The Critics Say...: 57 Theater Reviewers in New York and Beyond Discuss Their Craft and Its Future by Matt Windman Read Free Book Online Page B

words. Ned Rorem has a neat line on this: “Critics of words use words. Critics of music use words.” If I’m writing about a symphony, I have to find a way to translate the event into words, but without using the kind of technical language that I might use if I were writing for musicians. There is no paraphrasable content in a symphony or a plotless ballet. But a play is about something, and it is written in words, and it usually has some kind of intellectual content. That makes writing about theater easier than writing about abstract music or a painting. There are more ways to go at it. You have more hooks to hang your hat on. But because I’ve written about art forms where verbal content is nonexistent or less important, it’s loosened up the way I perceive what happens up in a play. It causes me to be more aware of certain kinds of nonverbal aspects of a theatrical production that other critics might not notice.
    Helen Shaw: I have written about dance, and trying to explain just a movement through language is so bloody difficult. With theater, you can always hang your hat on the interplay between text and image. It’s a dialogic art. It invites us to write about it. It wants us to have a dialogue with it. You’ve been sitting in a room for two hours with these combating voices, and then you get to add your voice to the fray.
    Linda Winer: In terms of difficulty, writing about dance is somewhere in between writing about theater and writing about music. With dance, you’re writing about something abstract, but you have arms and legs to talk about, and you’ve got so many pictures that you can create in your writing. Creating pictures about what the violin may have been meaning is meaningless with music.
    Eric Grode: I once got a job offer to be a theater, dance, art, and classical music reporter and critic. I would be grotesquely underqualified for that job. In fact, I don’t know if anyone exists who can handle all those different things.

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How I Became a Theater Critic

    Matt Windman: How did you become a theater critic?
    Peter Filichia: One day in college, I was walking up a flight of stairs, and this guy I knew from high school saw me and said, “Hey, I’ve just been made editor of the school paper. I remember from high school how much you love theater. Why don’t you write reviews for us?” I had never thought about it. I didn’t know yet about press tickets. The first show I reviewed was the Broadway production of Hair . I paid with my own money to see it: $7.50 for a third row orchestra seat at a Sunday matinee.
    Then I got a freelance job working for a new publication called Boston After Dark , which was essentially the Village Voice of Boston. I was 23 years old, and like today, they wanted people with a youthful slant. Because they were just starting out, paying the writers was a struggle. And when I went to get paid, they’d always say, “We can’t pay you this week.” I gave an ultimatum and threatened to quit if they didn’t pay me. And when they didn’t pay me, I quit. Next to my marriage, it was the biggest mistake of my life. It took a while before I realized that I wouldn’t get free tickets anymore. And more importantly, my name wouldn’t be in front of the public. I vowed that if I ever got the chance to do this again, I would not blow it over money.
    Seventeen long years pass. It’s now 1987. I’m walking down the street, and on the newsstand I see TheaterWeek , volume one, number one. I immediately bought it and thought, They must be looking for writers. I went over to my girlfriend’s house and said, “I’m going to call them tomorrow, and I’m going to write for them.” She said, “You’re crazy. They’re not going to pay you any decent money. Why don’t you call up the New York Times ? They’ll definitely give you a freelance assignment.” I said, “Yes, but only every now and then. What I want is a regular gig.”
    I went to see the editor-in-chief of