SR Digest: TCG and me
Issue #17—June 17, 2019
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The week before last, I was in Miami for TCG’s annual conference. For the civilians among you, that’s Theatre Communications Group—a trade group for nonprofit theaters across the country; think the League of Chicago Theatres on a national scale.
As a conference for artists and (maybe even moreso) arts administrators, it’s not the sort of thing I would normally attend, though I dropped in here and there the last time the conference was in Chicago, in 2010. But TCG invited me, along with several other theater critics and journalists from all over the country, as part of a first-time “journalism track” of programming, featuring panel discussions on issues facing arts journalism.
I led a breakout session on new platforms for arts criticism and reporting, which was livestreamed by HowlRound—meaning you can watch it now, if you so choose:
The other panel on which I spoke was titled “Getting on the Same Page: Journalists and Artists Discuss our Common Values,” and featured Isaac Butler as moderator; Christine Dolan, the Miami Herald’s theater critic for more than 35 years, now writing for one of those new platforms, ArtBurst Miami; Atlanta-area critic Kelundra Smith, the theater editor at ArtsATL.org; Dámaso Rodríguez, artistic director of Portland, Oregon’s Artists Rep Theatre; and Regina Taylor, playwright, actor, director and longtime member of the Goodman Theatre’s artistic collective. (I somehow managed not to gush to Ms. Taylor about how much I loved her on I’ll Fly Away when I was in junior high.)
That session wasn’t livestreamed, so there’s unfortunately no video archive. The only folks who heard it were those in the room…which were most of the same faces I saw in all of the other journalism track sessions: the journalists. This was a real missed opportunity of the conference, in my opinion; there wasn’t much effort to interest the artists and administrators in attending our sessions, which were almost entirely programmed in slots that put us head-to-head against panels that spoke directly to artistic concerns. There wasn’t even an “affinity group” session scheduled for the journalists where we could have some unstructured griping amongst ourselves.
Even the one all-hands session that involved a journalist, a conversation with the New York Times critic-at-large Wesley Morris, felt dominated to me by Morris’s interviewer Todd London and his desire to relitigate the work of former NYT theater critic Frank Rich—whose tenure ended in 1993, 22 years before Morris joined the paper.
Still, I’m glad for many of the conversations I had and connections I made over coffee breaks and at the hotel bar. And if TCG wants to try it again another year, with a little more intentionality about getting artists and journalists in the same room so we can then get on the same page, I’ll be down for it. As I hope is clear if you’re signed up for this newsletter, I try to be as open and transparent as possible about my process, because I do believe that theater artists, critics and audiences are all participants in the same ecosystem, all of us wanting this form of art to thrive.
The Non-Equity question
The day before I left for Miami, I published a piece at Chicago magazine inspired in part by that week’s Non-Equity Jeff Awards, and my observation that some of the night’s big winners were companies that have been producing outside of the auspices of the actors’ union for decades.
Now, speaking of ecosystems, the evolution of Chicago theater over the last four decades is a complex thing I was never going to be able to capture or solve in one 750-word piece. (Honestly, I think I could get an entire book out of it, but would anyone buy it?) That same week, Substack (the platform that hosts this newsletter and lots of other great ones) beta-launched a new discussion threads feature, and I decided to give it a try to host some further conversation around that Chicago mag piece—though since I was at the conference by that point, I may not have nurtured it as much as needed for a new feature none of y’all knew to expect. But that thread remains open if anyone wants to keep the conversation going.
Reviews & other views
Daniel Cantor and David Darlow in If I Forget at Victory Gardens Theater. Photograph: Liz Lauren
My review of If I Forget at Victory Gardens just went up at the Sun-Times; you can read it here.
Here at Storefront Rebellion, I’ve posted new reviews of Ms. Blakk for President at Steppenwolf, Firebrand Theatre’s production of Queen of the Mist, and Underscore Theatre Company’s The Ballad of Lefty & Crabbe. Paying subscribers can click through to read the full text.
From left: Daniel Kyri, Molly Brennan, Sawyer Smith and Tarell Alvin McCraney in Ms. Blakk for President. Photograph: Michael Brosilow
I have a couple of non-theater pieces I want to point you to as well. For my old friends at Time Out Chicago, I wrote a Pride month piece for their summer print edition about LGBTQ Chicagoans who found their people in niche groups: the live lit community, a gay hockey league, a Facebook group for nerd interests, and the comedy drag scene. I think it’s pretty fun. And last week at Chicago magazine, I had a short interview with Chicago native Gina Rodriguez (of Jane the Virgin fame) about managing mental health.
Finally for this week, I wanted to link out to a few Storefront Rebellion exclusive reviews of recently closed shows that I’ve since unlocked for public view. If you’re only signed up for free emails, it’s a taste of what you’re missing:
First Love Is the Revolution at Steep Theatre
A Number at Writers Theatre
Non-Player Character at Red Theater Chicago
I’m Gonna Pray for You So Hard at First Floor Theater
West Side Story at Lyric Opera