BY CARRIE L. KAUFMAN
with additional reporting by Ben Winters

You hear the stories in bars and dressing rooms all the time. The ones about critics behaving badly. Some are apocryphal, some surely true. Sometimes the disgruntled actor doing the complaining only knows half the story. But it’s a fact that both theatre and journalism breed a sense of community, and the relationship between critics and theatre artists can sometimes be an ethical minefield.

In talking to theatre writers and theatre artists, questions arise that strike at the heart of the ethical dilemma between critics and artists. Should critics and theatre artists have any sort of relationship outside of the night of show night? What happens when theatre critics are also playwrights (think George Bernard Shaw) or directors (think Harold Clurman)? What about writers who write for multiple publications? Or those who write features on theatres as well as reviews? Is it right for a critic to have talked with the director about the play before she sees it? What about the critic’s role as theatre advocate?

Albert Williams has become more lenient over the years. As the assignment editor, as well as chief critic, for one of Chicago’s weekly alternative papers, the Reader, Williams used to jump through hoops to avoid even the appearance of conflict. But too many of his writers—himself included—are part of the community. Williams has taught theatre at Chicago’s Columbia College for 16 years. Justin Hayford does cabaret. Former critic Adam Langer is a playwright, as are freelancers Lawrence Bommer and Jack Helbig, who also does improv.

The only theatre staff writer for Time Out New York is an active member of the New York theatre scene. Jason Zinoman, Time Out’s assignment editor and chief critic, grew up in theatre—his mother is a director.

For both Zinoman and Williams, trying to weed out whether or not a critic might know someone they’re reviewing has become next to impossible. And it may not be known in advance. Williams has gone to a play and found one of his former students was in it. He could have walked out, but instead he chose to stay and disclose the connection in his review.

"If they’re inescapable, I trust myself and my other critics to put those conflicts aside," Williams says.

"It’s impossible to completely keep out any conflicts of interest," concurs Zinoman, who says about half of his freelance writers are involved in theatre in some way. That doesn’t mean he’s cavalier about who he assigns. He looks very carefully at the nature of relationships before he decides if it’s a conflict or not.

Williams agrees that there are limits.

"If [the critic is] friends with the director or the playwright, we don’t send them," Williams says, adding that he would never review a play written by his friend Jeffrey Sweet.

But Sweet has been reviewed by friends and he has written about other friends’ works, with mixed results.

"A pretty good friend of mine panned a production of Bluff out in New Jersey. A pretty good production, too, and I thought he missed the point. I sent him an e-mail. I said, 'Well, you can’t be right all the time.’ That was the end of it."

On the other hand, Sweet wrote a review of a season of New York theatre for "Best Plays Annual" and gave his honest opinion about a friend’s work.

"I think the play she wrote was a terrific play, but I think she did not do justice to herself as a director. I praised the script, but I said what I thought—she’s normally quite a good director, but I thought she had loaded up the production with so many gimmicks that she had obscured her work. She didn’t talk to me for two years. Then we ran into each other in a theatre lobby and she looked at me and went, 'Ah,’ and we hugged and that’s the end of it. I’m sure she knows that I didn’t do it out of malice, I was just saying what I felt was true."

Saying what you think is true and being respected for
what you say are two different things. Theatre artists will tell you that how much attention they pay to a review has a great deal to do with how much they respect the critic—and how much they feel the critic respects them.

"I like to know that the critic is respecting what it is artists do and has a kind of simpatico with that, and is trying to help pave the way for the artist," says Goodman associate producer Steve Scott.

That’s what James Leverett remembers about the director, teacher and critic Harold Clurman.

"He was always in the middle of the community," says Leverett, chair of Yale’s Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism department, of Clurman. "He taught, he directed, he knew everybody, he was out and about within the community all the time. He acted as somebody who could speak to the community and say, 'This is worth encouraging, this is not quite so successful.’ All the actors in the community trusted him. Even if he said bad things about what they did in a past performance, they knew he was just doing it out of love, really, for the field."

That love for the field can lead to other interactions between critics and artists that go beyond one review.

"To me, part of the task of the critic is to champion things, in the same way that a dramaturg champions things," says Michelle Volansky, former dramaturg at Steppenwolf who is now with Philadelphia Theatre Company. "I have completely appreciated the times when [Chicago Tribune critic] Chris Jones would call me and say, 'You have to go see this play, this is a really terrific piece of writing.’ [Chief Tribune critic] Richard [Christiansen] did it, too. [Sun-Times critic] Hedy [Weiss] did it. I found that to be really helpful, and I wish that would happen more."

Jones, in fact, was instrumental in getting Famous Door Theatre’s Beautiful Thing transferred from Chicago to New York. At the Chicago opening, Jones thought there was a story in the fact that Famous Door had gotten the American premiere. The rights had been on hold for a couple of years because of the movie and New York producer Roy Gabay, who had been promised the American premiere, passed on it after so much time. Jones called Gabay as part of the story and, incidentally, told him Famous Door’s production was quite good. That started a chain of events that ended up with Gabay taking Famous Door’s production and transferring it to New York.

"Mr. Jones really helped us out tremendously there," says Famous Door artistic director Dan Rivkin. "He smelled a story and wanted to get the bigger picture."

Jones demurs. "I don’t normally go out of my way to promote things beyond my review. It certainly comes up, though."

Where, though, do these things come up? At the post-show party? Over lunch or some other social occasion? Critics and artists clearly draw lines between each other. It’s just that the line is not always in the same place.

"To try to chummy up with a critic is not in the best interest of anyone," says Tim Corcoran of New York’s 29th Street Repertory, expressing the view that critics and artists are completely separate.

Judith Egerton of the Louisville Courier-Journal agrees. She wants access to information, but is cautious about getting too close to theatre artists.

"I don’t really have friendships—I know them, they know me, but I don’t see them socially. It would get too complicated."

Chicago’s Court Theatre artistic director Charles Newell does not see the complication. "It’s in our interest to know them and communicate with them as clearly as possible," says Newell. "I make an effort to develop professional relationships with critics who have an ongoing relationship with Court, just to understand them better and maybe help them to understand us better."

In that sense, he views the critic as a journalist who should know about his subject thoroughly.

Albert Williams doesn’t like the idea of going to lunch or socializing with theatre artists, but he is very emphatic that "the job of the critic is to influence the theatre as well as the audience."

In that sense, he can understand critics and playwrights who regularly meet on a professional basis.

"I can see the argument in favor: If the critic and the artist are trying to shape the art, then maybe there’s a flow of ideas" that can be hammered out over lunch in a beautiful restaurant.

Recently, Chris Jones wrote of Defiant Theatre’s Fortinbras, that it was a familiar, aging script outside of the theatre’s mission. "We expect newer—or at least powerfully re-imagined—material from this edgy troupe," wrote Jones. He then went on: "This is a common mistake when Chicago companies lose sight of their niche. Given its proven history of quality and risk-taking, Defiant needs to stick to the defiant."

Some theatre artists thought Jones had strayed from his role as critic by talking about Defiant as a troupe in the context of their show. But Jones disagrees.

"You can’t review a show in isolation from a company," he says.

By ignoring the company’s vision, "you’re assuming that the artistic director or producer doesn’t have a key role in the work," says Zinoman.

But where is that line between seeing a theatre in context and seeing it with blinders on?

"There’s good theatre and there’s bad theatre and they should be reviewing theatre on the merits of the production as opposed to a particular theme or mission statement that a company has in the past put out," says 29th Street Rep’s Corcoran. "To do that is to pigeon-hole a group."

Greg Allen of Chicago’s Neo-Futurists sees both sides. He admits that his troupe gets a lot of benefit from having been around for 13 years. "There is an element to which I’m given a break because I know them and they know my work."

At the same time, Allen doesn’t like to be categorized by critics who often, he feels, don’t understand the Neo-Futurists to begin with—calling them a comedy or, worse, improv troupe.

Most theatre reviewers are also drama reporters, responsible for filing profiles, previews and other sorts of features in addition to their reviews. Every critic can recall having written an amiable article on an upcoming show, only to be confronted with a shocked, betrayed theatre artist when the subsequent review is not as kind.

"That’s a source of a lot of pain," says Jack Helbig. "It does set up this expectation in the artist’s mind that if you’re going to write a feature then you love them in some way, and that you will never say anything bad about them. There have been people in the past who don’t speak to me now because I have written a nice feature about them and then not liked the show."

Jones, who in addition to writing reviews for the Tribune pens a weekly theatre column, says, "I would like to just be a critic, but the only newspaper where you could do that is the New York Times. Most of us also write feature articles. To be an effective reporter, you have to have sources and to have sources you have to have relationships with people. That separation is just not possible in the real world, though ideally that would be the case."

What bothers Albert Williams isn’t that the theatre artists might get upset, but that the theatre writer might feel like a fool for contradicting himself if, for instance, he writes that a company is "the best young theatre troupe of the year" for one publication, then doesn’t like a particular show when he is sent to review it for another publication.

"If you’ve gone on the record praising someone’s work, you have to be careful that if you see their work and it’s not good, you’re not afraid to say that because it will reflect badly on you," Williams says.

The big dilemma for theatre writers comes when they are also, well, theatre writers—with scripts in the drawer or on their hard drives. When they give a good review to a theatre they have also submitted a play to, does that make that good review suspect? Are they just buttering the theatre up?

"We have members of the association who have advanced degrees and do theatre, but they’re also theatre critics," says Jeffrey Jenkins, former head of the American Theatre Critics Association. "The question you have to ask yourself when you do that is, 'How can I do that? Am I asking someone to hire me? Are they hiring me because they want me to do something for them later [i.e. write positively about them], or because I’m good at what I do?’

"We have members who struggle with this. The answer to ethical standards ultimately is the same as the answer to 'Do I have enough background?’ The answer is, can I look in the mirror and say I’m doing the right thing. That’s a purely individual question."

There is also the occasional case in which a critic is honored by a theatre company. Chicago freelancer Lawrence Bommer was given a Trailblazer award last year by Chicago’s Bailiwick Repertory Theatre. The award recognizes gay and lesbian people "who move the community forward in one way or another," according artistic director David Zak. He recalls Bommer accepting the award and telling him it didn’t mean he wasn’t going to slam the theatre again. Bommer insists that "the proof is in the printing," pointing to Bailiwick shows like Go By Night or Emotional Monogamy that he gave not so great reviews after he was given the award.

It’s worth noting that Bommer was given the award because of his early work as a theatre artist, as well as "writing about queer issues in the mainstream press," according to Zak. He has been doing and writing about theatre for the better part of two decades. He considers himself not just a critic, but a theatre person.

"The things that connect critics and theatre artists are infinitely greater than the things that divide us," says Bommer.

"Ultimately we’re in love with the same thing," says Williams. "That’s why we’re here."

Adds Steppenwolf artistic director Martha Lavey: "One hopes that we are all invested in the same enterprise, which is more and better theatre."

Any feedback?

E-mail critics@performink.com.

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