Let’s assume the importance of theatre criticism as a given.

Scores of artists and virtually all the major critics of the past century or two have articulated how good critical writing nourishes the theatre. From Oscar Wilde’s famous 1890 essay defining “the critic as artist,” to the roundtable discussion this past October at New York City’s Philoctetes Center featuring Eric Bentley, Robert Brustein and Stanley Kauffmann (see page 30), the case for the value and the centrality of discourse about the art form has been surpassingly well made.

But let’s not take as a given that other item of conventional wisdom: that American theatre criticism—which I practice professionally, and thus feel licensed to comment upon—is about to wither and die.

It’s tempting to accept the end-of-criticism argument, of course, since it gets made from every available platform. Even a casual consumer of media reports or intermission conversations is likely to pick up the thread: The nation’s critics (except for a cluster of curmudgeons in NYC) have less influence these days than ever; they are the first victims of newspaper and magazine shrinkage; the bloggers-come-lately have diluted their authority; their European counterparts are their clear superiors.

Meanwhile, some of the oldest clichés about critics—that they actually hate the theatre, wish they could create it instead of just write about it, or don’t understand it a whit—remain evergreen.

I’m not saying those sentiments are entirely bunk. American theatre and theatre criticism are both facing serious challenges, and identifying the problems is the first step in solving them.

Nothing gets done, however, when frustration curdles into lazy cynicism. And when we repeat the same rosaries about criticism’s demise, that’s what our conversations are in danger of becoming. Rather than discuss how to fix what’s wrong—or highlight what might be working—we too often resort to endless, fruitless complaining. (I’m certainly guilty of this myself.)

Granted, there are pockets of positive thinking. A growing contingent of bloggers is leading a lively charge, asking sophisticated questions about the theatre, its critics and everything in between. Amid the dour talk, there also are pieces like the December cover story in Time Out New York that argued criticism isn’t dying, just changing. And, as I’ll discuss in this article, there are cities in America where critics and artists are working in tandem to reevaluate their relationships.

All of us—no matter our professions—need to help fan these efforts into a movement. If we have complaints about the critic-artist relationship, what are we going to do about it? If we see something succeeding, how are we going to validate and expand upon it? If the world of criticism is changing, what will we help it become?

This article aims both to inspire discussion about those questions and to enhance conversations (like that between Bentley, Brustein and Kauffmann) that have already begun.

With that goal in mind, American Theatre and I recently conducted a controlled experiment. In three theatrically active cities—Denver, San Francisco and Nashville—I spoke to two critics and two artists apiece, asking how their camps interact. I chose these cities because theatre folk told me the critics and artists there are reasonably engaged with one another. It’s not a matter of spreading love all around, I discovered quickly enough, but in each locale, something valuable and worth examining is definitely happening.

Maybe the people in these communities have ideas we can use—or maybe they’re progressively mirroring what we’re already doing. Whatever the case, I hope they will keep us talking—and fighting for criticism’s future.

Things to Do in Denver Right Under a Critic’s Nose

If you live anywhere near Colorado, it’s hard to avoid Denver’s influence. The Mile High City is not only experiencing a population increase—the 2000 census reported growth of almost 20 percent since 1990—but is sinking money into a massive convention center, nurturing five major sports teams and preparing to host both the first-ever National Performing Arts Convention in June and the 2008 Democratic National Convention in August.

Accordingly, the city also has a behemoth arts presence. Just consider the Denver Performing Arts Complex—a 12-acre site that houses everything from opera to ballet to classical music. The flagship Denver Center Theatre Company also performs there, mounting not-for-profit productions just a few hundred yards from the commercial touring shows produced by Denver Center Attractions. The complex is the kind of place where many Coloradans will have their first experience of live performance.

But the gorilla isn’t the only game in town. The greater Denver metropolitan area supports almost 100 theatre companies, ranging from community groups to midsized Equity houses; there are at least eight places to learn Irish dance.

Covering this array of arts activity are two major newspapers—the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News—as well as several alternative weeklies. Though the Post and the News are both published by the same umbrella group, the Denver Newspaper Agency, each paper insists that it maintains editorial independence, and each employs its own theatre writer.

John Moore, theatre critic and reporter for the Post, works overtime to insert himself into his region’s artistic life. He writes a review or feature almost every day, maintains a MySpace page for local theatre fans, and aggressively updates the Post’s own theatre site, which includes everything from reader polls to weekly podcasts to behind-the-scenes videos with local artists.

“No one at the paper is putting a gun to my head to write these profiles and stories, but if I don’t do it, who will?” Moore asks. “I consider myself one of the few people who gets to be a full-time member of the theatre community here, drawing a paycheck to cover theatre. I think that puts me in a privileged position—it’s my responsibility to disseminate as much information as I can.”

A self-preservation instinct also fuels his output. The financial hardship facing papers across the nation prompts him to reflect, “Theatre criticism is tied to what’s happening in journalism, and the trend isn’t good. We have to be in front of the multimedia trend or get left in the dust.”

As he’s generating feature content, Moore invariably gets to know some of the artists he later reviews, and the intersection between reviewing and beat reporting gives him pause. (Lisa Bornstein of the Rocky Mountain News also writes features as well as reviews.) Moore concedes, “It’s a constant concern of mine about how far you can integrate yourself into your community before someone draws an ethical line in the sand.”

He partially soothes that worry by making his readers his first priority, particularly when reviewing a show. “Sometimes, when you know you’ve gone soft and a reader sends you a letter asking why you’ve recommended a crappy play, that’s much harder to reconcile than dealing with someone’s bruised ego,” he allows.

But Moore, who has experience as an actor and high school drama teacher, insists that his ties to artists are also worthwhile, even if they collide with his efforts to keep his writing fair. “I feel like people do occasionally have to read things they don’t want to hear, but they also know I’m an advocate for the work being done,” he says.

Chip Walton, producing artistic director of Curious Theatre Company, one of Denver’s most prominent midsized companies, praises Moore’s contribution. “John Moore is everywhere and doing everything,” he says. “His engagement is exceptional.”

Walton notes that Denver-area critics are all generally supportive of what theatres are trying to accomplish, though he’s concerned about what happens when a critic has the inside information of a feature writer. “The danger that I see,” Walton explains, “is that there are different critical standards for different producing organizations. And if you have anything less than blanket standards, how is a reader supposed to discern that a four-star review for a community theatre is different than for Denver Center Theatre?”

For DCTC artistic director Kent Thompson, dealing with theatre journalists can be delicate. “I’ve always been wary of the urge to report breaking news or controversy, which is not always the healthiest thing for a theatre company,” he says. “I think the writers here often have their critical agenda working in their feature writing.”

Recently, however, Thompson has begun having off-the-record conversations with local writers about the DCTC’s work. He asserts, “The only way to keep a healthy relationship with the critical community is to maintain communication, but I think that communication sometimes needs to be off the record. I’ve been very blunt, off the record, about why shows did or didn’t succeed. That way, the critics and the artists may totally disagree aesthetically, but at least we’ll be able to better understand the choices we’re all making.”

On the other end of the spectrum sits Juliet Wittman, critic for Westword, Denver’s alternative weekly. She’s not a full-time staffer, and her job doesn’t require her to write features. She tries to remain anonymous to the theatre community and has little contact with its members. “In a way, I’m glad about that,” she says, “because if the director tells me this play is an homage to his dead grandmother, then when the lights go down, I’ll be thinking about his grandmother. I’ll have a different understanding of the event than the average audience member.”

Yet while Wittman, who also teaches writing and rhetoricat the University of Colorado-Boulder, identifies herself with the audience, she still feels she’s intertwined with theatremakers, particularly when she can provide readers with a context for a challenging or unusual show. “Sometimes I’m holding up the mirror to the theatre community, for its own benefit,” she believes. “But overall, I hope I’m adding to the vitality of theatre in my area.”

I Left My Objectivity in San Francisco

As much as in New York or Los Angeles, artists in San Francisco must deal with expectations. Many people believe that San Franciscans—and particularly its creative types—are aggressively, boisterously progressive. After all, this is the city that helped launch everything from Beats to hippies to gay rights activism.

Assumptions of radicalism are only strengthened by some of the Bay Area’s most notable theatre companies—avant-garde icons such as the San Francisco Mime Troupe, thriving since 1959, and the 40-year-old Magic Theatre, nurturer of experimental artists including Robert Woodruff, Anne Bogart and Sam Shepard.

Of course, the city’s actual theatrical life is more complex than that tidy image. Theatre Bay Area, a local performing arts coalition, boasts more than 365 member companies, which produce everything from Broadway hits to deconstructed dance.

Print coverage of this remarkably diverse scene comes from the San Francisco Chronicle, the region’s major newspaper, as well as a slew of alternative weeklies and local magazines. Plus the city has one of the country’s most listened-to National Public Radio affiliates and is the home base for major Internet media outlets such as Salon.com.

Recently, and in true counterculture fashion, the relationship between San Francisco’s theatre critics and its theatremakers has been providing an excuse to party.

Since April ’07, a group a group of San Francisco folk has hosted semi-regular “theatre salons” for artists and journalists, providing everything from food and booze to entertainment. Amidst the merriment, there’s also serious conversation about the Bay Area’s theatre scene. December’s salon, for instance, welcomed almost 40 people and focused on engaging local audiences.

“The idea is to get people from all corners of our community to eat, drink and discuss our work in a critical way,” says Mark Jackson, a Bay Area director and playwright. The cohort of organizers certainly reflects its mission—along with Jackson, the roster includes two critics, a producer, an actor and a director.

And the entire enterprise was largely the result of a bad review.

Last February, Chloe Veltman, chief critic for the alternative paper SF Weekly, slammed Jackson’s own production of his play American $uicide, saying it was “roughly as provocative as a debate in Entertainment Weekly about the best and worst dresses on Oscar night.” Veltman now says, “It wasn’t the intelligent, thought-provoking work I expect from Mark. On reflection, I was very hard and a little sarcastic—but on the other hand, I felt so damn strongly about it.”

Jackson felt just as strongly about Veltman’s remarks. “Her piece was unnecessarily personal and cynical, and I wrote Chloe and told her so,” he recalls. “I’d never done anything like that before.”

Veltman’s reponse? She invited Jackson to see a show with her. Then they went for drinks. Soon enough, they were talking about the lack of opportunity for Bay Area theatre professionals to casually hash out ideas—and the salons were born.

For Jackson, the gatherings serve a crucial purpose. “If you’re going to be critical—and this goes for artists as much as critics—you have to know your subject in detail,” he says. “If you’re a critic and you’re distancing yourself from a project, then how can you write about it in detail? If you’re an artist and you distance yourself from the critics, then how can you ever understand what they do?”

Veltman insists that for critics, that type of intimacy is not only useful but necessary. “In order for the theatre community to thrive, and for thinking about the art form to thrive, critics have to roll up their sleeves and get in there with the artists,” she argues. “If you’re not engaged, it makes for boring, cold criticism. Even if you end up with a few uncomfortable relationships, it has to be done.”

Veltman, it’s worth noting, has an extensive theatre background, having worked for companies like London’s Cheek By Jowl and studied dramaturgy at the graduate level at both Harvard and the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. Her willingness to approach artists may stem from the fact that she has already spent time working with them.

Rob Hurwitt says that’s standard in the Bay Area. Currently the theatre critic at the Chronicle, Hurwitt spent time in the ’60s performing with the Mime Troupe, and he notes that cross-fertilization occurs in almost every artistic field in town.

“Starting out as a critic and coming out of the theatre community, I was obviously reviewing a lot of people with whom I’d worked. To me, that was a tremendous advantage,” he says. “I could look at actors I knew and say, ‘Aha! I can see how he or she has grown, or been reined in, or what have you.’”

In his earliest critical days, when he was working for smaller publications, Hurwitt had frequent conversations with artists, some of whom even stormed his desk and demanded satisfaction for a bad review. Though the feedback is less regular now, he says he maintains an open-door mentality about being approached. “It’s enormously helpful, because people will always point out to you the things you may have missed, or offer you an alternative, interesting perspective,” he says.

Patrick Dooley, artistic director of the midsized Shotgun Players, feels the theatre community must offer critics its own perspective. He says, “I feel like what creates animosity toward critics is that theatre companies feel so powerless. And in order to change that dynamic, we need to reach out and make contact.”

But could all this coziness be dubbed a conflict of interest for a journalist? “Here, it’s a smaller community than in a place like New York,” Veltman reasons. “You keep running into these people and interacting with them, and to pretend you’re not would be dishonest. I do worry about the possibility of a perceived conflict of interest. But as long as I know I’m writing from a place of honesty, then I can’t really give a damn what other people think.”

On a Smaller Scale, the Tennessee Waltz

Questions about criticism change in a city like Nashville, where the theatre community is smaller and the opportunities for coverage are slim. The city is dominated by the influence of the country music industry, the Christian pop scene and the large intellectual community that surrounds Vanderbilt University. The city’s flagship theatre is the 23-year-old Tennessee Repertory Theatre, which mounts a standard repertoire of contemporary plays and classics under the leadership of executive artistic director David Alford. Nashville Children’s Theatre, the only professional company for young audiences in the state, dates back to 1931. The city’s major print media is almost monopolized by the Tennessean, a newspaper that lost its only serious competitor, The Banner, in 1998.

A few alternative papers do have strong followings, and the City Paper, a free daily, is gaining traction. But with so much competition for the public’s attention and so little room to vie for it, just spreading the word that theatre is happening can feel as necessary as analyzing a production.

So says Amy Stumpfl, a freelance writer who contributes reviews to the City Paper. “It’s more than just Steel Magnolias and Smoke on the Mountain,” she says, referring to Robert 

Harling’s Southern-flavored hit and a popular Appalachian musical. “We’ve got some people doing some very edgy work, but people don’t know about the companies. They’ll drive an hour for a [Tennessee] Titans [football] game, but they won’t even be aware there’s a show going on.” Stumpfl doesn’t always feel exhaustive critiques are her first priority. “I 

don’t have the background to offer true criticism,” she concedes with perhaps overstated modesty, “but what I love is that I am a true advocate for the arts. This community may be ready for a more academic critic in the future, but right now it’s growing. And it needs the audience to grow with it.”

Nashville dramaturg Jaz Dorsey, a frequent performer who has also at times worn a critic’s hat, sees this kind of commitment in many of the city’s theatre writers. “If I run into any of them in public, the first thing I do is start talking to them,” he says. “The guys that held these jobs previously wouldn’t do that. But you want critics who are passionate about the community and want it to excel. Right now, that’s what we have here.”

Clearly, Nashville’s theatre community could use a few more full-time journalists. At present, it has just one: Martin Brady, theatre critic for alternative weekly the Nashville Scene. “I’m the only regular voice in this town, which I don’t think is good,” Brady offers.

He’s not the only one who thinks so. Cathy Sanborn Street, executive artistic director of East Nashville’s scrappy Street Theatre Company, says, “There’s definitely not enough press here. Sometimes a single voice is the only one getting heard.”

Street, a singer and musician as well, has tried sparking conversation on her own, like when she bought a newspaper ad last August that challenged Brady’s negative review of her company’s production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. She also cites the rise of Internet writers as a hopeful trend for the city. Blogger Trudy S. Gordon, for instance, has begun reviewing shows regularly on her website, Nashville Theatre Lost and Found.

Brady wants the online surge to continue, since it will send a message that locals are hungry for more theatre writing. And he suggests theatres themselves can be crucial in upping the coverage. “The busier things get and the more productions there are to write about, the more pressure comes to bear on the newspapers to do something about it,” he says. “If editors see a depth and breadth of commitment in the theatre, then you’ll see a commensurate rise in copy.” 

Mark Blankenship is a 2006-07 American Theatre Affiliated Writer, with support from a grant by the Jerome Foundation.