GUILD STATEMENTS - Chicago Suntimes Follow-up
As previously reported in this space, there was recently a controversy over an article in the Chicago Sun-Times written by theater critic Hedy Weiss, in which she slammed all 8 of the new musicals presented as “works in progress” in the Stages 2006 Festival, presented annually by the Theater Building Company in Chicago.
It was reported to the Guild that Ms. Weiss had not only reviewed these workshops, she had done so based on seeing only portions of some of the works, and that she had reportedly done so after explicitly being asked NOT to review the shows by the Theater Building’s executive director, Joan Mazzonelli, since they were works in progress and not yet ready for any kind of published critique.
As a result of this report to the Guild, emails were exchanged among Guild Council members, who were uniformly appalled and anxious to respond to this situation. Guild President John Weidman composed a letter on behalf of the Guild addressed to both the editor and publisher of the Sun-Times, and 22 other Guild Council members appended their own expressions of outrage at Ms. Weiss’ behavior.
In response to the Guild’s letter, Ms. Weiss claimed that she HAD, in fact, been invited by the Theater Building to attend the festival and had even received press kits for the shows; furthermore, she had reviewed the shows in last year’s festival without any objection. When confronted about this, Ms. Mazzonelli conceded that, while she may have not explicitly asked Ms. Weiss not to review the shows, she thought it was “understood”.
This entire affair was reported in the NY Times and Variety, and the Sun-Times followed up with an editorial that positioned Weiss as a victim of New York playwrights and their Guild, who were all happy as long as she was offering positive reviews about provincial Chicago’s quaint theater scene, but chose to flail her mercilessly when she wrote bad notices.
A number of DG members were also upset by the possible inaccuracy of the Guild’s position in this matter.
So, in light of the new information, Mr. Weidman wrote a follow-up letter to the Sun-Times, in which he stated, “to the extent that I criticized Hedy Weiss inaccurately, I was unfair and I regret it.” However, he also made the further point that “writers must be allowed to evaluate their work in a environment protected from critical appraisal, and professional critics should be expected to review an entire work, not just a few minutes of one.”
September 5, 2006
John Barron
Editor
The Chicago Sun-Times
860 Chicago Ave.
Evanston, Ill. 60202
Dear Mr. Barron:
On August 24 th, I wrote to you, vigorously defending the principle that bookwriters, composers, and lyricists must be allowed to develop their work in a protected environment, free from premature critical appraisal. The letter took Hedy Weiss to task equally vehemently for having flagrantly violated this principle when she reviewed eight workshop presentations at the Stages 2006 Festival.
Before writing the letter, I confirmed with what I believed to be an entirely reliable source that Ms. Weiss had been told by the producers of Stages 2006 that they did not want these presentations to be reviewed. This is not something I deduced. It is something I was told, directly and unequivocally. It now turns out that what I was told was untrue. That Hedy Weiss believed that the managers of Stages 2006 would be neither surprised nor distressed if she reviewed the eight presentations in question is now clear. I asserted otherwise. For that I apologize, both to Ms. Weiss and to you.
Having said that, I will add this. That Ms. Weiss’s decision to review a workshop presentation of eight new works-in-progress, to base those reviews on having seen, in some cases, no more than a fragment of the presentations, and to publish those reviews in one of the most influential newspapers in the country, remains irresponsible and unprofessional. Writers must be allowed to evaluate their work in a environment protected from critical appraisal, and professional critics should be expected to review an entire work, not just a few minutes of one.
To the extent that I criticized Hedy Weiss inaccurately, I was unfair and I regret it. But what I regret most deeply is that that inaccuracy may undermine the valid criticism of what she wrote about these eight teams of authors.
Sincerely,
John Weidman, President
Dramatists Guild of America
The following are comments from the Guild’s executive director, Ralph Sevush:
It seems to me that Mr. Weidman has made an important point that is in danger of being overlooked as we are busy flagellating ourselves, and investigating who knew what when and who misled whom, and trying to determine whether Ms. Weiss was invited, or merely tolerated. We may be ignoring the simple, unrepudiated truth at the heart of this matter… that an experienced, big-city theater critic, writing in a major national newspaper, wrote reviews of new musicals being presented to the public as works in progress, and she did so based on seeing only limited portions of many of the shows. And she did this despite the fact that, as a matter of general practice throughout the theater industry, the press does not review workshops, readings and other “developmental” presentations.
Now, whether or not Weiss had been solicited to engage in such behavior by the theater (or, for that matter, by the writers themselves), or whether she had engaged in such practices in the past without objection, is, in my view, of secondary importance at best, if not entirely beside the point.
In the early stages of a dramatic work’s life, writers do not need critical judgments rendered in print; they need to see their work on its feet, eliciting an honest emotional response from a real theater audience. A premature critique, whether positive or negative, whether well intentioned or malicious, whether well informed or blithely ignorant, can be destructive to the development of both the writer and the work. At this early stage, a writer doesn’t need to hear a critical response from one voice, but from a cacophony of voices, all laughing (or not laughing), all crying (or not crying), in the dark, in the same place, at the same time. That is the way a writer can really know what works and what does not. And most theater critics understand that and respect this process. By violating this standard, all a critic succeeds in doing is filling her column inches and entertaining her readership, without concern for the baby she may have smothered in its crib.
Was Ms. Weiss invited? Well, what difference does it make? Newspapers and journalists are supposed to use their editorial judgment as to what they choose to report on. The critics at the Sun-Times, like their counterparts in New York, are likely inundated with invitations to a great many events they simply don’t have the time or personnel, or don’t consider newsworthy enough, to cover. In this case, Ms. Weiss simply could have taken the position that most critics and papers adopt… to decline an invitation to review a work in progress. But she failed to do so.
Instead, she sputtered excuses. “They sent me a press kit!” But a press kit is not an excuse to critique; it’s an invitation to “write about”, and she could have written a feature piece about the festival, instead of using it as an excuse to eviscerate unfinished shows and bemoan the death of the musical form. And her statements that “it’s open to the public!” and “they charged admission!” are not excuses that require a theater critic to treat a $15 festival workshop performance, promoted to the public as a work in progress, like an $85 performance of WICKED at the Oriental Theater or even like a $55 performance of a new work at the Goodman. Charging a relatively nominal fee to theatergoers who are knowingly attending a festival of new works is intended to get a real audience to respond to the shows; it’s not intended as a big “kick me” sign addressed to the media.
The Sun-Times failed in its editorial obligation, too. After all, the phrase is “all the news that’s fit to print”, not simply “all the news that fits”. And publishing a defensive and misleading editorial to engender sympathy for their employee is all very well but doesn’t really take any responsibility for this situation or solve the problem for these particular writers created by Ms. Weiss’s irresponsible behavior.
The Theater Building, also, showed a distinct lack of judgment in this matter. Putting aside the irresolvable issue of who was misled by whom, it seems clear that the theater didn’t complain about Ms. Weiss’s habit of reviewing their festival presentations until the reviews were overwhelmingly negative. Perhaps they enjoyed using her prior good reviews for their marketing and fundraising activities, despite the destructive potential of premature criticism. And even the writers themselves may have solicited reviews, in hope of furthering the commercial prospects for their work, despite the disproportionate harm (both commercial and aesthetic) such reviews can often do.
And the Dramatists Guild bears some responsibility here too, for not first double-checking with other sources regarding the accuracy of the Theater Building’s allegedly unequivocal statements about Ms. Weiss’s conduct. But, as Mr. Weidman said in his letter, “what I regret most deeply is that that inaccuracy may undermine the valid criticism of what she wrote about these eight teams of authors.”
But at the end of the day, this is not an issue about who is to blame, or who lied, or who should apologize. This is about stopping the continuing erosion of safe habitats for that most endangered of species… the American dramatist. And it is the responsibility of the Guild, and its most prominent members, to speak out on that issue… without pause and without apology.