The Critics Say...: 57 Theater Reviewers in New York and Beyond Discuss Their Craft and Its Future (43 page)

Alexis Soloski:
I tell students it’s a marvelous hobby, but I do not encourage them to pursue it as a career.

Leonard Jacobs:
Diversify your talent and skills. You’re ultimately a better writer if you know something about the world above and beyond the latest revival of
The King and I
. When I was unemployed, I made a conscious decision to broaden my palette of writing. I wrote about business, music, art, architecture, and dance. I’m not necessarily trained in any of those things, but I’d go to a museum, see an exhibit, do some research, and try to write intelligently about it.

Young theater critics need to think broadly. Can they write a news article? Can they do a Q&A? Can they write an op-ed? Can they write about sports? Can they write about the law or politics? Do they have any interests or areas of expertise other than theater? What else can they do to become a more sellable commodity in the world of journalism? If all they want to do is write reviews, that’s a niche within a niche—the larger niche being arts journalism, the smaller niche being theater journalism.

As for established theater critics who have worked at a newspaper for 10, 20, or 30 years and suddenly find themselves without a job, I don’t know what they’re going to do. I don’t know how you turn around when you’re 50 or 55 years old and you’ve been a working theater critic for 25 years. What do you do? I really have no idea. I know many of them. If that’s you, and if you’re not of retirement age, I think you’re fucked.

Charles Isherwood:
The chances of forging a full-time career as a critic are dwindling by the minute, but I would certainly encourage young people to study criticism because it’s a way of developing writing skills and analytical skills, which are important in many realms of culture and business. I would just caution them that no matter how passionate you are, there’s no guarantee that you will be able to have a career in writing about theater.

Ben Brantley:
I don’t want to be downright discouraging. I find it heartening that there are still people who want to be theater critics. There’s still a romance about it, at least for a few kids out there. You should see all you can, read all you can, and get your words out there however you can. Today, someone can start posting on their own online in way that I couldn’t. But in terms of practical career advice, I don’t really know. What can I tell them? Where do you go?

David Rooney:
I’d say, “Back off, Eve Harrington!” But seriously, I would advise them to think very carefully about how much they want to do this because it’s really a tough field. It would be very hard to make a living out of it. There is a lot of bravado in young people who sign up for journalism courses and think, I’m going to be a critic. But it’s becoming harder and harder. I don’t know whether there will eventually be a turnaround. I don’t have that kind of foresight.

I would tell them to think about having other skills to supplement criticism. You can be lucky and land a great gig as a chief film or theater critic at the
New York Times
, the
Washington Post
, the
Wall Street Journal
, or the
New Yorker
and you can make that pay, but that handful of dream jobs is tiny. More and more, newspaper owners are looking at those jobs and thinking, Do we really need this as a salaried position? A lot of the second-tier newspapers have already made those cuts.

I think the people who are going to make a go of it are the ones who are able to do other things. Don’t just be a purist and say, “I want to be a critic specializing in only this discipline.” You have to be able to write features, profiles, and non-review think pieces. I suspect both the successful upstarts and the survivors are going to be the ones who are savvy about using social media to enhance their personal brand as writers, which I have to confess I’m not very enterprising about.

Howard Shapiro:
I don’t think criticism is dying. It’s changing. The whole nature of it is changing. It will survive in some form because people want it. I teach an arts criticism course once a year in the journalism department at Temple University. Out of the 20 students in each class, at least five are already getting paid for writing criticism. They’re not making a lot, but they’re getting some money.

David Cote:
Read, read, read. See, see, see. Write, write, write. Consume as much theater criticism as you can. See as much as you can. Start a blog. Get free theater tickets. But don’t expect anyone to pay you for it. I would say it’s next to impossible to find a good paying job as a theater critic, so you might want to think more broadly about journalism. Maybe you want to be an arts journalist who has the opportunity to write theater criticism as well. To be a specialist is not necessarily a desirable thing anymore. You want to be a generalist. Maybe you want to do arts journalism and build a career that way. But again, getting a staff position on a paper or magazine is extremely hard, so prepare for many years of freelance work, not making money, and hoping a job will open up.

John Simon:
I would say to forget about it because in most cases, there are no jobs available. Of course, it’s already a bad sign if you’re asking whether to do it or not. The only people who have a chance are the ones who don’t ask. They go ahead and do it. There has to be a very strong propulsion to do it.

Helen Shaw:
I tell students to start writing. I give them a list of places to try submitting their stuff to. I think writing is very useful. And if a student spends five years writing theater criticism, there will be zero downside. There are actual physiological benefits to writing and engaging and thinking in that way. But I’m very upfront about how I have to work several jobs to support my theater criticism habit.

Michael Schulman:
I don’t know if I could wholeheartedly recommend to a young person today to pursue theater criticism unless the model is changed to give people more opportunities. That’s not to say I don’t encourage people to follow their interests and passions. But if a college student came up to me, I would say to beware that theater criticism is a dwindling natural resource. I would say that it’s very unlikely that you’re going to be able to do it as a full-time job. There are places to do it, but not a lot. I would tell them to diversify. Don’t put all your eggs into the basket of being a theater critic because your survival depends on being able to write about other things and adapting to what there is a market for. I know so few people who are able to support themselves as just theater critics or theater journalists. I’ve never even tried to do that.

Frank Rizzo:
Just do it. When I started out, I had to crawl my way to the middle, but you could have an impact pretty quickly now if you’re clever and if you can build an audience. There are more possibilities now. What I’d like to think is that younger critics will have even more ideas on how they can connect to a larger audience out there. The potential for a new era of theater criticism is there. That’s the good news in all of this terrible news.

Steven Suskin:
I would dissuade them. It’s great if you love it, but train yourself to do something that will pay a living wage. If you can supplement that with theater criticism, that’s fine.

Richard Zoglin:
Just start writing, even if it’s for nothing, and try to establish your name and reputation. If you’re good, somehow or other, you will be rewarded for it. I have to believe that. You have to get your stuff published somewhere and hope that somehow a way will materialize where you can make money at it.

Rob Weinert-Kendt:
Write as much criticism as you can, in whatever venue you can, even if it’s on your own blog. There’s no barrier to just starting to do it. I would caution them from getting ahead of themselves and thinking that they’re professionals and sending articles to editors. They shouldn’t expect to make a living at it. If you really are passionate about making a living at it, you might have to think about covering something more diverse than just theater, or doing more than just criticism, like becoming a theater academic. For example, Tom Sellar is now the new
Village Voice
critic, and he teaches at Yale. If you look at many playwrights, the way they make a living is having an academic gig, and then they write their plays. We’re in a similar boat.

Robert Faires:
I got so much encouragement from people who had been professionals before me, and I got such a leg-up on what being a professional theater critic meant from them. I would love to think that people are going to be following in my footsteps. I would love to help them in the same way. I just don’t know what the profession will look like in the next 15 or 20 years. I don’t think I could send a young person over to a daily newspaper in this or any other city and say, “This is where you get your start.” There will always be freelancers writing about theater for my paper for as long as it exists, but I don’t know if that’s a stepping stone into the profession or simply one more aspect of a freelancer’s life.

Adam Feldman:
I would warn them about the economic challenges and the rapidity with which the landscape is shifting. The professional model of journalism changes all the time as the methods of media distribution change, and we have no way of anticipating how that will continue to change in the future. It does seem less stable than it used to be. On the other hand, we don’t know how many hidden possibilities will open up in ways that could be very productive, very satisfying, and maybe even financially advantageous.

Jesse Green:
I’d try to discourage them, as I try to discourage anyone who expresses a desire to go into the arts, but I don’t really mean it. I say it as a kind of test. You should become a writer only if you must because it won’t be easy. Beyond that, you’re really asking what kind of skills someone should have or acquire and how to acquire them. You have to learn to write well. And you have to develop an interest in the world that is larger than your interest in the theater. If you do not have an interest that is larger than the theater, you cannot be interesting in the theater. Therefore, don’t major only in theater or theater criticism. Have a profound and deep understanding of literature, or another field, or several other fields. Read great criticism of the past. Pursue a valuable life. And, back to the beginning, learn to write. That’s the most important thing—and the hardest.

John Lahr:
It’s like when people come up to you and say, “I want to be a writer.” What do you say to that? You say good luck. If you’re lucky enough to ride those rapids and go down the stream without tipping over, it’s a fabulous ride, but the marketplace is going to test you very quickly. If you can’t make a life or a career doing it, you should stop. The battle won’t be worth the prize. There’s no sin in stopping. You can move on to something else. Having drama criticism is necessary, but it’s such a small field. I could never in good faith say to someone who wants to be a theater critic, “Keep at it and you’ll make it someday.” I don’t think anybody can really make it now. I just don’t think the opportunity is there, and I don’t think it’s going to get any better.

Maybe the way to do it is to do something else. Write a biography. Follow a theme through someone’s plays. If that gets noticed, you’ve got a calling card. I don’t think that just submitting a series of short opinions to a publication will get you anywhere. I was incredibly lucky because I wrote a biography of my father when I was 27 years old, and it was on front page of the Sunday
Times
. I had a calling card. If I didn’t have that, this whole thing wouldn’t have happened.

Marilyn Stasio:
Why would I dissuade them? If it didn’t work out, they would still know a hell of a lot about theater. Maybe they could do something else in the theater. There’s nothing wasted when you throw yourself with a passion into something that you love. If that’s what you love, if that’s what you want to pour your life savings, work, heart, and soul into, then do it. Don’t censor yourself from something you love because you think you’ll never get hired. That’s sad. Do it anyway. Something will come out of it.

Terry Teachout:
I never recommend to anyone who’s interested in working in journalism to shoot for a job like the one I have. My experience, which dates all the way back to the 1970s, is not relevant to a millennial who is trying to figure out how to make a living in the arts. I tell them that if this is something they want to pursue, they should make sure they know more than one discipline, more than one branch of the arts, so that their potential value will be greater than if all they know about is theater. That’s already a good thing for theater critics because theater encompasses all of the arts.

Beyond that, I give them the usual professional advice. Seek every opportunity to publish, whether paid or not. Practice your instrument. Make art. Get involved. Get your hands dirty in the making of art. Find out what it takes to put a performance on. Find out what it feels like to go onstage. It doesn’t have to be theater, but it needs to be something. You really have to put yourself on the line. Otherwise, you’re not going to have the standing that you need in order to sit in judgment, insofar as that’s what we do. That’s more important than anything else. It’s even more important than the large body of knowledge that’s central to being a critic. You can fuse that experiential knowledge with your knowledge of whatever art form you’re writing about. You ought to get yourself in the position where somebody’s reviewing you. Then you’ll know what it feels like when you’re on the other side of the typewriter.

Zachary Stewart:
Be as honest and insightful as you can without alienating your editors and the people signing your paycheck. You need to make rent, but you also don’t want to trade away your credibility because once you do, you can never have it back.

David Finkle:
I would tell them to see as much theater as they can and write about it. Send it to newspapers they’d like to write for. You never know when an opening will pop up. Look at the Roger Ebert story. He was working as a sports writer at the
Chicago Sun-Times
. They lost their movie critic and said, “How would you like to review movies?” You never know.