 I'm Paul Dervis and I'm going to do this kind of stream of consciousness which critics for when I first was in Boston would have understood just what I meant. And I'd like to start off by saying that Bill Marks is a little humble when he says he started in the 80s because he had me on his radio show in the 70s on a day in the death of Joe Weg. And he taught me something about theater criticism in that first interview, the first time I met him. I had just done Joe Wharton's Ruppery on the Stair and I had just opened up a day in the death of Joe Weg and Bill asked me on and he said, it's going to be a lot of fun. It's like the first time I've been on radio we're both still having pimples on our faces and stuff. And he said, so just relax, have a good time. And I said, great. And we went on the air and Bill turned to me and said, so Paul Dervis, what is your obsession with the death of the American family? And it was an eye-opening experience, but it taught me a lot. It taught me a lot about how to open an idea which critics do. In the early 80s, I'm going to talk a little bit about myself in this simply because I both run theater companies for 40 years and been off and on a theater and film critics in 75. So I've been on both sides of the fence. In the early 80s, for example, when I opened up my theater in the Alley Theater in 1979, we had $400 in our pocket, we had another rent, and an opening night we had Elliot Norton and Arthur Friedman coming to a show for a bunch of 23-year-olds who had never done this before. That would never happen today. That would never happen today. In 1979, you had a series of theaters that were opened up by kids that had just come out of college who, if they succeeded, great. If they failed, so what? You know, they were 23 and they declared bankruptcy. No big deal. You had the real paper, the Phoenix, the Globe, the Herald, the Boston Ledger, the Cambridge Chronicle all coming to your show. And you know what? That's what allowed a theater to succeed or fail. That's gone. When Bill talks about theaters or the papers doing features, he's being very kind when he says features, because it was always considered puff pieces, right? You know, a puff piece would be written before a show opened so that the world knew that we were here, but the show was reviewed and succeeded based on the critics. And I swear that's a truth, because all these small theaters, I'm sure, still to some extent, have really no money for advertisements. So if you don't have the critics, you don't have publicity. And that, in the world of New England theater, specifically greater Boston theater in the late 70s, early 80s, I think, and I agree with Bill on this, it was a bit of a golden age, at least for like small experimental spaces. You know, when people were doing shows that you had never heard of before, working with playwrights who had never really been exposed, and they were succeeding or failing, in a lot of ways, based on the fact that like Arthur Friedman may come in and say, and I loved Arthur, I just loved Arthur, because I think that he was incredibly a servant, but a remarkably funny man. And not only did he get audiences in, if he hated your show, it was just as good as if he loved your show, because people wanted to see what that was about. And when you finish the first paragraph, and this is a real one, Bill's too, for that matter. I've known Bill for what, 40-some-one years. And I love the man, and he has panned me many a time. But I love that because he's always brought me an audience. And I know that what I write, and I've been writing really, since even before I was directing, for magazines and newspapers, I know now, and Bill and Arthur taught me this, you come in, and even as a playwright, you come in and you grab an audience. And if you could do that in the first paragraph, you're halfway home. It doesn't really matter. Joe Loutman called Transfiguration of Ben O'Bumpy the worst place you'd ever seen. And when Albert O'Reilly was to write this, that's his choice. But when Paul Durbs decides to direct it, it's time to call for censorship. And we went from like 10 people a night to a Pat House. I used to pick up Arthur and drive him to the show to make sure he would make it. But that's lost today. And I look at it as an example. The last show that I did, which is in Maine, the critic from the Bangor paper got paid less to do review my show than the Boston Ledger paid me to do Diary of a Madman in 1977. It's appalling, appalling. And don't kid yourself. Papers write reviews for theaters. It even films that take out ads. That's what they're doing. And if you don't take an ad out, you're not going to get a review. People like, in my mind, and I work with Bill, I work for Bill, there's nothing I appreciate more than what ArtsFuse is doing, because it's like a salmon swimming upstream. Bill tells me, don't go see this film. It's getting reviewed by everybody. Go see this film. Nobody's seen it. And something that's hugely important. He's absolutely right. Sometimes it frustrates me, but he's absolutely right. It's what needs to be covered. We've lost that. Now you look at a show going up, a play going up. And what you see is bloggers writing about it. And what they're really writing is what Bill was talking about. They're really writing features. They talk about themselves in the theater. They talk about their friends in the show. And it's like, I read a blog. It doesn't make me want to see a show one way or the other. I have no idea what that show's about. I read Bill's review. I read Arthur's review. Even Elliot North, I read his review. And I said, oh, I want to see the show because they've told me right off the top, this is happening. This is something that's happening here. I don't feel that in the blog. Bloggers, I don't know how many of you blog. So I don't want to, I don't. I'm bad with that. What? I'm sorry. All I'm saying is it's basically hanging a shingle and writing a review. And I look at it and I think it's important to the theaters to have bloggers because if they don't, they don't have any publicity. On the other hand, if you're getting your audiences from Facebook, which so many theaters right now are doing, social media has become the way to grow your audience. The problem with that is when you do theater, I believe what you want is people who are walking in and not knowing you. It's not a vanity production. They may come. They may not to the next show. It's not the same 300 people that are coming because then basically you're doing your living room. And if you're doing that, you know, I don't see that you're an artist because you want to have a voice. You want people to hear your voice. And newspapers used to create that. And that's a lot. They're not reading newspapers anymore. I know. Well, newspapers are dying. That's correct. You're right. Nobody's reading newspapers. How can I place a judgment on how people come in? I'm in the lobby. I know why people are coming to shows. I don't understand what you mean. I'm not judging who's coming in. I'm saying I'm a playwright as well as a director. And I know this for a fact. I'd like people who don't know me to hear my work, to hear my voice. Now, I don't know if other writers feel that way. Well, I do because I work with almost nothing but original works. I work with playwrights out of New York and Toronto, Montreal. But I do know that the key to most writers' hearts is that they have something to say, and they want the world to hear it. And I do believe that 30 years ago, that was a possibility. I believe it's really hard to do that now. That's my feelings about that. I want bloggers to come to my shows. I do. I want to get depressed. But I so miss the critic coming in and having a critical eye on the piece. I learn something from a critic who knows who has a breath of knowledge of the field that they're talking about. I listen to a bill or an author or an alien Norton. And I feel like I learned something as a director. I learned something as a writer. I don't necessarily feel that if I'm reading something on Facebook. And I think that one of the comments that Bill made that I agree with is seven out of 10 pieces that you read about a show are positive. I don't believe that was the case in 1985. I believe that you are just as likely to see something that a critic said, this does not work, and this is why it doesn't work. And I'll tell you this, as in any other field, I think you learn so much more from hearing that. You don't learn a whole lot from Man Sadie, saying you're wonderful. That's my feelings. And I'm expressing my feelings. Anyway, I would just like to finish off by saying that in my mind, art's views is creating something that if it's not going to be the way of the future, then there will be, in my mind, the death of real criticism. So I really applaud what Bill's doing. And I love being part of it. Thanks.