dirac Posted September 7, 2005 Share Posted September 7, 2005 After a nice long leisurely search, the Los Angeles Times gets around to hiring a chief drama critic. Nikke Finke describes the ordeal. (“Message to Los Angeles theatre performers and fans: We care.”) The LA Times Drama Critic Drama Sue Ellen Case, a UCLA theater department professor who holds a chair in critical studies, called the LAT on the carpet about its drama-critic void. “I think it’s an insult to the values of the community,” she declared. “There is an art community here, and it’s strong and it has, in spite of this, a number of really faithful audiences. There is this scene here, but what it looks like in the paper is that the scene here is cars. The Times has someone write about cars every week, but not about theater?”“It doesn’t seem to be a major issue for the paper. If it was, they probably would have hired an ongoing critic prior to this time. I don’t think they’re looking to do anything negative to the theater community, but it just seems like an obvious oversight.” The greatest harm has been done to those lesser-known, smaller theaters, like Circle X and City Garage, that rely most on publications to inform the public for free about their productions. Link to comment
sandik Posted September 8, 2005 Share Posted September 8, 2005 "Long, leisurely search" That's an understatement! Now if the San Francisco paper would hire a regular dance critic... Link to comment
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