The Critics Say...: 57 Theater Reviewers in New York and Beyond Discuss Their Craft and Its Future (39 page)

Terry Teachout:
The chat rooms simply accelerate the buzz that has always been an intrinsic part of theater, especially in a city like New York. It just speeds up what already existed. In my experience, buzz is almost always true if it’s pronounced in one direction or another. Ninety-five times out of a hundred, if you’ve heard that a musical is going to be awful, it will be. There’s nothing wrong with knowing that. It’s always good to avoid punishment.

John Simon:
Too much attention is being paid to the chat rooms. While everybody should have his own critical standards, it doesn’t mean that they should bother us or other people with their opinions.

Charles Isherwood:
The people who are going on these chat sites and reading these first reports from non-professional critics are a very small subset of the theatergoing population. They’re the truly obsessive theatergoers. The public may be aware that a show is playing, but they won’t know what the responses are until the reviews come out.

I don’t go on those sites because reading numerous opinions of a show when it’s in early previews creates a bit of a clutter in your head when you finally go to see it. It’s hard to get those voices out of your head when you sit down to write the review. When I was at the office at
Variety
, I would kill time by going on
All That Chat
. But now that I’m not tethered to a desk, I don’t do that as much.

Also, now that I’m at the
Times
, those crazy queens on
All That Chat
are always tearing into me and Ben Brantley, so it’s not enjoyable to look at the site. I guess it’s par for the course. George Jean Nathan said, “A man in the brick-throwing business must expect occasionally to be hit by a brick,” but I don’t go out of my way to hear the awful things people are saying about me. Life is hard enough already.

Eric Grode:
If Jesse21 on
All That Chat
does a better job at writing about a show in a chat room than a critic for a sanctioned professional medium, there’s no reason why readers should feel duty-bound to read the critic over Jesse21. I’m okay with the idea that the best writing out there should get the most readers.

Jesse Green:
I look at those sites, and I enjoy them. They’re somewhere between a coffee klatch and a mud fight. Some of the people that write posts are clearly quite knowledgeable about the business or the art of theater. That’s great, but it’s not criticism. Even the posts that label themselves as reviews are not really professional reviews, as is easily demonstrated if you compare any of them to a professional review. To the extent that we believe that the theater or any other art form is still worthy of serious attention by writers who have a background in the art form, we need professional theater critics.

This is not to say that the presence of those communities is a negative. They support excitement and interest in the theater, but in a different way. It’s like the difference between a community theater production, which could be very good, and an Equity production. What you see at an Equity theater may vary in quality, but there’s at least going to be some seasoning to it.

Jesse Oxfeld:
The overwhelming majority of ticket purchasers have no idea what
All That Chat
is.

Leonard Jacobs:
I look at
All That Chat
once or twice a day. It seems to be a group of, at most, a couple hundred people, not all of whom are in New York. I think their influence is limited, and that’s to say nothing about their taste. They only influence the other people in the chat rooms.

Terry Teachout:
I snoop around once in a while in the chat rooms, but what I find out tends to not be useful. It’s the commentary of agitated fans. Sometimes it can be interesting, but there is no substitute for a good review, least of all a 140-character tweet. In the
Journal
, I have 850 to 1,100 words at my disposal, to use in whatever way I want, and I have time to write those pieces.

Alexis Soloski:
I don’t think citizen journalism does the same job or demands the same rigor. It’s great that there are venues that allow people to voice their opinions. I read it, and I value it, but I don’t confuse it with professional theater criticism.

Ben Brantley:
I think that having a job or a title gives you a feeling of responsibility. If you’re in a chat room, you can much more instinctive. It’s like tweeting—you write before you think. I think that’s the danger of the Web in many ways, especially if you’re a person with a low impulse control or who drinks a lot. I’d rather read a reasoned argument than a quick, orgasmic yelp.

David Sheward:
It’s gossip, not a review. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s not the same as an informed review of the final product. They’re saying, “I saw a preview, and this is what I thought.”

Elisabeth Vincentelli:
It’s background chatter. I see a lot more shows than most of those chatters. I see about 215 shows a year. I doubt that many of them can do that. And it’s not just a matter of “I see more shows than you, so I know more.” We see the show when it’s been deemed to be ready. We see what’s meant to be the final version. It’s good to have a professional assessment of the final version of a show.

I have a lot of friends who like going to the theater but don’t work in the theater, and none of them go to the chat rooms. They read reviews, and that’s how they pick their shows. They’re not insiders. The people in the chat rooms have an inflated sense of how important they are. It’s a very tiny group of people, and they’re read only by insiders and not the general audience. It’s a distorting mirror.

Jeremy Gerard:
Those sites create more of a need for professional critics. Anyone who is involved in the performing arts knows that 99 percent of what is put out online in the chat rooms is meaningless. There are some smart people who write smart blogs, but it’s hard to find them.

Robert Feldberg:
Most of the chat rooms I’ve seen are pretty amateurish. They’re full of free-floating enthusiasm and opinions that aren’t backed up by anything. They’re very personal in a bad way. They write, “I went to the theater last night. I saw this. I saw that. I love this actor.” It’s like somebody’s diary.

Thom Geier:
If you go on some of those chat rooms on the opening night of a new show, someone will often post a roundup of all the reviews from the professional critics, so it seems like even they care about our opinions.

Michael Riedel:
I know for a fact that a lot of the people on
All That Chat
are press agents or producers using fake names to promote their own shows. The nice thing about having critics is that you know who they are. You know where they’re coming from. You know they’re being paid by their publication, and not by the people that they’re writing about.

MATT WINDMAN
: Do you use social media as a theater critic?

Rob Weinert-Kendt:
Social media is a tool. Some of my favorite film critics engage with readers on
Twitter
. That must be exhausting to do. Peter Marks does it in D.C. I know that Brantley reads a lot of stuff online, but I don’t think he involves himself in commenting. In the arts journalism programs that I know about, people are being trained to use social media. A lot of the job listings that I see now are for people to manage social media and file posts every day. The whole business is changing. People are aggregating content and tweeting for a brand or magazine. I’m not sure where criticism is going to fit into that.

Jesse Oxfeld:
It’s what’s happening across the journalism business: engaging with readers online and trying to build an audience in that way. You do end up seeing some interesting conversations between writers and creators on
Twitter
. You also see a lot of conversations happening among critics, which are sometimes amusing and sometimes tedious. What’s more interesting is when a debate flares up. Mike Daisey is such an active
Twitter
user. He can be bullying and angry on
Twitter
, but he can also be really smart and insightful. I don’t tend to get into those conversations, but they’re interesting to watch as they’re happening.

Hilton Als:
Our editor, David Remnick, doesn’t press you into that stuff at all. He’s great that way.

Michael Schulman:
Every journalist has to have a
Twitter
account now—and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It’s how you reach people. Jason Zinoman is a very provocative, insightful critic on
Twitter
. John Lahr just joined
Twitter
two days ago. I love watching critics disagree with each other on
Twitter
and hash out arguments about whatever is on their minds.

Terry Teachout:
A professional writer uses social media to strengthen the brand that is himself. I use
Twitter
and my blog to point people to my reviews, comment about the theater and the arts in general, communicate with people, and make myself more present. As far as I know, I was the first national arts journalist to start a blog about the arts. It was only by a couple of weeks, but it was me. That was also the year I became the theater critic of the
Wall Street Journal
. In 2003, I realized that blogging was going to become a very important thing. I said to myself, I better come to terms with this now. I did the same with
Twitter
and
Facebook
when they came along. I just see them as part of my daily work, and I enjoy using them, too.

Helen Shaw:
I read my Facebook feed, but I very rarely write on Facebook or tweet. I feel like I’m five years too old to really adapt to it correctly. It’s something I feel guilty about daily.

Perez Hilton:
I use
Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr,
and
Instagram
for all of my reviews.

Ben Brantley:
I don’t use social media at all. I have a
Twitter
account only because there was someone impersonating me on
Twitter,
and the only way to get this guy to stop was to open my own account. I’m not on
Facebook
. The
Times
would like us all to use social media because it’s the direction of things. I’m just naturally a private person. Self-promotion, which social media is largely about, is something I feel incredibly uncomfortable with.

Christine Dolen:
I’m
Facebook
friends with tons of theater people in the community, so I learn about things through
Facebook
. I also hear from a lot of professionals on
Facebook
after my reviews get posted.

Peter Filichia:
I talk about my theater columns on
Facebook
. Getting the word out is perfectly fine. I’m not above doing that. Even though I’m an old-timer when it comes to traditional theater, I like the fact that all this new technology can help us spread the word.

Charles Isherwood:
The industry has changed for all journalists in various ways. The job used to be to see a show and write a review, and that was the end of the process. Now, with the increasing importance of social media, there’s a lot more pressure to continue the process: to open yourself up to
Twitter, Facebook,
and reader comments. We’re supposed to be much more engaged with our readers now. It’s supposed to be more of a conversation, as opposed to, “Here’s the official take of the
New York Times.
End of story.”

I am not terribly active on social media, but I am increasingly seeing that it’s inevitable, especially for the next generation of critics. Even for old fogies like myself, I feel like it’s time to start learning those tools. I am somewhat of a
Facebook
phantom. I am not on
Twitter
at all. I follow a few people on
Instagram,
but I am not generating any content. I don’t embrace the idea of self-promotion. I feel like a lot of it is, “Here’s my review. Read my review.” To me, that is an act of narcissism.

It’s a challenge for all of us because it’s a lot more work. In addition to writing reviews (which takes a considerable amount of thought and research), you have to think about ways of promoting your work and connecting with readers. For people just starting out in journalism, these things come quite easily to them. For people who have been working in more traditional models for many years, it’s a whole new ballgame—and one that many of us don’t really want to play.

David Cote:
I use it for self-promotion—to post links to my reviews and distribute my work. As far as sharing my life on social media, I’m not interested in that. I’m too busy writing. If I’m not writing for
Time Out
, I’m working on my own art. I see people incessantly tweeting about this and that, and I’m not that eager to share my life with strangers.

Richard Zoglin:
I do a little tweeting—not very much, usually just a link to a story. I’ve toyed with the idea of tweeting about shows that I can’t review. I really loved the Alan Ayckbourn play I just saw, but
Time
couldn’t accommodate a review. I’ve written about Ayckbourn before, but in this time of picking and choosing, the magazine passed on publishing a review. I did a quick tweet on the show because I was so impressed. I don’t know if that was good or bad.

Richard Ouzounian:
I absolutely do not tweet. I don’t want to enter into the trivial, mindless discussions that I see happening with it. I see what it does to J. Kelly Nestruck at the
Globe and Mail
. I see him being tempted to run off at the mouth at 140 characters about everything from the karaoke bar he’s at to what he thought about the show he just saw at intermission. That’s not what I do.

Maybe I’m an old-fashioned old fart, but I do not think theater criticism, at my level, is about dialogue. As someone who’s trained and has worked as long as I have, I have an opinion. You can disagree with that opinion. You can write letters to the editor. If you write me an email using your real name, I will answer you intelligently and respectfully every time. But I think the comments section under all the online reviews is one of the worst things that has ever happened to theater criticism. It lets trolls hide, and it’s usually the same trolls time and time again.