abruptly snuffed out all Taper programs devoted to the development of new work. One of them, the Other Voices program for disabled artists, has been a Taper project for 23 years. According to a story in the May 24 Los Angeles Times, the demise of Other Voices leaves our own Victory Gardens Theater as the only “major U.S. theater” with a similar program for disabled artists. Ritchie also ended Latino, Asian-American and African-American playwriting labs. The hatchet falls on playwright Luis Alfaro (Electricidad) who supervised the annual Taper New Work Festival. Alfaro will be in Chicago in July for rehearsals of one of his plays at Teatro Vista.

Also from LA: Late Nite Catechism will end a two-year run at the Laguna Playhouse on June 20. The international cottage industry created by Maripat Donovan and Vicki Quade also ran in Los Angeles, proper, for a very long time. Indeed, Ms. Donovan’s new creation, Late Nite Catechism 2 now is running at the Coronet Theatre in West Hollywood. Meanwhile, Ms. Quade is preparing to open a rival nun’s story (Put the Nuns in Charge)at the Royal George on June 18. It’s pretty much public knowledge that Donovan and Quade had a falling out, although they remain bound by the contracts and cash cow of their original collaboration.

Two playwrights with local connections have been selected for the 2005 Playwrights Conference (“The O’Neill”) at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center in July. Rebecca Gilman heads out almost immediately following the June 28 opening of Dollhouse at the Goodman Theatre, for a workshop of Snake Tank. Also, Melanie Marnich will be there with Cradle of Man. They will be among only eight O’Neill writers this year.

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