Sneezy, Grumpy and Busy

On Saturday afternoon, shortly after the Prelude 06 NYC Critics/Bloggers panel concluded happily, I started feeling a soreness in my throat and a sniffliness creeping over me. Sure enough, by the evening I was acutely sick with a head cold. Sunday I spent blowing my nose and chiseling away at this Shining City essay for the Best Plays Yearbook. Anyway, that's why I haven't put together a postmortem on what went down at the panel. Some general thoughts: I arrived to moderate at the last minute (sorry, folks!) and was a bit nervous under the hot lights. The anticipatory flop sweat started to flow. But my panic was unwarranted: The panelists were a tremendously eloquent, informed, witty bunch. Plus we had a friendly, attentive audience of about 30 folks, people who either couldn't get into the reading of Will Eno's new work performed by James Urbaniak and Marian Seldes (!!) or dear souls dying to learn more about New York's finest theater bloggers and their counterparts in the MSM. On hand were Garrett Eisler, George Hunka, Tweed and Sharkskin Girl (aka Steve Luber and Nicky Caesar), Isaac Butler and, representing the Luddite press, the Village Voice's Alexis Soloski. Went about 90 minutes. I lobbed questions and they ran with 'em. There was discussion of the spring scandal regarding My Name is Rachel Corrie and New York Theatre Workshop, and how blogs kept the discourse about free speech going; the Pig Farm Bloggers Night and whether this was an incident of bloggers being coopted by marketing; whether it was right for bloggers to demand more accountability from artistic directors; Alexis admitted that the unlimited space blogging affords is tempting to the writer who pines for long-form criticism, but she also extolled the virtues of concision; George spoke about his international readership; Steve Luber and Nicky Ceasar indicated that they were interested in blogging on a range of topics, not just theater; and the bloggers pretty much agreed that they functioned somewhat as small-town newspaper reporters, making sure shows that were low-profile or ran for extremely short times don't fall through the cracks. When I asked Isaac what role he thought blogs might have in the theater ecology, he expressed interest in seeing the theater blogosphere eventually constitute a third constituency, to supplement theater subscribers and The New York Times. This was, for me, one of the more intriguing thoughts. A widely read fast-responding theater blogosphere that turns the heat up on the mainstream media to make it accountable for shoddy reporting or callous, ignorant reviewing, while trying to shame the nonprofit world into taking greater artistic risks. It's already happening, I suppose, but is it having any effect? As someone who draws a weekly paycheck from the mainstream media (is that an oxymoron when you talk about theater? When was the last time the theater was mainstream?), I am all for more accountability in my field, and greater advocacy directed toward the extremely well-paid administrators who run the city's big, thriving nonprofits. Anyway, that's just a brief taste of what happened. I'm sure other sites, especially the panelists, will have more detailed analysis. Important thing is: the discussion is not over. Theater blogs can only grow in relevance and usefulness. Even now, they're asking the hard questions about audience development, programming, marketing and overall aesthetics that artistic directors and theater journalists ought to.