This Talkinbroadway.com Policy Surely Doesn't Apply to George Hunka

Read about TalkinBroadway.com's new policy on certain kinds of posts here.

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The Casual Casuistry of George Hunka (Updated)

(NOTE I: There were some horrid typos and grammatical mistakes and just plain sloppiness in the original version of this post, so I have fixed those. I also removed a pair of passages that one person felt was somehow getting in the mud. I disagree, but as the offending passage wasn't all that germane, out it went.)

(NOTE II: The current count on this post is four private emails thanking me for writing this and one suggesting otherwise.)

(NOTE III: I fully expect certain people to rush to the defense of the person I'm discussing in this post. That's fine. Those who hate me will hate me anyway.)

My colleague Mark Shenton from London -- who I ran into at the Lincoln Center Cymbeline -- alerted me to a post from George Hunka on the Guardian's arts blog in which he gleefully draws and quarters American theatre critics, bemoaning the perceived lack of fine contemporary criticism. Oh, for the days when Bentley and Brustein were young! Oh, for the days when Gilman and Esslin were the it! Hunka's nose, I should note, must be profoundly brown from kissing the ass of critic Michael Billington of The Guardian, of whom he speaks in his post in worshipping terms. Funny thing, praising the critic of the paper paying you to post. Or pillar to post. Anyway...

Here's a quote from Hunka's piece:

When, as a teenager thinking about making a career as a dramatist, I read this criticism, I found critics who believed in a theatre and drama of profound significance to contemporary culture and society; at the same time, they considered 3,000 years of an art form that had over its history touched the deepest wellsprings of human fear and desire. These critics knew that history intimately, too, and engaged with it critically and with enthusiasm. They were as educative, and as inspiring, as reading the plays and playwrights they most carefully and brilliantly considered.

Theatre critics of yore "considered 3,000 years of an art form that had over its history touched the deepest wellsprings of human fear of desire" and now they do not? Really? Is that not a tad hyperbolic? Hunka decries -- as if the world is really desperate for more people to ascribe more power to the New York Times, so as to attack it -- the fact that Brantley has edited only one book and Isherwood written only one book (about a gay porn star). As if they're all we have to talk about in the realm of contemporary theatre criticism.

Hunka's sense of history has more holes in it than Gary Gilmore post-execution. First, let's be clear: there are a lot of critics beyond the Times' terrible twosome. He might have written, for example, about Michael Feingold, who hasn't written any book-length criticism that I know of (book-length criticism is apparently the sole standard of excellence), but does anyone question that Feingold has written more intelligently, thoroughly, and exquisitely on the theatre over the last 35 years than anyone else? Does Hunka believe Feingold does not, in his criticism, consider "3,000 years of an art form that had over its history touched the deepest wellsprings of human fear of desire"?

Hunka ignores the work of Julius Novick (active until recently), and reaching back a little bit, Walter Kerr, Harold Clurman, and Mel Gussow, all of whom, I think, wrote quite eloquently and often on the post-1945 American theatre. Ignoring Kerr is weirdly tragic: he wrote How Not to Write a Play (1955), Criticism and Censorship (1957), Pieces at Eight (1958), The Decline of Pleasure (1962), The Theatre in Spite of Itself (1963), Tragedy and Comedy (1967), Thirty Plays Hath November (1969), God on the Gymnasium Floor (1971), and The Silent Clowns (1975) all while at the old Herald-Tribune and, later, the Times (links courtesy of the dreaded Wikipedia).

Hunka ignores the work of Stanley Kauffman, and John Simon.

Hunka ignores the work of John Heilpern of the New York Observer, whose Conference of the Birds is an unquestionably important work, and whose recent biography of John Osbourne has been widely acclaimed.

(It also occurs to me that while Hunka decries the lack of book-length critical studies that are not from the academic marketplace (what an absurd measurement for what is acceptable criticism), we have, perhaps, some of the finest critic-biographers we've ever had. Anyway...)

Hunka ignores the pioneering criticism of Edith Oliver, who wrote for The New Yorker for 40 years -- no, she didn't publish a full-length book of criticism, but does any publication give its critics the latitude of The New Yorker, and did she not take advantage of it? Is Hunka unfamiliar with John Lahr, the current theatre critic at The New Yorker? People may cavil at his insistence upon revealing essential plot details, but his biographical profiles are essential reading for theater lovers -- and Lahr's book on Coward is exceptionally good. People may cavil with the opinions of Lahr's second string, Hilton Als, but not only is Als exceptionally perceptive and often persuasive, he's the only major critic of color in New York City -- and the fact that most people are unaware of it is a tribute to his skills as a critic and writer generally. Like John Lahr, Als won the George Jean Nathan Award for dramatic criticism. Here are some more George Jean Nathan winner Hunka ignores:

2005-2006
Charles Isherwood
2004-2005
Raymond Knapp
2003-2004
Trey Graham
2002-2003
Hilton Als
2001-2002
Daniel Mendelsohn
2000-2001
Laurence Senelick
1999-2000
Albert Williams
1998-99
Michael Goldman
1997-98
Alisa Solomon
1996-97
Ben Brantley, Elinor Fuchs, and Todd London
1995-96
Michael Feingold
1994-95
Robert Hurwitt
1993-94
Marvin Carlson and John Lahr
1992-93
David Cole
1991-92
Kevin Kelly
1990-91
Jonathan Kalb
1989-90
Steven Mikulan
1988-89
Eileen Blumenthal
1987-88
Scott Rosenberg
1986-87
Robert Brustein
1985-86
Gordon Rogoff
1984-85
Jan Kott
1983-84
Bonnie Marranca
1982-83
Herbert Blau
1981-82
Julius Novick
1980-81
Carolyn Clay and Sylviane Gold
1979-80
Sean Mitchell
1978-79
Jack Kroll
1977-78
Mel Gussow
1976-77
Bernard Knox
1975-76
Michael Goldman
1974-75
No Award Made
1973-74
Albert Bermel
1972-73
Stanley Kauffmann
1971-72
Jay Carr
1970-71
Richard Gilman
1969-70
John Simon
1968-69
John Lahr

Well, let me correct that -- he does not ignore Jonathan Kalb. Good thing, that.

Meanwhile, please notice that many of these critics are outside of New York. Surely Hunka realizes there are, in fact, critics elsewhere, yes? Why does he ignore Charles McNulty, formerly the theatre editor of the Voice, now the theatre critic for the L.A. Times? Or Gordon Rogoff (the link is to a list of books)? Or, back at home, some other NYC heavyweights: Alisa Solomon and Erika Munk?

Why does Hunka cast such a narrow net? Could it be to service his point, to position himself as some kind of cultural arbiter? Could it be that his hope is make the Guardian buy into it?

Hunka writes:

Theatre in America now doesn't produce such critics. When one reads most American drama criticism in newspapers and magazines these days, you realise that the reason for this lack isn't that these critics don't want to write books like Billington's. It's that they can't, even if they wanted to. And that says more about the health of American theatrical and dramatic criticism than it says about the health of theatre and drama in America.

..."because they can't"? Oh, rubbish. As evidenced by the links to the names of these critics, they can and do write books -- and for Hunka to suggest that "books about theatre right now are relegated to university or small presses" demeans the academy -- it demeans anyone publishing books about theater anywhere.

Perhaps the Guardian needs to know what else Hunka believes, a la the 100 Saints disaster.

Hunka writes, in his easily assailable and highly selective "State of the Union," as if it is he who decides what the state of the theatre blogosphere is. Or, to put it in Project Runway terms, if you're in, you're in, if you're out, you're out.

(NOTE: How curious that comments for Hunka's post in the Guardian are turned off.)

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Nick of Rat Sass Socks it to George Hunka (Who Doesn't Notice, Nick Says, Because George is Busy 'Brownnosing' British and Australian Critics)

Whew, good for you, Nick -- about time someone else called out George Hunka yet again. I'm gonna just sit back and watch the sparks fly -- until I'm ready to comment.

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"Where Do We Live," Hunka Essay, Considered

Man your battle stations. I just read George Hunka's "Where Do We Live" essay and I have a few things I'd like to say about it. Generally speaking, and as I've learned during my first six months as a serious theatre blogger, we live where we choose to -- whether on the fringes of the reality-based community or at the center of it. Provided, that is, that we aren't readjusting where we feel the center of that community is.

Ah, the joys of speaking elliptically. I think I'll try to speak more directly in this post, and I write this not to attack (although I'm quite sure I'll be attacked) but provide some other views.

I should first say that I was cruising through Matt Freeman's blog when I stumbled on "Where Do We Live," and Matt is, as ever (and endearingly so), far more diplomatic than I am, noting that he'd prefer not to comment on it. I've gone back and forth on the same subject, wondering whether I should ask some questions, debate some points, argue a bit and raise some red flags or not bother at all. For those who recall my dust up with Hunka over his 100 Saints fiasco, the last thing I want is another battle in the war of dying theatrical roses. I hope to keep it civil.

Much of what Hunka observes is obvious and true: the part about sniping at Times critics, the part about the prevalence of inside baseball, the part about self-promotion. I am particularly glad he recognizes self-promotion to be inevitable:

"...many bloggers have abandoned longer discussions of form, craft and content for plugs of their own shows (and that's not necessarily a criticism, for that's one of the things the blogosphere is best at -- self-promotion -- and it does have an impact)."

Let us imagine our ideal version of a healthy, progressive theatrical blogosphere: Would not the prevalence of inside baseball connote some degree of acceptance of the blogosphere by the wider industry? After all, you don't get bits of inside baseball without inside-baseball players fully arrayed on the field.

Taking Times critics to task, Hunka correctly notes, is a sport as old as inside baseball. Brooks Atkinson's earlier predecessors Alexander Woollcott and, even earlier, Edward A. Dithmar, of whom little is remembered today, are also examples. And maybe better ones: it's well known that Atkinson, like Boston's Elliot Norton was beloved by industry creatives and businessfolk alike. Certainly Atkinson was more intellectually curious than Walter Kerr, who, with Atkinson, has a Broadway theatre named for him. I admire Kerr chiefly for his relaxed, chatty prose. I think Brantley tries for that at times, by the way, to varying levels of success. Whereas a Kerr review typically reads like a fireside chat, a Brantley review reads like a forest fire.

Hunka also makes this observation:

"Where the blogosphere has been particularly poor is in providing a place for the longer essays and thinking about theatre and drama that used to be the province of the Times Sunday edition."

I'm not quite sure I agree. I have read many a long (and occasionally long-winded) critical essay on theatre blogs, and one of the refreshing aspects of these pieces is how relatively free they are of critical-ese and journalistic-ese. However, I would observe that this freedom reinforces the notion, which I do have a problem with, that there must exist a wall between theatre blogging and theatre journalism -- or even more broadly, theatre blogging and all writing about theatre, including academic. The nature of my pointed and sustained broadside against Hunka's unwise review of 100 Saints was that bloggers are part of the critical discussion -- right here, right now, today.

Let me digress slightly because I'd like to share something. Less than a week after the fusillades between myself and Hunka started going back and forth, Aaron Riccio emailed me and asked if he could call me; I readily agreed. One of the things that stunned me in our conversation (which was terrific and friendly) was the degree to which Aaron felt that he, as a theatre blogger, had a questionable role to play in the critical dialogue of our present moment. He even said, in a tone I found flattering yet unfortunate, that there were mainstream critics like me on this side and bloggers on that side. My response was that I believe theatre bloggers -- especially the major theatre bloggers and I think we all pretty much know who they are -- should be brought into the fold, not excluded from it. I further maintain that the biggest threat to theatre blogging is self-segregation. And I quite with Hunka that Aaron's getting better and better as a critic. I just think things need to go further -- a few of the major public relations professionals in town know that I think the major theatre bloggers, like Aaron, should be put on press lists. I don't care if they go on second-night lists or first-night lists (first-night critics see shows in previews; second-night critics see shows after opening). And that brings us to Hunka's comments about a "crisis of legitimacy."

Are there issues around the availability of tickets? You bet. Is it clear to the industry yet that theatre bloggers drive ticket sales? You bet...that we don't know yet. And while I know theatre bloggers largely didn't create their blogs to drive ticket sales, once aware of that power, once of some assurance that they possess that ability, they will surely take full advantage of it. It's not about power, it's about voices -- it's about leavening the market.

And so I return to my sad song: When theatre bloggers agree to accept complimentary tickets to a show in previews, they are at that point willing participants in that transactional dynamic. And I think that's excellent. Whereas I believe that self-segregating -- i.e., not having to play by the rules that other critics play by -- is tantamount to creating a lower-class of writers.

Elsewhere in his essay, Hunka discusses the idea of having a comments section. I choose to have a comments section and rarely reject a comment when I receive one, even if I feel the poster is writing out of rage or idiocy or both. While I respect Terry Teachout suppressing a comments section on his blog, I find it counterintuitive: the ethos of "read my view while I suppress yours" strikes me as the very antithesis of conservative thought. I also think anonymous posting is an inherently cowardly act. Now, this past week, in response to a post and another post about the Jewish Theater of New York brouhaha, I received an anonymous comment and I published it, leading to a little back and forth. But the unwillingness of the poster to be forthcoming made the whole experience -- to use Hunka's word -- impotent, akin to sitting on Hannity and Colmes and debating Harvey the rabbit. When an anonymous poster, presumably the same one, sent in a really objectionable, nutty, ridiculous anonymous comment, yes, I rejected it; the dialogue had devolved enough that I felt no one was truly being served. Fundamentally I'm committed to a free exchange of views, even if it gets vindicative and sniping and ungentlemanly, as we know certain New York critics to be. Fundamentally as well, it's my blog and I'll reject if I feel I ought to. There's either a trust that I moderate comments fairly or there isn't. I'd hope that Teachout would appreciate the idea of letting the market, for the most part, decide.

I have to admit I scratched my head a bit when I read this:

"There is a breathless sense of self-promotion and self-importance rather than the contemplation and serious consideration that the condition of our theatre and audiences demands. The need for fast, vituperative, jazzy prose and an attentiveness to juicy gossip to attract attention (in the absence of any significant content) is a very New York trend; but this style doesn't suit longer-form dramatic criticism and essays. There's room for that breezy, casual style in the print media; in fact, the print media feeds on such language; it sells magazines and newspapers. The blogosphere, on the other hand, sells nothing -- it's a loss-leader, a freebie. But because it doesn't have that fiduciary responsibility to the publisher and stockholders, the barriers to entry are far lower, and the playing field is level."

Frankly, I don't understand what Hunka is getting at here. If self-promotion is not what the theatre and its audiences demand, how can bloggers plugging their own shows "not necessarily be a criticism, for that's one of the things the blogosphere is best at..."? Any J-school graduate will tell you, too, that "fast, vituperative, jazzy prose" is not a New York trend. I've looked at lots of theatre blogs in other cities, and I see plenty of (stellar) jazz there, too. I rather like jazz, to extend the metaphor a little. The style seems to suit the medium. I don't think the blogosphere would benefit from critical prose handed down in double-column measur like a gift from God.

I think Hunka is offering a lament for old-fashioned theatre criticism, and in that I very much support him. I take the history of theatre criticism very seriously, mostly because what I have learned is that things really are cyclical: the form has evolved more than people realize. There may far fewer venues in traditional media and certainly fewer column inches, but I think Hunka should also remember that critics, on balance, are far more openminded today compared to, say, 100 years ago. The Mansfield Theatre wasn't renamed to honor Brooks Atkinson because the man was incurious; Atkinson deliberately championed the new and the progressive, the daring and the adventurous, even if he didn't fully understand it or grasp how to frame it for readers. It was Atkinson who, in his book Broadway, wrote these paragraphs about William Winter:

"The best-known critic was the most virulent -- William Winter, both in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1836, and critic for the New York Tribune from 1865 to 1909. The older he became, the less tolerant, the more petulent, the more vindictive, sanctimonious, and prudish. He came to have a proprietary attitude towards the theatre, as if he thought it should conform to his knowledge and taste -- and to his prejudices, which were massive.

When he resigned from the New York Tribune in 1909, he was seventy-three. He had a scowling face and long white hair that was carelessly combed. He looked like a surprised but doleful dolphin. 'Weeping Willie' was what [critic James] Huneker called him. He wrote an imposing, rolling style, with occasional words and phrases that were self-consciously bookish, and a general impression that life was so common that writing about it had become an intolerable duty. His principal reviews were about 3,400 words in length, set in small type in double-column measure. They looked like proclamations sent down from heaven, which indeed they might have been if God had not had a sense of humor. Since Winter never had an office, he wrote his reviews standing up in the New York Tribune business office. He always wrote section of his reviews before the opening night performance -- having read the script, perhaps, or having attended a rehearsal. He was paid $50 a week -- the smallest salary paid to the head of a drama department in any New York newspaper. To make a living and to support his family in Brighton, Staten Island, he wrong long polemics for magazines, and wrote several books, generally in two fat volumes. In his solemn prose style with its rare and haughty phrases ('impartment of predestinate evil'), in his intolerance of new ideas in the theater, in his thunderous vituperation over what he regarded as indecent or radical, he represented the ponderous cant of his time. Immorality became a vice of hideous mien in his writing. Of [Edward Sheldon's] Salvation Nell he said: 'Those persons who wish to have their minds dragged through the gutter and drenched in the slime of the brothel can gratify their desire at the Hackett [Theatre].' Harrison Gray Fiske [publisher of the New York Dramatic Mirror, a broadsheet] said that Winter could 'unearth impurity from the quotations of the stock market and wantonness from the Declaration of Independence.' "

Read many of the other critics of Atkinson's era -- and earlier -- and you'll find little intellectual curiosity and much dismissing of the hand and fears of prurience. Does no one know what Shaw, arguably the finest theatre critic ever, went through when he began writing plays? Shaw, Ibsen, Strindberg -- all were mocked and maligned at a time when there were more critics than now; imagine how devastating to the theatre's progress their dismissals must have seemed! To me, a more interesting, less facile conversation would involve not observing that there are trivial posts and sniping posts and self-promoting posts and posts that fail, as Hunka's suggests, to fulfill the intellectual promise of the theatre blogosphere, but what must be done to steer the blogosphere in that direction. Perhaps his post itself represents one such action.

Finally, Hunka bemoans the "apparent irrelevance of the current blogosphere to New York theatre; an irrelevance matched, it seems, only by the condescending coverage with which major New York print publications have been considering theatre," and here we come to my earlier point about the reality-based community. Truthfully, the theatre blogosphere is the furthest thing from irrelevant; talk to any producer, nonprofit or commercial; talk to any industry creative -- playwright, director, actor, dramaturg -- who uses a blog to get ahead, to consider victories and defeats, challenges and breakthroughs. The blogosphere isn't marginal, and I disagree that there is a lack of serious, thoughtful concern about and for the theatre. It may not be the thoughts or concerns Hunka would like to see (and I should add that his point about sloppiness in grammar and spelling is well taken), but it isn't marginal.

And I think the New York theatre regards the theatre blogosphere as quite legitimate; that they haven't figured out how to interact with it doesn't mean they dismiss it. Shoot, why else would Playwrights Horizons have invited Hunka to that fateful half a performance of 100 Saints? If anything marginalizes anything, it's the tendency -- we're all guilty of it, I guess -- to want to get a corner on truth. It's not that "the alternative to print criticism that the blogosphere represents is no plausible alternative at all." It's that the blogosphere doesn't fit Hunka's definition for what that is. My fear is that demanding homogenization is what ultimately spoils the milk.

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Moving On

Fortunately most of the emails on the Hunka debacle have been favorable, if occasionally a little bit tetchy. I did receive one today, via a comment on a previous post, suggesting George "at least" saw a production that Playwrights Horizons had invited him to, versus me passing pre-judgement on the Spike Lee-directed Stalag 17. Of course, there was no pre-judgement in that original post, which read, in response to no one talking about the announcement of Lee in the first place...

"Why is no one posting about Spike Lee being announced to direct the first-ever revival of Stalag 17 on Broadway?Is there (with theoretical good reason) an automatic assumption that the show will be crap, or that Lee will crap out on the project?

Or is it summer doldrums?..."

Funny how people have a tenuous relationship to the truth, hm? I didn't realize that the posing of a rhetorical question (in response to no one discussing, good or bad or otherwise, the fact that Spike Lee is announced to direct Stalag 17) is the same thing as the making of a statement.

Or perhaps the rules of grammar and rhetoric do not apply to you, since other rules apparently do not apply, by your own decree, to the matchless, unassailable princes of the blogosphere.

Let me assure you that what happened here is not going to go away. If you can't handle the fact that what happened was wrong, please don't visit.

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A Critic Beyond Reproach?

George Hunka has responded -- via a comment to one of my posts. My replies are below.

When I was the general manager of a small theatre in Philadelphia in the mid-1980s I shared my office with the artistic director. When a bad review of one of our shows was published in the Inquirer or the Daily News, the AD would often go into hysterics. "Ah, these reviews!" he would yell, stomping and screaming. "George, I want you to draft a letter to the editor! Tell them that all of their reviews should have a sentence in bold italics before each review -- 'The below is only the opinion of our reviewer and shouldn't be taken as fact!'

What struck me then about his response, and what strikes me now about yours to my review, Leonard, is the extraordinary condescension and lack of respect that you show not only to me, but to the artists who are responsible for "100 Saints" and to the potential audience for this show, which includes the readership of various critics, both you and me.

How extraordinary that you accuse me of disrespecting the artists when that is precisely what you are doing.

Artists are not children to be coddled and protected from criticism when they, or their producing organization, invite it from whatever source, and critics are not paternalistic playground monitors, to pat artists on the head when they do well or scold them when they do poorly. Artists are fully-grown mature adults, well aware that they conduct their professional lives in the public arena. Criticism, whether it's from a reviewer or from a friend over drinks after a show, is the risk one takes, consciously, when one chooses the profession.

No one, least of all yours truly, is advocating coddling and protecting, and I think neither of us have been busy patting anyone on the head. You are not the only person who gets to have an opinion about how artists should be treated, and in what manner. Artists have historically reserved the right to determine when their art should be unveiled and evaluated, and Playwrights Horizons—and your complicity in their scheme—wags a middle-finger at that, and rather happily as well, it seems.

Readers of both blogs and newspaper reviews, similarly, are not children. Despite what my AD used to believe, they are fully capable of reading, fairly and critically, the reviews we write and decide on the basis of that whether they want to see the show or not. They are aware that these are opinions, nothing more and nothing less. And the more familiar they are with an individual critic's prejudices and interests, the more they are fairly able to judge whether the play itself holds any interest for them or not. People who have been reading "Superfluities" for the past few years, as well as the reviews I've written for other publications, are well-aware of my own, and my fairness when it comes to reviewing shows which don't conform to the aesthetics I hold for my own creative work.

None of which is the point. I dare you, George, to point to the specific sentence in which I stated that artists are children, or that artists are not capable of reading reviews. This germane issue is not about familiarity. It is about ethics, and you still haven’t addressed the question, perhaps because you know you did something unethical: You participated in an unethical and, in my view, very damaging experiment.

To give Playwrights Horizons its due, they're aware that the nature of the critical, reviewing and marketing world is changing too. It's changed quite a bit in the four years since I've been writing "Superfluities." Among the things that have been changing is this very "industry practice" that you spend so much time defending. The blogosphere has wrested criticism and reportage from the traditional MSM that former elitist cadre of marketers, critics, editors and producers used to control.

The blogosphere hasn’t wrested crap, Jean Valjean. What you are complicit in is a controlled violation of industry practices that everyone—including ATPAM and the League of American Theatres and Producers, to say nothing of every nonprofit and commercial establishment in this city, and, indeed, in every city I can think of in these United States, regards as stare decisis. Let me also mention the writers and directors, and the actors as well, all of whom are doing their job or, more likely, learning how to do their job. What you’re really saying, too, is "Ha! Now I’m one of you elitists."

I don't need to be lectured on professional ethics by the likes of you. It's your own self-protective, paternalistic, moralistic attitude towards the art and the industry itself you're expressing. You're not defending artists here (they can adequately defend themselves in their own work), or the audience. You're defending your own sinecure as a paid reviewer firmly ensconced in the MSM.

Well, that's too bad, because I’m going to -- and the likes of me, hm? Snuggling up to good old Stewie, I see. Most charming. It's not because I’m self-protective (I’m seeing the show anyway, I’ve arranged for Lois Smith to be the national cover story of Back Stage, and I’ll still vote on it as a Drama Desk member, so there’s nothing to protect). And it's not because I’m paternalistic. I am, though, defending artists precisely because you, so as to pump yourself full of unethical and (evidently) pissy self-satisfaction, choose not to defend them, but rather to subject them to the worst possible atmosphere in which to evaluate their work—actually, half their work, since you didn’t have the professional courtesy, or courtesy to the entities that provided you with tickets, to stick around.

I don't know why PH invited me to write about "100 Saints" on the terms they offered me. I continue to receive invitations to shows, some of which I write about, some of which I don't. But I think I get these invitations because of the quality of my writing and the perceived value of my response, positive or negative -- a fully open, ethical response to the individual reviewing situation I find myself in. I'm very flattered that it's valued. Your own self-serving harangues, though, seem to presume that I have some kind of influence that I certainly wasn't looking for.

It doesn’t give you the right to be damaging and hurtful. Or do you think it does?

In the event Backstage does want to do a story like this (and in the even unlikelier event they want to talk to me about it), my email address is on the home page of my blog. I'd have written to you via email, Leonard. But apparently you don't want your readers to have that kind of access.

Your last sentence makes no sense. If I didn’t think you were absolutely 100% wrong I wouldn’t even bother. You’re completely wrong and I can assure you I'll continue to yell it and scream it and shout it.

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The Apologists Defend George Hunka

Now I'm receiving emails stating that because Playwrights Horizons offered George Hunka free tickets and invited him to write whatever he wants, he's utterly from ethics or responsibility for what he did. You. Are. Wrong.

No, I'm not blowing this out of proportion.
No, I'm not letting this go.
If you don't like it, ignore my blog. Bye.
Back Stage may be doing a story on this.
Meantime, a couple of thoughts:

1) One more time, just because there's a pimp doesn't mean you have to fuck everyone.

Yes, George was offered free tickets in exchange to write whatever he wanted, but that doesn't exonerate him from doing something unethical -- both writing a formal review and leaving at intermission. And I do think it harms the artists -- I think it harms artists immeasurably. What a cavalier, who-gives-a-fuck attitude to have, to say that it's ok to review the play in an early preview because one or some of the actors are "successful." What does that have to do with anything?

2) I've just gotten off the phone with a major press agent and learned that neither ATPAM (the Association of Theatrical Press Agents and Managers) nor the League of American Theatres and Producers, which jointly controls press lists, sanction inviting bloggers to review early previews. Both groups, the press agent added, do understand the changing nature of theatre press, and do understand the differences between print/Web and blogging. And yes, all PR people want buzz for their clients -- this, I might add, is additionally being offered as justification for Playwrights Horizons doing what it did, and for George's actions.

Do you believe to your core that PR people -- people who make their living generating buzz -- had no choice but to encourage formal reviews because it was the only, sole, singular way to get buzz? Are you saying there absolutely no other ways to work with bloggers to help a show get buzz -- negative or positive or otherwise? Could Playwrights Horizons not have invited bloggers to see a rehearsal, to attend a preview, and write a feature? Could they not have talked to the playwright, talked to the director, observed or talked to the actors or the artistic director? Or have the bloggers attend the same late-preview performance as the critics?

Again -- a formal review is the only option for a blogger? The only one? I don't think so.

Again, I'm not letting this go.
And I don't think I've blown anything out of proportion at all.

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Even More Hunka Fallout

I just read that Jay Raskolnikov is getting into the debate, and I thank him for the shout-out on his blog. I have a couple of comments, and already posted a comment on his site as well.

Jay writes,

I don't necessarily agree that critics must be held at bay until the "Press Opening." Hell, I've invited critics to a preview before. Working with a small company in a city with such a vast array of theatres, not every paper can make every opening. Given the choice between being reviewed at a final preview and not being reviewed at all--it's a pretty easy choice. (Almost) Any press is better than none. Most critics I know will take into account that it is a preview. There is a vast difference between a final preview and an early preview, and I know many shows that are completely different (usually for the better) by the time opening nears, as kinks are worked out. I don't necessarily agree that critics should not cover early previews, I do think they should not review a show that far before opening. In fact, writing about the process itself can make for a great story, keeping in mind that it is a process.

I say...

Inviting critics to a preview is standard practice, especially for first-string critics -- I'm talking Broadway, Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway. However, critics are usually invited near the end of the preview period and quite frankly the reasons for this should be obvious. However, if it isn't, let me explain: attending at the end of the preview period, not at the beginning, gives all the artists involved in the production -- the writer(s), the director, the actors, the designers, the backstage tech crew, and, yes, all the administrative personnel, no matter how large or small the production -- a fair opportunity to get everything together and to present the best possible piece for a (presumably) paying audience.

What Playwrights Horizons did by inviting bloggers to see the play and to post, in advance of all the critics, their thoughts about the play, is patently absurd, and I'm shocked and mystified as to why they chose to do this. I didn't even know about this until Aaron Riccio posted about it in the comments section of one of my posts on this issue. However, as I said in a more recent post, just because there's a pimp doesn't mean you have to fuck everybody that walks in the door. Hunka could have said no. Or he could have mentioned that he left at intermission right up top. Or he could have -- like most critics that command any respect -- stayed for the entire play. The tickets were free, after all. Was he losing money by staying?

Let me add that I quite agree, having directed more than 40 OOB productions from 1990 and 1999, and having produced and directed in the 2004 Fringe, that "not every paper can make every opening" and given "the choice between being reviewed at a final preview and not being reviewed at all" is a "pretty easy choice." We are not talking about a small company here. In terms of budget, longevity and industry leadership, Playwrights Horizons is one of the top five nonprofit theatres in New York City. Surely you're not suggesting that the Times and all the other publications, print and Web both, won't be releasing their reviews on the appointed day. That's not true, and you know it.

I do think critics should be able to see early previews, but they should not base their reviews on one; ideally, critics are invited multiple times. (I realize the economic problems inherent in this discussion.) More ideally -- and in what would be a throwback to the days of Elliott Norton and Brooks Atkinson -- critics would be regarded as part of the process, essential eyes and ears in the developmental experience.

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More Hunka Fallout

So Aaron Riccio posted a comment on my prior blog entry on George Hunka giving professional ethics the wagging middle-finger. My response is below.

Aaron writes,

Just a note of clarification, as Hunka got his tickets the same way I did, through an offer from Playwrights Horizon's publicity department. They asked for comments to be posted, regardless of content, in return for tickets. That's what they got: George just writes like a critic possessed. Think of it as a very lucid blog. When I accepted tickets, I asked very carefully if they wanted a REVIEW or a BLOG: they chose the latter, which as far as I'm concerned, pretty much frees me of any obligation (as a print/online critic) to wait for an embargo. So on that, I think George is off the hook. For the theaters, however, I do think it's dangerous to actively SEEK comments for preview performances if they're not able to handle negative, Deuce-like hype, as well as positive, audience building comments along the theatrosphere.

My thought is...

1) Just because there's a pimp doesn't mean you have to raise your legs and fuck everyone who walks through the door.

2) How about addressesing the grievous and savage, irredeemable wrong that a pre-review review does to the artists? This non-mea culpa -- "they offered us tickets, we're innocent" -- is like blaming conscription in the German army for mowing down a town of Jews.

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A Hunka Fallout

Well, the fallout is already beginning as a result of my most recent post on George Hunka and the balls-to-the-wall middle-fingering of the ethics of theatre criticism. (I repeat, Virginia, yes, there is such a thing.) To those that have emailed me, I thank you for your support, and no, I don't need the Witness Protection Program at this point. Though a tummy tuck, yes, that's ok, sure.

Meanwhile, a big shout out to CollisionWorks, which gave me such a nice shout-out over there with regard to my posting a YouTube video of "Someone in a Tree" from Pacific Overtures and about the Presidential Advance Manual that has probably already fattened my CIA file far more than I ever could have hoped. Thank you!

I saw the revival of Pacific Overtures at the Roundabout, of course (and wrote about it for the Roundabout's house magazine, Front & Center, here. I have always thought the show is vastly underrated, and yes, that includes the book. I mean, no, I don't think John Weidman is the best book writer ever, and frankly I think both Sondheim and Weidman (and probably the original director, Harold Prince) could have benefited from a gentle dramaturge, but I do think there is far more in that show than a thousand others. I also saw the revival at the now-shuttered Promenade Theatre back in 1985 (I was 17 at the time) and I vividly remember Kevin Gray's performance like it was yesterday.

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George Hunka Gives Ethics the Middle Finger, Then He Wags It

I have no opinion regarding the fact that George Hunka isn't exactly giving burnin' love to Kate Fodor's 100 Saints That You Should Know at Playwrights Horizons. But I do have an opinion about the fact that he published a formal review of the play on his blog, and the play doesn't open until September 18. Talk about breaking the embargo!

Yeah, I know, I know, he probably paid for his ticket, and thus, like all the other chuckleheads out there -- I'm talkin' about all those chatterers on All That Chat -- he can post whatever he likes. Hence the nature of blogging, one could suppose.

Yet I think his action raises some real ethical concerns -- and yes, Virginia, I do think there are ethics to blogging. Let me state that while I don't question George's formidable intellect and equally formidable prose, if you look at his review, it's clearly formatted so as to read just like, well, a formal review. Now, let's be clear: if a print and Web journalist like myself did that, oh my God, the walls of Jericho would come crashing down, Lucifer would be salivating to get his claws into me, Dick Cheney would be cackling monstrously and cranking up the burning fires of hell and everyone in the blogosphere would rake me over the coals and attack my ethics and call me names and wonder why my ancestors didn't burn in the Holocaust. But it's ok for a blogger to publish a formal review before the official opening? I mean, even when Newsday does it, it runs Linda Winer's reviews on the day of the opening, rather than the next morning.

I don't care how smart you are, how much you like or dislike something, or whether you paid for your ticket or not, to be perfectly frank. And I don't care if you think, well, it's a blog, and blah blah blah. Blah blah blah my ass. To write a formal review of a play in its third or fourth preview -- think about it, the play doesn't open for another three weeks -- strikes me as unfair. Perhaps Hunka -- and here I will carefully note I've had pleasant email exchanges with him, and when I say I respect what he writes and thinks, I mean it -- would argue that ca-ca is ca-ca, no matter whether the ca-ca in question is three weeks old or freshly dumped, pardon the pun, off the poo truck.

Surely it is unhelpful to artists (and I think, to Hunka) to expect one set of standards from one group (print/Web journalists) and a separate (but equal?) set of standards from another (the blogosphere). Blog-post opinion sharing in one thing, it seems to me, whereas the trappings of a formal review is another.

Hunka acknowledges leaving at intermission. He also lays blame for the play

"at the door of the playwright, Kate Fodor, a recipient of lots of prizes and commissions, but in a 'Playwright's Perspective' essay included in the program notes (which I wouldn't ordinarily cite as it's outside of the experience of the play itself, but its inclusion in the program -- also a part of the theatregoing experience -- makes it fair game), and to be fair, she denies responsibility for it. 'Plays often know things that playwrights don't know they know,' she concludes, urging that readers take the 250 interpretive words that come before 'with a grain of salt.' The essay itself is as tortured as the dialogue (not to mention a tedious pseudo-lyrical monologue delivered by the priest towards the end of the 75 minute first act); the play's self-conscious references to the definition of simile and metaphor, and the old Irishwoman's reference to 'allegory,' suggest that copies of Warriner's English Grammar and Composition, my old high-school grammar textbook, are as readily available as Gideon Bibles. Even in the Auld Sod, dontcha-know."

Fair game? It's fair game to attack Fodor's essay but ignore press nights? Fair is fair and fair is foul, hm? Please comment. I'm already wearing fireproof clothes.

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