The Critics Say...: 57 Theater Reviewers in New York and Beyond Discuss Their Craft and Its Future (34 page)

Richard Ouzounian:
Papers have less space because they’re selling less advertising. Although we can always write online reviews, I’m very wary of what I call the “online ghetto.” J. Kelly Nestruck at the
Globe
is currently writing 700-word reviews online. But in the paper, they get squished down to 200 words.

I keep desperately trying to keep newspapers alive. I think that if you take away the newspapers, there’ll be nothing left. There has to be a place where you have to write within the restrictions of taste, space, money, and time, and where you get paid well for doing it. What we have to do is fight for it. I’m already having a dialogue at my paper about this. I don’t want to retire, and they don’t want me to retire, but I’m getting to that age, and they’re already saying, “Can’t you bring along a few more people, so we have some choices when you go?” My paper still thinks that there should be a theater critic in a theater department.

Christine Dolen:
I’m probably only going to be working for a few more years. I would like to think that someone will replace me, but I’m doubtful. The newspaper has to prioritize and use its resources in new and different ways, but perhaps I’ll be proven wrong.

Zachary Stewart:
Criticism is in a state of transition. As the wall between sales and editorial becomes increasingly nonexistent (partly due to the move online), financial pressure to promote advertising clients will increasingly fall on critics, just as pressure to bury negative stories will fall on reporters. But readers are smart and they know when they’re being bullshitted. Eventually, the stupid publications will trade away their credibility for short-term revenue, and they will lose the readership that advertisers crave. This crisis of credibility can be seen in nearly every industry, from financial ratings agencies to fast food chains. There will always be a need for truthful, informed, and entertaining criticism. Publishers need only to offer a financial shield for it. Eventually, the smart publishers will find a viable way to do this in a digital landscape.

MATT WINDMAN
: Some of you have lost or left your positions as theater critics recently. If you don’t mind, can you talk about what happened?

Jesse Oxfeld:
I wrote for the
Observer
just shy of five years before I was let go. It’s a newspaper that is not financially robust, and where things are always changing. During the time that I wrote there, I think I wrote for five different editors-in-chief and four different cultural editors. It was a broadsheet, and then a tabloid, and then a broadsheet again, and then a tabloid again.

Being let go wasn’t astonishing news to me. It ties in with what’s happening at every publication, where revenues and budgets are shrinking. The
Observer
was losing money for years. Why does Michael Feingold no longer write for the
Village Voice
? I’m sure he was relatively expensive by the salary scale of the
Voice
. He’d been there for years and had some seniority that I’m sure was worth something. If you have freelancers writing things instead, you don’t have to pay them as much. Why was David Rooney let go from
Variety
? Because
Variety
decided they’d rather have freelancers writing the reviews. It wasn’t worth the additional cost in benefits on top of a salary to have a chief theater critic. As it happens,
Variety
’s current critic, Marilyn Stasio, is a fairly regular freelancer, so they still have a serious person doing it, and David Rooney has ended up as the lead reviewer for the
Hollywood Reporter
, but as a freelancer, not as an employee. Michael Sommers was the theater critic for the
Star-Ledger
and got a very nice buyout offer.

There’s certainly an idea that this is an expendable position. To some extent, you have to live in the world as it is. I’ve also worked as an editor and have been involved in running publications. Let’s say, for example, that I’m an editor at the
Star-Ledger
, and I have an
Associated Press
subscription. If I can run
Associated Press
reviews for free or a marginal cost, it doesn’t make sense to pay a salary and benefits to Michael Sommers. I only have so much money because the circulation is shrinking and advertising is going away. I’d rather spend that money on an enterprising political reporter in Newark than on a theater critic. All of these publications are losing money, or at least not making the money they used to, and are looking for things to cut.

To some degree, I feel like being a theater critic was a fun thing that I did for five years, and whatever I do next will be different. Theater criticism is not the entirety of my career or my expertise. I enjoyed doing it and being a part of that world. I do miss it now. But on a practical level, it’s difficult for me to imagine another situation where I’ll have that opportunity again.

Peter Filichia:
I held my position as the New Jersey theater critic at the
Star-Ledger
for 19 years until I took a buyout. They said it was a one-time offer. At the time, I had this idea for a play, there were books I wanted to write, and the idea of staying home and not having to go to New Jersey every day was tempting. Sometimes I traveled as far out as Cape May, which is two hours away. Not that long ago, 167 people were laid off at the
Star-Ledger
, and they got nothing. I don’t have any hard feelings about it at all. They gave me a year’s salary and health insurance for life. Since then, I’ve written four books. I currently have four Internet columns. I work mostly for Music Theatre International. I write a column for them every Friday, for which I am paid pretty much what I got when I was at the
Star-Ledger
.

Alexis Soloski:
I was with the
Village Voice
for 16 years. I saw nearly all of my friends leave or get fired. I saw the paper shrink to a quarter of its size. It’s very sad. It’s a paper I really fell in love with as a teenager. In some ways, I still love it and what it can be, but the resources have become so limited that it’s not the same paper anymore. When I moved to the
New York Times
, I didn’t make an announcement. I don’t really go in for big gestures. At the
Times
, I’m doing reviews as well as features, profiles, and listings.

David Rooney:
One of the few upsides of being pushed out of
Variety
, my professional home of almost 20 years, was the incredible outpouring of support I received from the industry. The very first note I got was a sort of “What the fuck?” email from Scott Rudin. All sorts of people like Andre Bishop, Oskar Eustis, and Todd Haimes followed. That was a great source of comfort. I know that sense of injustice did filter back to
Variety
, though I don’t know whether or not they actually said, “We made a mistake” with regards to film critic Todd McCarthy and me or anyone else. There was a sense in the industry that
Variety
was getting rid of one of the things that made it strong and identifiable: critical voices that people know and trust.

When I was suddenly without a professional home, it was very good to have a window of exposure at the
New York
Times
. They were extremely generous in reaching out to me. They offered me a steady stream of reviews and feature assignments. It was a very good way for me to maintain visibility while I looked for something closer to full-time employment.

I got a call from the
Hollywood Reporter
the day the announcement was made that
Variety
was cutting me and Todd McCarthy. It was from Elizabeth Guider, who at that time was the editor-in-chief. She was also an ex-
Variety
colleague. She said, “I would be nuts not to reach out to you. You have knowledge across theater and film and television. It would be great to get you onboard in some way.” I said, “Let me think about it because I’m still catching my breath.” But we kept talking.

My title at the
Hollywood Reporter
is film and theater critic. I spend my year juggling theater coverage with film festivals, most of which conveniently coincide with the downtime of the Broadway season. If something is opening when I’m at a festival, my colleague Frank Scheck steps in and covers it. My background was in film before I started covering theater, so I actually welcomed the opportunity to get back into film and spread myself between the two mediums. Film festivals are hard work. At Sundance, I’m usually sitting up in my hotel room surviving on room service, writing reviews until four in the morning, and then getting up to see more films each day.

It’s been interesting to shift my writing style in my post–
Variety
life.
Variety
has a very identifiable style, with its own industry “slanguage.” It was great to work with the editors at the
Times
, which has very particular style rules. They’re endless. You’re learning them all the time. After so many years at
Variety
, it was interesting to adapt to that. At the
Hollywood Reporter
, the house style is much more elastic. I have the freedom there to put my own stamp on my reviews.

Howard Shapiro:
The features editor of the
Philadelphia Inquirer
came to me on October 1, 2012, and told me the paper was going to have several job shifts because they needed people to do specific things. I was going to be sent to New Jersey to cover townships, and I had three weeks to move to New Jersey. After I learned that, I was actually preparing to go. Three decades earlier, I had been the deputy New Jersey editor, so I thought I could do it, but then I realized that I didn’t particularly want to do it. If I did, I would no longer be a theater critic. I’d be out of the business. People wouldn’t think of me in that way when they thought of my journalism. Then they offered me a buyout. And by the end of the month, I was gone.

There were almost a dozen staff moves. Some people believed that because they were older and making more money, they were somehow being driven out. I took the management at face value. I knew they needed reporters in New Jersey. There were a couple days in a row where the paper had a “New Jersey” section without much Jersey news in it. Some of the people who stayed went to the Newspaper Guild, which represents them, and got their old jobs back after arbitration, but I was done. I had a terrific ride at the
Inquirer
and a great career, but it was time to move on.

I’m now reviewing on the radio. Before I left the
Inquirer
building, I called WHYY. Like so many big NPR stations, WHYY is building its own local news team. Because newspapers have fewer resources to cover news, public media sees an opportunity there. They were building a staff of very smart, mostly young people. I’m not a full-timer. My title is theater blogger, or at least that’s what they call me on the radio, but essentially I’m the theater critic.

Jeremy Gerard:
I was thrown out of
Bloomberg News
. The world of culture and the arts was shocked when
Bloomberg
decided to discontinue our section, which was called “Muse.” Virtually all of the critics and editors were fired or relieved of their duties, or whatever you want to call it.
Bloomberg
stopped its regular coverage of the arts, with the exception of the work done primarily by Manuela Hoelterhoff, who had been our boss. The rest of us were out on the street.

We were all shocked because Michael Bloomberg himself is such an advocate for the arts. It seemed impossible that the news organization he built would suddenly say, “We’re not doing this anymore.” From a practical standpoint, you can’t be shocked by it. We were hardly central to the core business of
Bloomberg News
. Had it been a different owner, perhaps it would have not been so shocking—although it’s hard to imagine
Reuters
, the
Wall Street Journal
, or certainly the
New York Times
saying, “Those aren’t our core readers, so we’re not going to cover culture anymore.”

I very fortunately landed a new job at
Deadline.com
, where I’m working with my old
Variety
pal Mike Fleming, who runs it. I’m sort of holding down the New York office. My career has followed the world: from the days of very old media, where I was literally cutting and pasting copy that came off a printer at
Our Town
; to the first days of the computer era at the
Dallas Morning News
; to classic mainstream media at the
New York Times
,
Variety
, and
New York
magazine; to electronic media at
Bloomberg
, which didn’t put out its own hard copy but was published in many newspapers around the world; and now
Deadline
, where I’m completely online and never see my name in print, except when somebody’s catching up with a story I’ve broken.

John Simon:
Adam Moss, who took over
New York
magazine in 2004, obviously didn’t like me, or agree with me, or whatever. That caused my departure. It was a surprise because I had three or four other editors-in-chief who seemed to be perfectly willing to keep me on, and then suddenly this guy who was hated at the
Times
(and whose departure was celebrated by the
Times
people with joy) was hired by Bruce Wasserstein, Wendy Wasserstein’s brother, who had purchased
New York
magazine. I guess Wendy had it in for me, even though we had been friends. She seemed to have told her brother to get rid of me, and he told Adam Moss. Anyhow, that’s how I was kicked out.

After that, I was hired by
Bloomberg
, and it was okay for five years. Then something must have happened. Manuela Hoelterhoff, who was in charge of all the arts at
Bloomberg
, turned against me, as she has against all kinds of other people, too. They were also trying to save money at
Bloomberg
. And since they had Jeremy Gerard as an editor, they promoted him to critic since they were already paying him a salary, and therefore he’d cost nothing, whereas I cost them money. So it was a good time to get rid of me.

When
Bloomberg
let me go, my wife contacted 75 magazines, newspapers, colleges, and universities to find a writing or teaching position for me. But out of 75 attempts, only one single thing, the
Westchester Guardian
, accepted me. It is kind of peculiar because, at least among people who know something about theater, I have a certain standing. You’d think there’d be more than this one small, obscure publication. Nevertheless, I am very grateful for the
Westchester Guardian
because it saved me in a sense. Only it responded. By now, I think a whole lot of magazines, newspapers, and whatnot have young people working for them, and they either don’t know who I am or don’t care. And if they do, it means that if they hired me, they’d have to pay me a living wage. Whereas if they hired some fresh young kid out of college, he or she will be grateful to work for practically nothing. That’s the kind of people they want.