 Hello, welcome to Theater Beyond Twitter, a conversation between these two gentlemen here who have actually never met until yesterday, but they have exchanged a considerable conversation on social media, and we'll take it from there. This is the beautiful Meade Center for American Theater here in Washington. Welcome to all of you worldwide on live streaming. The live stream is at livestream.com backslashnewplay, and as soon as this event is over, it can be reiterated. It'll be available immediately for anyone who missed it or if you came in the middle. My name is Jim O'Quinn. I'm the editor-in-chief- I think they're here at the beginning. They can't come in the middle. Well, that's just what they can, but other people might. So I'm the editor-in-chief of American Theater Magazine, and I'll sort of be interceding in the ongoing conversation between these two well-informed and very opinionated guys. I'm sure in this room they really need very little introduction to you, but I've been conscripted to do it, so let me introduce Howard Sherman. Howard, I know each other mainly from looking at each other across crowded dinner lunch and rooms. He represents the American Theater Wing, and I represent American Theater. But in fact, he has had nearly three decades of experience at such institutions as the Omeo Theater Center Jiva, GoodSpeak Musicals, Hartford Stage, the Manhattan Theater Club and Westport Country Playhouse. Now he's a bit more independent as an arts administrator with a particular focus on communications, marketing, and branding. Peter, whose primary credit has just become one of the dozen most influential theater critics in the U.S., as declared by American Theater Magazine last month. I think it was the universe. The universe, as it was. But as you know, he graduated from the New York Times to becoming the head theater critic of the Washington Post, and I'm sure you all know his work. It was interesting to me. I confess I don't Twitter, but I did read that Howard said at one point in this Twitter conversation, I see my role in the theater ecosystem as evangelist, not critic, which I thought was an interesting comment, and Peter said, and another point, we're journalists, as critics he said, we're journalists not members of the theater community. So why don't you guys explain how you came to this Twitter conversation. The first place, not knowing each other, and what the implications are. The short version is I saw him say something on Twitter that I thought was preposterous. I don't remember the first, and it seemed to happen with some regularity. What's your position? I guess I'm a bit of a masochist, so this was like theatermatch.com for me. I loved the fact that Howard, I knew Howard from, I didn't know him at all, Howard. I was totally, totally disarmed by the idea that someone would just call me on what he thought was my baloney. I think that what has happened to me, I've been tweeting for about five or six months as a result of Allie Houseworth, who is then the communications director of Allie Mammoth imploring, sort of suggesting to me that this is a world I needed to get involved in. And I found rather than feeling threatened and overwhelmed by the idea that people had their own opinions and could toss them back at me, I was kind of dazzled by it. And I felt kind of in that equalizing, the exchange that happens on Twitter, and for those of you who don't use Twitter, it will be a little bit of a mystery to you what we're talking about. But for those who do, there's a wonderful exchange that goes on in ways that were not happening to me in my position as the theater critic for The Washington Post. You tend to become cocooned in these jobs, and you tend to think that you need to retreat from a community in order to cover it to some degree, to have the distance to be able to render what you think are informed judgments about the quality of plays. And what happened to me was in the course of doing this and having people come back at me and say to me, you know, what are you talking about? Or, you know, I like this, I don't like that, and you like this, and you don't like that. I found that it made me less defensive about what I do. It made me feel more receptive to the idea that there were people out there who were feeling frustrated or angry that this seemed like such a monolithic process of somebody shooting lightning bolts down from the mountaintop. And at the same time, I'm aware that mainstream media, that the newspapers like The Washington Post are no longer occupying a soul's peak on the top of the mountaintop, that we're in a process of learning how to share all this. So for that long-winded reason, I was intrigued when Howard basically said, you know, you're a jerk. I thought it was a good opportunity to explore this new dimension through him and him taking a very strong point of view opposed to some of the things that I think. There's a weird phenomenon. I started out as a publicist and I refer to myself as a recovering press agent. But for some reason when I started, and I was very young when I started working as a publicist, I decided I was never going to couch out of the press. I was never going to treat them as if what they think is right all the time. I was there yes to help them. I was there to get them to my theater. I was there to get them to write articles about what we were doing but that I was never going to subsume my own opinion to theirs regardless of what expertise they may have. So first online and then frankly the conversation here today is I've never been afraid of critics. And the fact is in most cases people within a given theater community who are covered by someone are always having the back of their mind. I need to curry favor with this individual and I don't want to challenge this individual. I think there is greater benefit from challenging the assumptions of those who cover theater, whether they are a critic or a reporter, than from simply allowing them to do what they do from an eye to a tower. So again the idea that Peter would put himself into a public forum that would potentially allow himself to be attacked if people chose to although again if you don't know Twitter you can just you can block them and you'll never see it again. But that there was a willingness to engage I thought was really interesting and the fact is we did probably four or five times purely I was on, he was on, he said something, I said something back and suddenly we'd go for 30 or 40 minutes on that time. And the other people would join in some of them were here in this room and in fact the last time we got into this, hi first draft, the last time we got into this which was when we could go Friday there were in addition to the two of us 22 other people got involved in that conversation. And if there can be, and it was a mix of fans, theater professionals, there was a second critic who joined us from Denver who didn't say a lot but we knew that John Ward was out there because there were a couple of comments from him. And if you can truly have a simultaneous cross-country national conversation about theater on an impromptu basis you know that's really powerful. And so while we'll probably be bigger about some stuff today I think this is enormously healthy for the theater and I do applaud Peter not only for being on Twitter but for coming on stage today in the community that he covers and really be open about what his place is as somebody who covers theater because I will say fundamentally because often when I get into these conversations people end up assuming I don't like critics and I don't like the press. I like anybody who wants to pay more attention to theater and to help theater get more attention. And it is the arts journalists at whatever publication or media that they are at who are advocating for coverage. We may not always like what they have to say but they are fighting for their job. They want to be in that paper. They want coverage and they want space to say what they want to do and we want that as much as they did. I didn't think the Oprah moment would come so early. I appreciate that. I don't think it is kind of ironic to think how brave he is to come out to talk to people who read his reviews. To some degree it is lovely to think that people would come out and would be curious enough to want to talk about what reviewing is about and what the critics function is and where this is all going and where we are all going together in the theater. So for me it is not, I don't feel like I had to do three weeks of therapy to come and talk to you. I felt as if that will follow. I felt really that it was, there aren't these Twitter I have to say has allowed me to see that we all need to be talking about these things and we have no way to do it. We have very few organs and the space is drawing up in print media. I mean that is going by by and that is not coming back. So we need to figure out, all of us have to figure out where this is going, how are we going to absorb information about the arts, this vital part of our lives that seems to be getting shorter and shorter shrift. And so it is a big conversation. It is not just about two guys who don't share the same point of view. Speaking of means of communications, you in the room at the end of each row, there is a stack of dope cards and pins. And please at any point in this conversation write your own questions down, signed or unsigned and hand them here to Chad. And there are people in the room who will collect these and you can participate in that way as well. I want to tag on because it is somewhat a Washington specific thing and let's get to some red meat for this thing. I don't know how many of you are aware, but earlier this week, Michael Kaiser, the president of the Kennedy Center, wrote a piece for the Huffington Post in which he wrote of being scared of all of these voices on the internet that now have the opportunity to voice their opinion and suggested that people would be confused by these amateurs and that this was leading to the death of legitimate criticism. And I have to say I disagree with him heartily. I would love to sit him down and teach him how to use Twitter. I would come back from New York on my own time to do it because the fact is what I love is that not just Twitter, Facebook, email, blogging, anything in the internet is creating a democratization of the critical voice. It's a phrase I use a lot, which is that we all have opinions. I can't imagine anyone sitting in this room right now who doesn't have an opinion about theater and about the theater that they see until the rise of the internet, popularly about 15 years ago, you could share that opinion on the telephone, by letter, or by the people you talked to. Now you have the opportunity to broadcast that. When everyone is a broadcaster, it doesn't diminish both the incredible reach that Peter has or any critic has in print or on television, but it allows everybody's voice to be heard. I think that's fantastic. And I am concerned when the head of major institutions who are seen as ambassadors and experts are suggesting that there's danger in allowing the audience to have more of a voice. Don't you understand, though, his terror a little bit? If you're the head of a huge organization that has to sell tons of tickets and you have a way of thought to do that, the idea that you no longer have a voice or a set of voices that you can point to as authorities who can help you sell them in quote ads, for example. If you need to like refer to what Sidney Steinberg on Huckabee Street thought of your latest production, there are a thousand of those people. How does one decide? I'm just saying from his point of view, don't you think he's got a kind of a worry? I think the fact is the world is constantly changing. We have to adapt to it. I remember with great thrill and excitement when Hartford Stage, where I worked for eight years in the 80s and early 90s, got its first fax machine. I mean, that was revolutionary. Everything's revolutionary. I tell a story, and this may be meaningless to you, but I'll tell it very fast. In the mid to late 1980s, most organizations, arts organizations, not for profits, all were told they had to start getting into desktop publishing because desktop publishing was going to allow them to create supporting materials, collateral materials, beyond their big fancy brochure, and they were going to be able to do it for so much less money and it was going to just save everybody. And the net result was that for a period of four or five years was some of the worst graphic design you've ever seen coming out of any of these organizations. People didn't understand that desktop publishing was merely a different set of tools. You still had to be a designer to use it well. That is what social media is. All of these things, whether you use them or whether you read about them or whether you only saw the social network. Facebook was founded, I believe, in 2004. Twitter was founded in 2005. Here we are in 2011, and we have TV news and print newspapers telling you what was seen and heard on these and on blogs, which certainly came about a little bit earlier. They are new tools. The message, the strategy, is still the same. You have to adjust to the new tools because if that's where the adoption is going to resist them, well I'll quote Star Trek because this is a geeky conversation, resistance is futile. That's true enough, but you have to acknowledge that the social media, the electronic revolution has undermined publications and particularly newspapers, and arts coverage is suffering in that way from numbers. The question of professional authority is not one that you can simply dismiss in that television undermined radio. It doesn't mean radio is dead. The television was supposed to undermine the movies. The movies are okay. I agree with you that our traditional modes of journalism are not going away, but they're changing and we don't know where it's all going in that we don't know where the financing and the professionalism and the actuality is going to be, and we're in a tremendous time of transition. I have to say, I'll tell you something, I think there's still going to be a need for conversation starters and lightning rods, and I do think that that's why I'm not so threatened by the idea, Frank Ridge did a piece a couple of weeks ago where he said arts criticism is basically dead because the truism has come to pass, everyone is a critic, but what's still needed is context. You still need voices of people who are going to start by saying, this is good or this is bad, and here's why. That's not going to change. Basically on Twitter, half of the traffic is reacting to what somebody in the media has said. That may change as the media shrinks, as these monolithic media entities dissipate, but for the time being, and I think if you get out there and you become, if your voice stays strong on all these platforms, you have a chance to remain an important part of the conversation. So maybe that's where it's going to migrate, maybe you will start reading reviews, you're starting to think it'll be Twitter as opposed to the Washington Post someday. Let's not endlessly discuss the medium, let's talk about theater. Let's not, let's talk about theater a little bit. I was interested to see that you two disagreed on the idea of theaters following their stated missions. Peter said that he had no particular interest in a theater's mission as a consumer of art. And you, Howard, said that that was a primary interest to you. What, what, what did you mean? I hear this, you know, one of the things that, one of the conversations, and I don't know how many people here are actually, a theater, how many people here are actually work at a theater in Washington? I mean, and, and and by the way, how many people here, I'm just curious, I know that you can't see this if you're watching this from Egypt, but how many people here follow Twitter? Oh, more than enough. Okay, just curious. This started with one of many conversations we had, and I think there is a, there is a disconnect between what maybe I think and what some maybe members of the audience care about and what the people who run non-profit institutional theaters really care about. And one of those things for me was this idea of mission. I said something like, you know, they were talking about this in the context of the Shakespeare theater company doing Fela. And this seemed so out of character and he basically said, I don't see why, how a classical Shakespeare company puts on a contemporary musical about a Nigerian singer-activist who pioneered the Afrobeat. And the truth of the matter is there is no connection, essentially. And I said who cares? I mean, for me, the idea of a theater having a mission is is something for the people in the room who created that statement to think, to care about. As a theater goer, I care what's on the stage. I care what you show me and if it's good, I don't really care. I don't think about, hmm should they be doing this? Because it's not in their mission statement. I just don't think that's an important part of the process and I have found sometimes that the best things I see are theater companies that are surprising me by not doing what they've done all along. What they've said is their mission. And I think that we get caught up I think that theaters get caught up before we came here today, I read I went online and I read the mission statements for about 25 theaters and there is not a theater in this country whose mission is not to inspire, motivate, exhort, enthrall people of this country and to do excellent work and to be diverse and to do new work and classical work. I mean, it's like it's everybody's mission so it seemed to me a silly thing to get hung up on. I don't think audiences particularly care what theater they're in when they're seeing something great. I think audience is hunger for you in the theater to do great things for us and we'll come. We'll come no matter where it is if we can find out about it and you don't charge us an arm and a leg every time we do it, that's what's important. I mean to me an important mission statement would be we're only charging $15. That's a mission statement to me. A mission statement to me is not we're going to delight you and make you happy and you're going to have a better life because you came to our theater. Everybody thinks that. Tell them why it's wrong. I believe our moderator has an opinion and I may not actually jive with exactly what Jim feels about this. I was looking at it from a couple of perspectives and by no means do I wish to beat up on the Shakespeare theater. They're a great company. I was experiencing cognitive dissonance. It just seemed confusing to me and I don't attend a lot of theater here in DC but I'm certainly aware of what goes on. What surprised me was not simply that the show was being done but that it was the launch of a commercial tour and at the time that we had this conversation one of the responses in the conversation, I don't know if it was Peter or someone else who joined us said well it's not a show that could play commercially and the irony was very shortly thereafter it was announced that it would be returning to Washington as a commercial tour and Fella has done that it did that in London as well it played at the National it had its limited run and then it came back as a commercial run. To me the issue of mission is not the generic statement and yes there's too many and part of the reason they become generic is because organizations don't want to have to say we're about this because then that's something they're measured by. But I do think especially in communities where there's a multiplicity of theaters having people have some understanding of what you are there to do and especially if you have in your name an explanation of the kind of work you do it's not that it matters that night but it matters over the lifespan of a company the greatest thing that should be happening for institutional theaters I'm not talking about commercial theater at all or touring houses is that work is viewed in the context of a larger body of work commercial theater is when you go you see a show and you like it or you don't like it these institutions were founded in order to provide homes for artists with different you know different focuses, different priorities they can be very general in what they do the greatest thing that I think critics can do and journalists can do is not treat every artistic event at institutional theaters as discrete events but understand them in the context of the institution and in order to do that there needs to be some understanding of what the organization's goals are and so it's not about yours etched above you know neither rain nor snow nor sleet I mean the post office you know is burdened by that etched above its doors in New York City I'm not even kidding so it's not about the big declaration but it is about understanding why the company is there what the company wants to do and at the moment I'm not sucking up but I'll say Molly has set out at this institution a very clear definition of what she wants it to be and certainly the new play as part of that is very very clear how arena fits in the ecosystem of theater here in Washington in relation to the Shakespeare theater in relation to woolly mammoth and I'm just trying to prove that I do know what's going on I gave him a primer understanding what each of those institutions is for and about mentally can matter in press it can matter to the press the press who communicate to audiences how it affects your marketing how it affects your fundraising I think that that filters through it's not about the words but in the absence of defining an organization the organization defining itself the audience will define the organization as they see fit and they don't always understand what the organization is there to do you know interestingly arena stage said they were the theater American voices, American plays and I saw this terrific production of Molière here I saw a very interesting interpretation of Brecht's a man's a man here I mean and sorry Molly I'm just saying that that I'm just saying that you know I don't know that it didn't cause any you know it doesn't I don't think anybody you know that weren't ticketing outside the theater and also I don't I do think I mean not that we can get caught up in this but of course you want to follow you want to track the progress of a theater it's the most exciting thing for me is watching the growth of a small company in this town become a more firmer part of the soil here and that has happened several times whether it was Sinetic Theater which is a very movement based and very quirky company or if it's a company like Forum which is doing interesting plays out in Silver Spring now I mean there are things that happen and you want to chart the growth of those places but I'm not so sure that as members of the community anyone is really following you know is trying to figure out what larger thing this company is trying to say but this is you know I think we should I don't know if we want to go you know I'm not so sure I mean I think that's not I think we're but that's just me sort of trying to understand you understand it on a plateau of what are people going to like going to as opposed to you know I think whatever that larger about continuing this if you just allow me I think you know a mission about new plays and whether it's arena whether it's any company that does a great deal of new work the idea that people come to understand that new work not risky in the sense of oh it's dangerous and people are going to be shocked risky in the fact that it's an inexact process and sometimes everything comes together and sometimes it doesn't and believing in the idea that there must be new play and that a theater has that mission should allow that theater the freedom to not succeed every time and not be ultimately beaten up or castrated or lose funding for doing this I think that's true I think that's an easier that's easy to say if you're not laying out 95 bucks to see the play I mean in other words I think there is a component you're compact with the theater and I've seen many people get alienated from this new play idea when they feel like they're not seeing something that was ready to be seen let me ask you something about money because this comes up which is you don't pay for your theater tickets I rarely pay for my theater tickets because I've managed to hustle good jobs that give me access but if you're a critic why should the cost of the ticket matter it doesn't I mean that's not you bring it up well because I'm saying that it's easy for me to say but I don't think it's easy if you're somebody who's trying to support what's going on in the community and has to lay out this money I can't let a company off the hook just because they're trying new things yes you've got to give some breath of understanding to the fact that you want God you want new things to happen but what I'm saying is yes I think actually it would be a healthier thing just the camera is going to record that I think it would be healthier if we did pay for every ticket I think it would be healthier maybe for my sense of distance from what I'm seeing but it wouldn't be healthier for the theater I mean for the Russian Post I mean it would be very expensive and frankly the problem is not so much we would just make more choices about what we saw I think because we wouldn't be able to afford to see everything and the complaint would be from the theater companies you're not coming to see everything please take these tickets so it's a cycle we're on but what I'm trying to say is I don't try to evaluate a play based on how much they're charging very often I don't even know but what I am saying is that I sympathize with people so to see a lot of things and have to sacrifice I mean it's a big sacrifice in some cases the amounts of money that it costs to see plays in Washington and it's probably a reason that more I talked for several years at GW it's the main reason that kids didn't go to see more theater I don't think it's unique to Washington theater is a labor intensive business that gets expensive as the world gets more expensive so but I always wonder with critics because there always seems to be this point in the conversation where critics first of all just want to talk about you know they write what they feel they're writing for themselves they're writing their opinion and then they start talking about sort of this populist idea of is it worth it and should people put out the money and everything else and I feel like either you're a consumer in which case you should report and say you'll have a great time even if you hate it or leave money out of the equation and just say what your opinion is and people can make their own decisions whether they like you or not that's a perfect world that doesn't exist you're asked to be both you're asked to be both a consumer reporter in a sense and an artistic sort of evaluator you can't the two just if you ignore one or the other you're advocating your responsibility it doesn't always fit it's a lot different when you're evaluating a new play at studio theater by a British playwright and they're trying something new then if you're doing the return visit of Jersey boys obviously those are apples and oranges you're going to clearly you understand that there's a pure a pure commercial intent in one than the other but that doesn't mean you send people to the Terrell McCranny play just because it may be a itself a more idealistic altruistic experience they're still going to have to pay 50 bucks to see that show so you balance these things that's what you have to do that's what the good critics do I think they don't feel good when people feel betrayed by a review and they feel like it's overly praised they go and they feel as if they've been had and your credibility suffers as a result and the credibility of reviewers suffers as a result and it's why people turn to other forms the democratization of opinion which is great someone wants to know Peter members of a theater company are people in the theater written to you to argue or agree do they do this regularly or is this a whole new phenomenon great question no they don't I get very little of either thank you or screw you I don't hear much I'll tell you what happened to me I'll tell you how interesting about two years ago a very fine Washington actress friended me on Facebook and I say yes to everybody anybody who friends me I friend them at first it was like a weird it felt slightly transgressive I was almost like cheating on my wife or something yes to people who are you I mean it's a community of people it's a community that I was sort of trained at the New York Times to be to stay away from so I started accepting and one of these people was an exceptional actress whose work I praised to the hills and this person was in a show in a small theater and I didn't like the play after having loved five or six plays and she posted on her page and I even praised her in this production let's start a campaign to get rid of this of Peter Marx he's a wart on the theater community and I was crushed well I'm a person I'm not a human being but it felt like such an unfair I wasn't saying banish this company from the face of the earth and I didn't like this one and the response was so over the top but what it complicated next was I now was engaged in a very confused relationship with this person you know it was now very hostile I liked her and she didn't like me so what did that do to the next time I was going to see her on the stage and I felt like do I now am I compromised can I not and you know I didn't review the next thing because I felt suddenly like it had changed the contract that I was going to somehow if I liked her it was because I was now trying to curry favor with her and if I didn't like her I was taking revenge on her so it's not just the weirdness doesn't happen just because people in theater companies are worried that I'm going to get angry at them but I will say Twitter is again my Oprah moment is that Twitter it sort of helped me understand that you know these people have emotional responses to what you write and they have a very quick people on the spur of the moment say things they don't necessarily think in the long run and I'm happy to tell you I'm now the godparent of her no I'm kidding but I got over it and I think I would have reacted very differently now and I think you know maybe I'm inviting you know Pandora's box to open for me but I would love to hear more the other thing you got to realize Jim is a lot of the theater world is very ambivalent about conferring power on me they don't want to there are many people in the theater and other critics they don't some people in the arts don't acknowledge or recognize the the validity of a critic and so they push it aside so you know for them to respond to me is to give me what they would see some would see as equal as making me their equal and some don't even read them I think that's a healthy thing frankly I think that's healthy but you're talking about individual artists because institutions frankly are an endless cycle of perpetuating the authority of critics and they will sometimes slice and dice what you say artfully with the use of the ellipsis to be able to say that the Washington Post frankly they care less whether it's you or anybody else they want to be able to say that that paper has conferred authority and I have been having these discussions for 25 years and nobody is willing to break the cycle because unless every theater in a city absolutely said we will not quote reviews in our ads no one would be able to it's like the airlines with pricing the moment one moves the other will do it so unless it was a complete cessation the theaters any arts organization that constantly wants to decry critics are the first people out of the box to put them on their brochures put them in their ads put them in their grant applications so on and so forth but well people want to know what's left of the place and function of critics when you can get immediate reactions from social networks it's sort of that's enough money the people want to know given the expansion of theaters in DC you know renown, signatures, new places and so forth how are all these theaters how are all these theaters going to survive in a time of funding cuts and reduced is it going to happen is that are we overloaded in that sense I think that remains to be seen you know we should make reverence at an event a large convening here at arena back in January this year Rockland has made a statement in which he who's the chairman of the NEA made a statement to the effect that there wasn't overabundance of theaters and that probably it was maybe some shouldn't be there anymore I think every business that enters the marketplace and theaters although they are artistic institutions they are also businesses enter a Darwinian world we may not like it but it exists I think ironically I go back to my statement about mission I think if and even to Peter's statement theaters if any arts organization can make the case for themselves can find an audience within the proportion that they need to sustain themselves if they don't overreach if they are realistic in their approach it's not to say that some may not succeed overall but if they're operating from a rational position and not if you build it they will come then you will simply find what can be done Peter made a comment and I think it was a good one on Twitter that if after five years a theater company's primary marketing strategy is to get good reviews they should probably go out of business may well be true unless they get such consistently good reviews that it's enough to drive the audience if they go out of business I said they should maybe start looking at another career it's a difference I'm not saying they have to leave I'm saying at a certain point you have to have established a relationship with people who want to see your things other than waiting to see if a reviewer liked what you did it has to be a more intense this person wants to know shouldn't theaters when developing their missions ask audiences what they want to see no we can't go into an isolation booth and see why but I'll give you my answer which is because audiences can only tell you things they've seen before that they enjoyed and want to see again people don't know what may be coming they don't even if it's a play even if it's a revival they don't know what the approach is going to be they may not have liked the last production it may have simply been bad if it's a new play it's impossible for people to ask for specific new plays I guess some creative person could say I'd really like to see a play about a boy and his dog do you have any plays about boys and dogs but there are this has happened more I'm not aware of it in companies that primarily do plays I do know that some of the larger Civic Light Opera companies have done this from time to time companies that are primarily mining the back catalogue of the American musical theater and the fact is what they want to see is a show they liked the last time you can't be an artistic institution you can't be trying to work and forward creative arts and do it based on people telling you what they liked before that's too cynical I don't think that people want to see necessarily what they saw before I think people want it's actually born out by what some of these companies have gotten as results which is why they mostly stop doing when you ask what are you supposed to say we're not patients telling the doctor our neck hurts fix my neck it's not that relationship what we want our artistic leaders to do is show us what we wanted they tell us what we wanted that's what they do and we didn't know we wanted it until we see it I didn't know that next to normal was going to be the most important musical in my life for the last three years until I saw it I could not possibly have dreamed it up and certainly critics I don't think should be prescribers either they should not be dependent on to tell you what you should be doing I think that's not what they do well it's a much more reactive profession but I want artistic leaders and it's one of the things that I want them to think really imagine outside the box all those cliches I want them to take me to those places that's what the leadership is and well just I mean next to normal is a great example I saw next to normal when it first played at second stage and I will say that at that point in the pieces development because of issues within my extended family and material that was in the show that I don't think even made it here to Washington I almost left an intermission not because I was bored I was offended and upset by the treatment of how mental illness was being portrayed and if someone at that point said do you want to go see next to normal again or you know should we put in our season my response would be would it been if they don't fix this this and this no I can't remember so there is that thing of you can respond to what you know when next to normal I don't know exactly what shape it was in here but certainly by the time it came back and was on Broadway all of the material that I found offensive and insensitive to the issues it was dealing with were gone I also I mean the same thing was true actually of Avenue Q which was a show I had some tangential involvement in which did cut a song which used to be the Act One Closer which I found so offensive it was being done in workshop at the theater I ran and I found so offensive I used to leave the theater every night because I couldn't bear to watch it and when I started the Vineyard Theater in New York when they were first off Broadway I did something you know completely preposterous which was after intermission and the song wasn't there I went up to one of the authors and I said oh thank you for cutting that I realize that's somewhat of a tangent but that's good you also spoke disparagingly which one of us Peter did about celebrity casting what do you still feel that's a bad thing in general well we don't you know it's not a Washington it's not really a Washington phenomenon that's really a New York issue and I took that LA Chicago one of the great things about this town is that really fine actors work all year round I mean I'm sure they would like to work more than they do but they have what I discovered when I came here which was extraordinary from another large city with a lot of theater was that the actors here really developed stage muscles they really felt on the stage that's where they lived and in many other places New York included they are occasional visitors not always but in large measure this has been that habit, that trend has been reinforced in places like New York because the casting now is so often about celebrity the reason I got freaked out and then I heard from the fans was one of the Jonas brothers, which one? I can't tell them apart Nick, thank you Joe, Bob, whatever one was which, what? Zepo has been cast to replace Daniel Radcliffe as Peer Pod Finch as the lead in how to succeed in business that we're really trying and it just let's all pack up and leave because this is not I don't really think that the theater is served by just bringing in brand name actors who have no real connection to what we experience in the theater and making them the focal points of a production Daniel Radcliffe is a lovely young man I think he's a really great Harry Potter and he is a terrible I think song and dance man with no charisma on the stage, he excites his audience and therefore this show is selling out, it's one of the biggest hits on Broadway and the last time it was on Broadway with Matthew Broderick it was a nervous hit it was not a big hit so I understand the power of celebrity completely I understand what they can think but I don't think they do anything for the theater something for themselves and obviously the other actors who are working around them for that show yes and they fulfill the producer's pockets but there's no payback there's no ongoing return, it does not create new theater goers I just don't believe it does I think it creates more for their fan club to sort of, you know, to revel in I just disagree with you I think there are plenty of people who may go see how to succeed and I am very carefully noticed, not going to voice my opinion of Daniel Radford who's a nice guy and has bodyguards no, but in all seriousness yes, I believe there are probably plenty of people who are going to see this production of had a sick and seasoned business without really trying because Harry Potter's that's all they know and it's desperate to be in the same room as him if let's say 1% of the 12,000 people who see that show a week are people who have not been to theater before and are willing to give it another chance and to hear Frank Lesser's score which is a great I mean it's a wonderful show you know, if it gives those people a chance to hear it and possibly engage them I think that's okay and what's really I'm mugging, you're mugging I'm doing my best to take you seriously alright, I'll listen I do think that people come to theater for all different reasons and sometimes it's celebrity sometimes it's because their class takes them as if we don't keep getting people excited and yes we can sit here as Caucasian men of a certain generation an ethnic background and be snooty because we may have always had this as part of our life I was not taking the theater I only really started going to the theater when I was old enough to take myself it was not part of my family's experience but whatever not just the first time but I hope the second and third time has the potential of building an audience for the future and the likelihood I mean I forget the age range of when the Harry Potter books started and when the movies started but if there's a generation of people who are aware of how to succeed in business without really trying and some small percentage of them decides to go back because they had a good time there's another show called Guys and Dolls maybe just maybe that moves things forward and we can sit with our critical eyes and again I believe everybody's a critic and say what we want about the performances of everyone in that show or the prior show or what we know from the 1962 cast album but I don't think there's anything wrong with the conferred legitimization of theater that celebrity can bring I am troubled and I share with you the idea that people are cast purely because they are celebrities and don't actually necessarily have the ability to perform the role and that's a judgment call I think as often as not when people do it the first time some we find are brilliant and some we find may never do it again and some overreach but the fact is in a media world where there is so much battle for attention and in which live theater is increasingly marginalized and has been increasingly marginalized over decades anything that reminds people theater is there time is good I was going to say Peter you touched my thigh and now you've touched my arm I have never had this much physical contact with a critic in my life and may I say it makes me uncomfortable that I'm going to sort of like sit in your lap next because you should be uncomfortable I was just going to say I think that once upon a time plays were stars and playwrights were stars and you went to Broadway or wherever you went to see an Arthur Miller play or a Tennessee Williams play or Edward but I say sorry I'm thinking of Edward Dobie Edward all of his work or Sam Shepard but now you go to see Chris Rock in a play on Broadway called The Motherfucker which actually is a good play but you don't know that Stephen Adler Gurgis is the playwright I mean it's not those things don't happen anymore it's because we are we're obsessed with seeing some with our curiosity about the person who's in the park there weren't even stars on Broadway but they were Broadway minted stars there were people who became stars because they worked on Broadway and they became famous and they had a following that doesn't happen anymore one of our audience members suspects that you as a critic don't like celebrity casting because it makes shows critical no I don't listen that's mythology that critics care about whether or not want to have the power to stop all of it I can't make people go to a play they don't want to go to any more than I can stop them from going to when they want to see there's just no I can help I can contribute to the zeitgeist I can help with the word of mouth when I like something but the idea that I'm offended by people going to see hey you want to see crap you go see crap I can't stop you I'm just saying I'm not saying that that's what happens sometimes in my opinion crap is in the eye of the beholder exactly but that's my what other perspective do I have with my own like everybody else and I think that some of the things that have lasted a long long time are not very good aside from casting a Jonas boy what ideas do you have to encourage more theater experiences for students well I took you know I taught as I said I taught reviewing for like 6 or 7 years at GW and I watched kids in an honors program who had almost no experience with theater turning to theater kids and you know the answer is mentoring and it's not one time it's lowering the fear the threshold of terror that young people feel that somehow going to the theater is not their place and if they go 6 or 7 times in a concentrated amount of time and they find out you know that the largely older audiences isn't going to bite their heads off that they're actually happy to see younger people there that that it's not incomprehensible that there are many aspects of life being touched on that they had no idea could actually be represented on the stage those things make kids excited I think it's more important than the price actually I think it's making them understand that these rooms are for them and that takes someone showing them and talk and translating sometimes for them telling them that it's okay to not understand that these things are not perfect and all those things it's lowering the confusion level for very very bright kids too I mean across the spectrum of intelligence it has nothing to do with it's a lack of familiarity it is access in all of the different ways the idea that it shouldn't be treated as a rarefied experience it's amazing I'm going to go back to my thing about mission when theater once upon a time was treated as a formal it had to be an event it had to dress up and opening nights had tuxedos and you needed to go in a jacket and tie and you know every so often I see people bemoaning the way people go dressed to the theater and my answer in my response is as long as they're going I really don't care how they're dressed demystifying it stripping away the idea that going to the theater I mean I'm not a big opera goer I'm not a big ballet goer I have a sense of those frankly that I retain I go occasionally but it's not my meat and I think of those as snootier for some reason if in the spectrum of entertainment I want to see theater the equivalent and people don't go to this so much but going to the movie it should be the access should be as easy as possible the experience should be as friendly as possible it is a communal experience that it's good to respond one of the things that's always struck me teachers prepare kids to go to the theater and one of the things they're just hammered about how they should behave and what's proper and what's right and sometimes kids are scared to the point that they don't think they can laugh or applaud or respond and no you're not watching a video at home so you shouldn't be talking loudly while the show is going on or we can do the cellphone conversation but it's boring but the fact of the matter is they need to know that you are able to express yourself and because I've found acting companies there are a lot of jokes people say oh it's our 11 am matinee today but the bottom line is teachers understand that they will get quote unquote inappropriate responses and they can roll with that so I wish that the teachers were instilling, spending more time preparing them if they need a knowledge base for the play you know with that then saying now don't you dare you know do this or do that and I'll say something else about teaching about what will get young people to theater and I'm going to use Shakespeare because I know people who are 50 years old who say I've always hated Shakespeare I think the best thing that could happen is that before you have to study Shakespeare you see it preferably good Shakespeare because what I've found is is people get so frightened at a young age by the language and that as long as you're seeing a production of Shakespeare where the intention is clear and where indeed the actors know what the words mean the audience will have no problem with it and as soon as you take that barrier away then they can read it but the text scares them sometimes teachers don't really understand Shakespeare and are looking at it totally as a literary experience and that's where in terms of general curriculum Shakespeare is still taught do you think that there's this is called theater beyond twitter is there a social media part to this? is there something that should be used that theaters aren't doing to drive home these points for young people? I think a lot of theaters argue I think there are attempts it's not specifically social media I think there's a lot online there's now a line of comic books most of you probably are not familiar with what's called manga which is a particular type of graphic novel coming out of Japan and there's now manga Shakespeare books and it's really the Shakespeare words but it's drawn and put out in the style of Shakespeare I thought there was a very funny thing on twitter running at one point where everybody was being asked come up with six word descriptions of Shakespeare parts and I came up with for Lear God I've got to try to get it right now because it was six words but it was something to the event of poor family planning leads to tragedy but you know if you can laugh about it stay planned that's what it was but again demystification what we are doing here and I also would say you know if kids can participate in some way in theater the act of making theater is fundamentally identical at every single level that it happens the only thing that's different is money how much you have to put it on but it's still about people going into a room learning a script and putting it on in front of other people so getting kids the opportunity to try that for themselves they may like it or not like it understand it better I think is hugely important somebody wants to know what was the original debate that inspired you what was it that you thought was preposterous about you know I don't remember I know the Nick Jonas debate was early but I don't remember so it's not I don't even think it's really the point again it's just the idea that there's the access I mean I'm opinionated I very carefully said I am not a critic and even though I've built some following on Twitter you can't look through my tweets and find out what I think of shows I'm more interested in the idea of theater and it goes back to that thing you quoted about about being a theater evangelist I'm not there to sell tickets to any individual production and at the wing that was not my goal and in my post-wing career I don't want that to be my goal I want to just keep figuring out ways both to offer opportunities for people to understand more about theater to demystify it which is part of this if demystifying understanding who and what critics are and the position that they operate from that's all to the good it's funny because the other thing I didn't really even think was that heated but it was so obviously a lot of people found it so shocking that you could challenge a critic online and they would respond I mean that to me is I don't know how to deal with that I don't even know what to make of that I guess that we've become that we believe that there's such a wall between people writing about plays and people being in plays well that's what we were taught in J-School but it just seems you know well there was an interesting we got a good conversation about community and whether you consider yourself part of the theater community and you said no you're not part of the community but you were more comfortable being part of the theatrical ecosystem well somebody used that word you said you like that word and despite it feeling like a terrarium and what level you're on you know okay that's legit I think as the world becomes ever more accessible and these different media allow people to meet together I wonder whether critics will be able to hold themselves apart in the same way that they have or whether they will be forced into a familiarity I mean there was always the belief you know from the theater side of things that you know if they understood these are real people whose lives they're affecting maybe they wouldn't be so mean and you know something I kind of think that's true but what's happening now is because the critics are holding themselves up to actually hearing criticism they will be forced to reexamine what it means to be publicly adjudicated yeah and I don't even think that you know frankly I don't think the critics who cover theater are really that mean I mean I really don't I mean there are some mean people who seem to have that sort of function to be kind of vicious or to be to really have poise I think it's a fairly, frankly fairly gentle craft at this point in the evolution of criticism and I do think also though if we're going to survive you have to be engaging you have to be talking to people who want to talk to you not every person because some people are just you know you can't talk to them because they get really worked up and say very mean things but I mean anybody else is I think it's a wonderful possibility and it opens up all kinds of possibilities I would like to posit that the very active performance is theater is a forum and it's a place for the sharing of ideas and that the discourse that comes after theater is an essential part of the performance and in that way I don't think really you can deny that you're part of the theater community it's really all part of an arc you're part of the active theater because the conversation that comes after performance I think you're part of a community if the community agrees you're part of the community I don't think that the I don't think you get a consensus from people in the community that critics are part of the community I think some would see it that way and some don't and in journalism listen I was a reporter before I was a critic I think of myself as part of a journalistic community and I love the theater but I chose a different career I chose not to be in the theater I mean it's a matter of semantics but it really goes to the function of how you do your job How do awards and reviews affect how work whether it's deserving or undeserving is encouraged in New York and then proceeds to go to DC and spread out across the country, other cities You want to go first? How do awards affect whether the work gets done? Well actually the Pulitzer Prize winner from last year was done in Washington concurrently with New York I was on the Pulitzer Jury actually that picked Clyburn Park as the Pulitzer Did anybody see Clyburn Park? I thought it was an extraordinary play and I think that a play that is a serious Pulitzer contender this year started in Washington and is going to New York now and it's Mike Daisy's monologue It's not a conventional play but I think it's I think it's absolutely warrant serious Pulitzer consideration and what I'm saying is I think it's creating out more and more I think 9 of the 10 Pulitzer winners from the last 10 years all started in regional theaters or institutional theaters of some kind so I mean it's not that I don't think theaters here are looking for award winners necessarily, I think they're generating more of the award the things that are worthy of awards except on the obviously the big musical front, that's the one area that I don't think is happening anywhere on the road to New York It's interesting to note in the case of Clyburn Park the New York production sort of came and went before the DC production and now that the Pulitzer prizes Well they were concurrent It opened in New York and it opened in Washington they over-relapped and it made a bigger stir in Washington than what it did in New York because now the play has been done in eight major theaters across the country, huge and it's important to point out that next to normal had its most important stop was at arena stage on the way to its own Pulitzer prize it really wouldn't have gotten there without that stop so I mean it really is that so I don't really think I don't think that Washington theater really cares that much about the awards that happen elsewhere like Tony Awards and stuff I mean I don't think it really has that much meaning maybe I'm I can't even remember what play won the Tony Award last year Wars but I'm saying there's not I don't think people here I think people go to New York to see the Tony winning play frankly I think it has more to do with touring shows where it will have an impact it's very difficult people don't realize that the majority of the presenting houses around the country where commercial tours play these theaters are vastly larger than Broadway houses and these shows come into town for eight performances they play Tuesday through Sunday in most cases so everything is about advanced say there's very limited time for reviews to have an impact for word of mouth to have an impact half the run is usually over before the critic has voiced an opinion of that tour so the people who market those shows need whatever they can hold on to or hold out to audiences to say this is going to be worth it for you I think there's a certain amount of attention and titles become more familiar even just by virtue of being nominated for awards and the fact of the matter is there is only one annual television program in the country that talks about theater at all and it happens to be the Tony Awards awards in any form in any industry always have their challenges but the fact that the only time the mass media that we have that still comes in free unless you may have cable but you can still get CVS that they hear about theater is that program and so there is a familiarity that can be gained and I often say as somebody who spent 8 years involved in the Tony Awards I never even had a problem when as the Times would do and many papers and magazines would do online would write oh well if they included off Broadway this would be nominated or they'll write what the Tony's missed what it does what awards do is they give everybody an opportunity to revisit the season the whatever it is and even if they criticize the awards process fairly or unfairly it's their opportunity to do so if it causes everybody to take a look back if it causes the media to look at it again it's just a way of putting a cap and I talked earlier about context of seeing people's work at institutional theaters in a context it puts kind of a theatrical season in a context be it in New York in Washington you know and that's why more and more cities frankly have sprung up their own awards there's also just a desire to celebrate stuff and while you bitch about oh it should have gone to so and so it's inevitable people lose overall it's a reminder that there's a lot of good stuff and it can't even all get recognized someone wants you to speak about the YouTube and copyright and the fact that the Tony's show all their clips from YouTube that's an awfully specific question it relates to I mean the fact of the matter is is I think the genie is out of the bottle and it's not really appropriate for me to discuss that level of business of the Tony's since I no longer represent the Tony awards except to say that you know copyright I think there are broader copyright issues in the theater and in all of the arts which are an issue and if you do not protect copyright you lose ownership of it and whether it's sheet music being pirated all over the internet whether it's video footage from the Tony Awards I think we do run a danger and it's true in journalism as well if everything that's created is believed to be then free for the taking then it will become harder and harder to create that material good journalism needs to be paid for songwriters need to earn a living the Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing need to be able to produce the Tony Awards for the effect that I just said and if all of that stuff is just out there for anyone any time to use in any way they see fit then there will not be the funds to propagate any of those things and it goes right it's patent law it's all of those things there has to be a benefit for creators to create work or the work may never get created we're nearing the end of our time are there any more pertinent questions there that we should put to these guys I promised one person I would ask this if I could get it in what are your thoughts about giving up written reviews in favor of an online discussion instead what are your thoughts about giving up written reviews give up more space are you kidding I think adding the component would be more interesting to me than subtracting entirely written reviews I think there's still an important audience for the printed word that may I don't know what shape that's going to take in the next 15 years you can see the retraction the retrenchment but I absolutely would love the idea of some central place where we all talked about reviews I don't think it's an either or situation I mean I personally don't want to get would never want to be online debating the merits of a particular show but some people like to do that and there is the danger of not doing it in the best of intentions which I would not want to be party to but I don't think it's an either or thing I should say this seems a good moment to mention this whole relationship between Peter and I sprang up truly spontaneously we are talking about the fact that we're going to try to start setting a time every couple of weeks that will publicize so that people can get on and we'll just talk about stuff there's a very good program that the new play program here at arena is doing it's an offshoot of their blog howl round and they do the weekly howl at Tuesdays at 3 o'clock Eastern there's great conversation there there's usually a topic Peter and I I think can approach some other things in other ways and hopefully people will join in that since I don't see Chad scribbling furiously I'll just bring it up somebody asked how Twitter might actually be used in theater and I was sort of curious as to what I asked this person I said do you mean buy theaters for promotion or do you mean in the work itself and they I believe demurred and said well I'd be curious to see how you respond to it I'm less interested in exploring is a marketing tool or a promotional tool because that's another whole discussion but to respond to that and I'd be curious to Peter's thoughts as well obviously I think that Twitter will be mentioned in plays the more we have playwrights who are growing up with it and for whom it's common language I remember a number of years ago when I saw the play closer which relied on projected email exchanges and I was kind of like oh wow that's very modern very new it hasn't become a trend in theater for it to replace things I think one of the challenges of Twitter I think Twitter would force playwriting into a sort of formalized exercise that might be an intriguing gimmick but not sustain simply because it's whole reason for existing is that you are writing messages in 140 characters and so you could challenge playwrights to say do a play in which nobody ever talks in something longer than a tweet or something like that but it's just a formalized exercise I don't think anybody writing be it for the theater, be it for literature anybody creating should be forced into any structure and I think that in particular because Twitter exists to limit it's fundamentally not going to be a new art form beyond you know six word synopses of Shakespeare plays I'll try to keep my response to 140 characters I'm just going to say I would love it if more theater professionals would go on Twitter I wish more artistic directors I wish people like Molly and David Hughes and Michael Kahn and Michael Kaiser would engage I think that I have found this incredibly wonderful community of young writers who want to be heard on Twitter I've found that the infrastructure of theater and people are still afraid of how much they could really be expected to communicate I wish that more of that was happening that's there I think theater thank you very much for power seven and Peter Barthes