Third in a 7-part series

BY BEN WINTERS

America is not suffering from a shortage of theatre writers, despite the wishes of some actors and producers. Almost every major daily newspaper—even those that have sharply curtailed their theatre coverage—can boast at least one reviewer on-staff, with back-ups and freelancers jostling to cover the leftovers. The American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) chairman, Michael Barnes, reports a membership of 275, which obviously does not include those not enrolled with the ATCA.

To the directors, performers and producers whose fortunes are so often in their hands, the question is: "Who are these people?" Or better yet, "How dare they?" What qualifications and experience should critics possess before entering their first hushed auditorium with a pen in hand?

There is a Catch-22 involved in the way that theatre artists perceive the folks who write about them. If the writer is an aspiring artist, she or he is easily dismissed as a wanna-be, venting frustrated ambitions on those behind the footlights. If, on the other hand, the writer has never been involved in producing a real show, they are likewise dismissed as not knowing what they’re talking about.

"Sometimes it seems like there are just people who aren’t making it as artists or actors, who need work," says Bailiwick Theatre artistic director David Zak.

But there is a case to be made that artists do make the best critics, since an active and extensive knowledge of the real world of theatre lends a knowledge base and sympathy to the work that might otherwise be absent. George Bernard Shaw, the great-granddaddy of all modern theatre criticism, may be the best example of this; then there’s the more recent example of New Republic critic and American Repertory Theatre founder Robert Brustein. Many artists-slash-writers, however, don’t have quite that reputation.

Albert Williams, who as lead critic for the Chicago Reader oversees that paper’s extensive theatre section, looks specifically for people with a background in the theatre. "Always in our case there is some practical experience," he says. "Everybody just going down the line has at worst dabbled, and at best really worked for a while, in the theatre or in performing arts or what have you."

"There’s a big pool of people out there who love theatre, were actors, and want to write," says Jason Zinoman, the theatre editor for Time Out New York. "But what there’s a shortage of is good writers. In the long run, it’s important to have some background in theatre, but also to be a good writer who knows why things work or don’t work." Zinoman adds that something that is as equally important as experience in creating theatre is having spent some time studying the literature of theatre.

Perhaps the best attitude is held by Daniel Aukin, artistic director of New York’s Soho Rep, who says the important thing isn’t a writer’s background, but whether or not they’re a good writer.

"Look, I’m a theatre director, and for me it wasn’t a straight path to becoming a theatre director," Aukin says. "I wouldn’t expect that straight path from any theatre critics."

Dan Sullivan is a man with a mission: To make the community of theatre journalists better at what they do.

"I was an English major who had done a little bit of theatre, and I studied literary criticism, but I really learned it on the job," says Sullivan of his two decades as lead reviewer for the Los Angeles Times. Today he is the director of the O’Neill National Critics Institute in Connecticut. "That’s one reason I’m so interested in preparing people for this more than I was."

Sullivan, now in his third year at the O’Neill post, describes the annual summer program as a "boot camp" for theatre journalists. An outgrowth of the O’Neill Playwrights conference, the idea of the Critics Institute was "to find a way to do for young critics, and people who wanted to be critics, what [the Playwrights conference] was doing for young playwrights." Besides honing their writing chops with fellow critics and instructors, campers are immersed in various aspects of theatrical production, from playwriting and acting courses to hanging lights.

Playwright Jeffrey Sweet, who leads annual workshops at the O’Neill, describes this sort of focused instruction as "invaluable" to reviewers and critics. "Each critic who goes there is assigned to sit in on the entire rehearsal process of a play and watch it, from first reading through two performances—the whole progress of a project," Sweet says. "It’s very intense."

The enthusiasm held by Sweet and Sullivan for the program (and echoed by recent grads like Kevin Nance of The Nashville Tennessean) in part reflects the paucity of institutional training programs for theatre writers. There are a handful of graduate programs in dramatic criticism sprinkled around the country, most notably at Yale’s Drama school. However, a majority of critics don’t have anything resembling formal education in their work. Like Sullivan, they "learned it on the job."

Which creates an interesting paradox of theatre journalism: The way to be good at it, say many practitioners, is simply to have done it a long time. "I started doing this is 1986," says Chris Jones, a regular contributor to both Variety and the Chicago Tribune. "I happen to have a doctorate in theatre criticism [from Ohio State University], but I don’t know if that’s helped me as much as having been doing this for 15 years."

To Sweet, there is no better critic than a Renaissance man.

"I’m tired of people who go into theatre and know only about the theatre," Sweet says. "I think it’s important to know history, God knows, and know something about politics and philosophy. Particularly ethical issues, because that’s what plays inevitably deal with…they should know the world. Beyond that, then they should become familiar with theatre."

Michael Sommers, president of the New York Drama Critics Circle, subscribes as well to this generalist theory, arguing that a life spent writing about theatre is "the perfect use of a liberal arts education. You’ve got the old stuff, the classical stuff, the revivals, then there’s the brand new stuff, and it’s all on different themes. Like last year, with Copenhagen—suddenly it was like, physics? And with Invention of Love, I could feel all this stuff I did in college moving up from the back of my brain."

"Do you know what hot asphalt overlay work is?" asks Judith Newmark, reviewer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Uh, no.

"I know it very well. I spent a couple years on hot asphalt overlay," Newmark explains, describing a massive city renovation project in process when she started her career at the paper, six weeks after leaving Bryn Mawr with an English Literature degree and a resume of performances on the college stage. "I was covering aldermanic meetings and schools boards and all that stuff."

One day the man who covered college and community theatre took a leave of absence, and Newmark snagged the job, bidding a not so fond farewell to the asphalt beat. She then began subbing for the Post’s lead theatre writer, Joe Pollack. When he retired six years ago, she took his slot. Many paths to criticdom, like Newmark’s, involve years in the trenches of "straight" journalism.

As Leverett notes, theatre writing, more so than any other forms of arts journalism, is often assigned to non-experts. "Theatre is not regarded by publishers and editors in the same way that music is regarded or art or literature are regarded," says Leverett. "They would never dream of hiring for a music critic someone who didn’t read music and know music in an extremely full way…they do that with theatre because they think that the theatre is a "popular art"—therefore someone who is intelligent and can write well should be able to judge…I don’t personally like the idea."

Maureen Ryan, who as assistant arts and entertainment editor assigns and edits theatre reviews at the Chicago Tribune, defends the idea of looking simply for people who are good writers. "We look for a breadth of knowledge and a depth of knowledge about theatre in particular," she says, "coupled with the ability to write clearly and critique things in an intelligent way."

Every critic and reviewer has their own origin story. Marion Garmel at the Indianapolis Star has been at the paper since 1971, working variously as an art critic, as the editor of the entertainment section, and as the television writer before assuming her current post in 1995. Sommers is a former editor at Theatre Crafts magazine; he is also a former college sports writer, which he says "is a lot like theatre reviewing, except you get to eat hot dogs during the performance."

Jack Helbig, after graduating in 1980 with a degree in English from the University of Chicago, gravitated to the local theatre and improvisation communities. He took classes, wrote plays and ushered at the Goodman and Steppenwolf, where an amateur critical career bloomed.

"I would have a little notebook I always carried with me," says Helbig. "I’d do a little drawing of the set and jot down my reactions to the show."

Late in the ’80s, while studying at the Second City Training Center, Helbig had an epiphany that pushed him firmly in to the world of criticism: "When I saw how great the strong performers were…it was clear to me that they had what it takes to go on to, say, "Saturday Night Live." I was always going to be a writer; I wasn’t going to be a performer. I switched my focus to being more of a writer, and started doing more journalism."

Helbig submitted his first piece to Newcity, and a year later began reviewing regularly for the Reader. It was in this period that he experienced the emotional transformation that is a common rite of passage for many new critics.

"I went through this big crisis because I realized I was crossing a boundary," says Helbig, who today supplies regular copy to two Chicago area papers, the Reader and the suburban Daily Herald. "When I had been an actor, I had read so much reviewing, and I knew that reviewers were a different type of creature than actors. Once you become a critic you have to play the game differently than when you’re an actor."

Marion Garmel is always walking out of touring Broadway shows. The Indianapolis Star reviewer isn’t trying to be rude—she’s just doing her job.

"I do overnights on the traveling Broadway series," says Garmel, using the shoptalk phrase for a review due to run the next morning. "We’re a morning paper, and the deadline is 11:30 p.m. I almost always leave before it’s over, in the middle of the second act or third act. I leave by about 10:30 p.m. to be able to get back to the paper."

Having to skip the end of Titanic to beat deadline is only one occupational hazard in a job filled with its own unique pressures. However they ended up in the reviewer’s seat, all theatre writers have to adjust to the lifestyle: perpetually booked Friday and Saturday nights, awkward friend-or-foe relationships with colleagues in the theatre community, and always, always, the looming deadlines.

There are those who thrive on this particular pressure. Chicago freelancer Andrew Patner says "I love deadlines. I have one hour in which to gather my thoughts, organize them, and write them…the more time I have, the more time I have to procrastinate."

At the Tennessean, Kevin Nance prefers not to write overnights, and usually does so only when the show will have a short run. "I prefer to be able to think a little bit," he says. "They tell you to think before you speak, and you should think before you write. But in daily journalism, you have to think on your feet, I’m prepared to do that and I do it."

Which returns us to the question, taken up in the first edition of PerformInk’s series (see September 14th issue) of the reviewer versus the critic: in Nance’s estimation, given enough time he evolves from one into the other. "I think that if you’re doing an overnight review, it’s a review. Criticism is a higher thing, and it implies time put in, into the thinking and the crafting of the opinion, and it implies a little bit of extra perspective that is awfully difficult [when you’re] doing it overnight."

Jeffrey Sweet agrees. "If you saw the premiere of Long Day’s Journey or Streetcar Named Desire, are you really going to be able to crank out in 90 minutes a fully considered piece about the merits of the work? Usually real criticism requires enough time for serious consideration of the work."

Here’s Dan Sullivan on the glories of the theatre writer’s job hunt: "You might not be able to have a job, because they’re not that frequent and they don’t pay that well."

Michael Barnes estimates that of the ATCA’s 275 members, approximately 100 are on staff somewhere, the rest freelancers.

Freelancers are paid by the word or by the article rather than on salary and depending on the length of the piece, the wealth of the publication and the size of the market, they can pull in between approximately $50 and $250 per article. Which means that for those not lucky enough to land a staff gig, making a living means working constantly for multiple publications—either free papers, dailies, glossy magazines, or trade papers like PerformInk.

"I don’t know how many people are supporting themselves [writing on theatre]," says Sullivan. "A lot of people have to do it as a sideline and their real money comes from somewhere else, and that’s a problem…a lot of the small papers where wonderful writing gets done can’t afford to pay you a full time salary."

This reality, Sullivan notes, may have a plus side. Such young, underpaid writers "are fresh, new, and really loving it or else wouldn’t be doing it." In other words, he muses, it’s good for writers to be hungry, because it often means they do better work.

"But," he emphasizes, "That shouldn’t mean literally hungry."

Which brings us to the question of why would anybody want to be a critic—other than that it beats covering the hot asphalt overlay community.

"I think every individual who decides that he or she wants to write criticism has to sort of look in the mirror and say: 'OK, do I know enough?’" says Jeffrey Jenkins, editor of the "Best Plays Annual" and outgoing chair of the American Theatre Critics Association. "Do I know enough about what I’m doing to do it?"

When theatre writers explain what it is that keeps them on the job, it isn’t for love of being a critic or being critical—it’s the same thing actors and producers and directors and designers love. They love theatre.

"Theatre encompasses everything, it’s the entire life experience," says Damien Jacques at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. "The canvas is so broad. I’m always able to learn things from theatre. You never stop learning when you’re in theatre, or involved with theatre, and I love that."

Judith Newmark, at the Post-Dispatch, describes her role, in part, as simply one of encouraging the theatrical community. She has, she says, been "beating the drums for more Shakespeare in St. Louis for years. Now they’re doing more Shakespeare than they used to—is that because of me? I don’t know. But if it is, I did a good thing. "

"Chicago theatre is my passion: It’s what I feel I know most about in the world," says Chris Jones of the joys of his work. "Theatre is an eternally fascinating mistress. It offers every delight, from utter brilliance to utter desperation and despair. You never know what you’re going to find. This job is like an explorer thrill—you’re going off into the jungle and returning with some great treasure."

Any feedback?

E-mail critics@performink.com.

Home

What are we doing this for?

Story 1:
Picks & Pans, Essay & Esoterica

Story 2:
Power, Money & Poisen Pens in the Real World of Theatre Writing

Story 4:
The Ethical Dilemmas of Theatre Journalism

Story 5:
A week in the life of a critic.

Story 6:
Recovering Arts Coverage

Story 7:
Talking It Out