CMU School of Drama


Thursday, August 31, 2006

Hedy Weiss

New York Times: "“Irresponsible” — Edward Albee.
“Ignorant” — Stephen Schwartz.
“Incapable of understanding standards of professional and ethical conduct” — Tony Kushner.
The reviews are in for Hedy Weiss, a theater critic for The Chicago Sun-Times for more than 20 years, and they’re not pretty."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The whole debate over this review really does bring to light the interesting relationship between critic and artist. The theater sold tickets to a performance, handed out a press kit, and made no request that the show not be critiqued. They were presumably quite happy with the attention, so long as the reviews were not negative. But as soon as the critic professes doubts about the quality of the work, the theater community condems her.

From what has been posted so far, the only fault I can find with the critic in this is that she does not appear to make clear to her readers that the shows may improve before their next public preformance. After all, if we present something to a public audience and ask them to pay to attend, how can we ask a critic to not comment on the value of attending or not? Even if the show may change in the future, the critic has the right to comment on what has been presented so far, at least so long as they mention that further change is intended.