The gutsiest PR person in town
Guthrie Theater communications director Melodie Bahan emailed to ask if I'd focus on arts writing for a moment. Even though I got my start as a movie reviewer (hired by none other than Brian Lambert), it's not really my area of expertise.
Then I saw Bahan's pitch: she takes a hard poke at local theater critics — publicly.
Melodie Bahan
In a piece for Minnesota Playlist, Bahan implores them to stop writing "hastily-written, ill-considered snapshots of an opening night performance and [focus] instead on actual journalistic coverage of the arts."
Bahan doesn't name names, though Graydon's, Dominic's and Rohan's ears must be burning. I'll include their responses in another piece; for now, I'll help Melodie get gums flapping. By the way, she says she showed the piece to Joe Dowling and her immediate boss, Trish Santini, before it ran.
Because of Bahan's outreach, I'm going to give you a little longer excerpt than usual, though I encourage you to read the whole thing. Her overall point is that theater writing, especially for a daily, needs to be interesting to more than just theatergoers. As an exemplar, she invokes the name of sainted New York Times theater reviewer Frank Rich — who, she pointedly notes, left the beat in 1993:
Let’s face some hard truths about the reviews printed in our daily newspapers.
Reviews in the Twin Cities newspapers don’t accomplish what critics and editors insist they do, which is provide a service to their readers. I would argue that the readers of the two major daily newspapers in this town would be better served by forgoing hastily-written, ill-considered snapshots of an opening night performance and focusing instead on actual journalistic coverage of the arts. I’m not against theater reviews; I’m against theater reviews that are poorly written, thumbs-up-or-down laundry lists of actors and designers that don’t do anything to illuminate the production or give readers a real sense of the experience. Maybe it’s not fair to compare our local critics to Frank Rich, but I think there’s a solution: Stop writing reviews and start writing news.
Local theater critics are journalists first. Journalists are storytellers, and there are thousands of stories in this large and active theater community that just aren’t being written. Features about theater are often glossy, shallow puff pieces that are indistinguishable from reviews. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had someone say to me, after reading a feature story about a show that hadn’t opened yet, “Wow, great review in the paper today.” And the very sporadic stories that do get reported are disproportionately about money — or the lack thereof — and therefore focus on only the large theaters. Plus, because these stories are so sporadic and lacking in context, complex issues are boiled down to one line conclusions.
Theatre de la Jeune Lune’s story is one example. It takes a long time to build up a debt as large as the one that killed Jeune Lune, but I can’t recall reading a story about their troubles until 2008, the year they announced they were disbanding. Our theater community is large, but hey, it’s not that big. How could our reporters miss something like that? When the Playwrights’ Center or the Guthrie or Mixed Blood gets a grant, the papers run a paragraph culled from a press release announcing the grantor, grantee, amount and purpose. And then…? Our critics don’t have time to follow the money to see how it actually creates art because they have to write reviews of the six shows that opened this week, an interview with an American Idol reject who’s appearing in a touring production of Grease, another profile of that really gorgeous actress they’ve profiled twice this year, and a Valentine’s Day poem.
In this performing arts community, there are personalities and huge egos and unsung talent and incredible artistry and gossip and bad blood and conflict. Readers are being denied those stories because our writers are spending their time writing reviews that won’t be nearly as interesting, vital, or even as accurate.
Comments welcome, and, again, I'll get the pros' perspectives as soon as I can.
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Comments (19)
Why can't we have reviews and arts news?
What's wrong with letting readers know if their ticket money is about to be wasted.
And if the Theatre de la Jeune Lune was a foundering ship for years, and folks in the community knew it, why didn't someone bother to tell a newspaper reporter. I'm guessing they wouldn't run away from a story like that.
Local theater shouldn't be immune from critical critics. Whether it is the review or the reviewer that sucks, the reader will be able to figure that out.
Good stuff. More please.
Now, about those "dance" reviews...
As a side note, "Withering Glance" non-withstanding, Rick Nelson has earned my respect with his restaurant reviews...quite exemplary, not that I can afford to eat out.
I think Ms Bahan makes an excellent point about the dearth of nuanced storytelling in arts coverage, actually. It's all too easy for editors and mags to focus primarily on just a pithy thumbs-up/thumbs-down sort of take on one-night's performance. The appeal of such reviews is perennial for a reason: the structure of such a thing is straightforward and relatively easy to knock out quickly. It's much more expensive (in terms of both time and editing) to commission and publish nuanced, labor-intensive behind-the-scenes stories. That's not an excuse for not doing such journalism; I'm simply noting that it requires more of the writer and the editor than the one-off review.
But without an investment in those sorts of stories, it's all too easy for readers to forget that art (in any discipline) is an altogether human endeavor, replete with juicy stories of the people who're working in the business. And Bahan is absolutely right, I think. If we in the media tried harder to think creatively about how we cover those human stories, we might draw more readers into the fold.
I don't think anyone's suggesting that we should do away with criticism; rather, I think she's just asking for more thoughtful variety in the kinds of theater coverage we do.
And (I can't help myself, forgive me)a shameless plug for our arts journalism at mnartists.org: the writing published by mnartists.org doesn't get mentioned much in these discussions--reasonable, we're talking about the coverage in the major dailies. But I'd like to point out that, along with review coverage on performance, we regularly publish just the sorts of nuanced, story-rich profiles on the people and happenings in the local performance scene Bahan seems to be asking for. (Please don't let it be said that no one's trying!)
Some recent examples:
Lightsey Darst's excellent profile of choreographer/dancer Sally Rousse, on the experience of being a muse:http://www.mnartists.org/article.do?rid=181387)
Matthew Everett's friendly article on the artists behind Osseo's new Yellow Tree Theater: http://www.mnartists.org/article.do?rid=215860
And just posted today, Camille LeFevre's lovely retrospective piece on Loyce Houlton's tenure at the MDT: http://www.mnartists.org/article.do?rid=221399
(Dig through the mnartists.org performance writing archives, if you're so inclined. There are scads more fine pieces by talented local arts journalists, just like these.)
The gutsiest PR person in town? How about the whineist? The Twin Cities are blessed with one of best theater scenes in the country. And, for now, it is blessed with two competing dailies featuring robust arts coverage with lively critical voices. To complain the theater critics are not as good as Frank Rich seems silly and small. And the timing of the barbs -- days after middling reviews of Dowling's latest production -- make Bahan's comments seem less courageous and more of an attempt to ingratiate herself with her boss.
I think you should hire her to write about the arts for Minnpost. She seems really smart.
I'd really really like to see an in-depth story about what the Jeune Lune principals/alums are doing now.
Act III, Scene 1
[Early morning. Deck side. Pandemonium as passengers try to secure passage in one of the dwindling number of lifeboats. The temperature is near freezing. The people are wild-eyed and in a panic, many only now realizing they have little hope of surviving for more than minutes in the brutally cold water. Amidst the chaos, the ship’s band miraculously, against all reason, continues to play. A passenger stops and listens.]
Passenger: A waltz? Again with a waltz? Hey, I don’t think I’m breaking news here, but have you ever thought of mixing it up a little? And where did you find this cellist? Why is he even bothering? You know, they used to have this cellist on the Mauretania --- my God, you should have heard him. How he could play. I used to listen to his phonograph cylinders when I was a girl in Illinois. He made we weep. Weep, I tell you. Weep.
I can empathize with what Melodie is saying, but I wonder if sports PR people would say the same thing. Our guys are donating time at local hospitals, why are you just focusing on the game scores?
And I suppose it's only fair to look inside and see if she's pitching some of these amazing stories that she says exists. If she is, and they're not being done, that's one thing. If she isn't -- and is just whining about it -- then that's a different problem.
Finally: despite the vibrancy of the theater scene in town, it's silly to compare it to film coverage. A newspaper is a mass medium. Movies reach a mass.
Rats. I thought I was the "gutsiest PR person in town" for supporting ethanol, in spite of what Ron Way thinks.
;-)
BTW: I have a new op/ed on my fav topic in the Twin Cities Daily Planet.
Gutsy? Maybe shrill. Could it be that Melanie is unhappy about recent reviews critical of the Guthrie? And what about the story that Joe Dowling makes more money than any other director in the country?
I am a long time Guthrie subscriber. For years I served on the board of a mid-sized Chicago theatre company. I am far from an arts hound, but I'm probably a 95th percentile-type as a consumer.
News on the arts scene here barely registers with me. I recall some cocktail party buzz around Jeune Leune's unfortunate demise. Beyond that? Yawn.
Should I care more? Probably. But if I am not interested, I can assure you the average daily reader here cares far less than I.
The newspapers are hanging by their nails for their economic and social-value lives. I don't know the answer to their problem, but I know its not to be found in better and deeper arts coverage.
Be glad you got your 25 year constitutional mandate for funding. Be glad your letter generates this small bit of free coverage and consideration.
Otherwise, get back to putting warm bodies in your cold building. Saturday's house at Delicate Balance was rather thin.
Jason makes a good point about whether or not sports PR would make the same complaint--and I suspect they would.
But that's because at many local publications, sports/arts/entertainment critics aren't *really* considered to be journalists, and as a result, what their bosses expect to see them writing about is limited to snapshot reviews and often less-than ground-breaking interviews.
I have a pretty solid journalism background (including a stint as a financial reporter), but when I decided I wanted to write about television and the media, the only real option was online.
A newspapers coverage of TV tends to be predictable and very soft, no matter what the writing ability of the critic. And that's assuming the paper has a full-time critic at all. Look at the current staffing at our two major papers when it comes to TV coverage. So much of the serious work is moving to the web.
Melodie makes some solid points about the coverage of the local theater scene, but a critic trying to write about the financial or "newsier" side of theater would find a lot of resistance from editors, as well as theater supporters who don't agree with the tone of the coverage. It's not that it can't be done. But it requires a lot of work.
This strikes me as the kind of thing that would work well online, even if it were part of a newspaper's web site. I just don't see any real appetite from any of our local critics (or their papers) to take on the challenge.
Okay, I'll bite.
Melodie, whose idea was it to name the McGuire Proscienium Stage after that modern day robber baron Bill McGuire? Was it a precondition of his $10 million contribution to the Guthrie? How was the quid pro quo of his contribution and the method of landmarking his contribution negotiated? You know, something like, "We'll give you the 700-seat proscenium stage, but not the 1100 thrust stage?"
And how exactly did McGuire Park become Gold Medal Park in the land adjacent to the Guthrie? Who made the decision not to have McGuire's name on that parcel and how did the timeframe for that decision square with the headlines surrounding the lawsuits filed against his stock options?
In a similar vein, was it Joe Dowling's decision to name a stage after Joe Dowling, or somebody else's decision? How did that come about? Was there anybody in the organization resistant to the idea? How eagerly or reluctantly did Dowling himself embrace this naming?
Given your desire to compel folks covering the Guthrie to adopt more of a journalistic focus, I'm confident that you won't mind finding the answers to these questions and getting back to me via Brauer. I promise I will follow up on your information and publish something in Minnpost's Arts Arena. It will be much more oriented toward news and not reviews.
I must take strong exception to Rick Ellis' dumb line about arts critics not being considered journalists. Sez who? My colleague at the Pioneer Press, Dominic Papatola, is every bit a journalist, and I'll stand on Ben Bradlee's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.
I think news coverage of the Guthrie has been remarkably forebearing and kind. The Guthrie is truly one of our sacred cows.
Ms. Bahan should be careful in what she wishes for.
If I sound a bit down about the New Guthrie, it's because I have tickets for tomorrow night, always a daunting prospect.
The Guthrie's downtown facility has all the charm of a Dickensian blacking factory, without the inherent vitality. Who would have ever dreamed that after all these years, the Guthrie's annual production of "A Christmas Carol" could take on a previously nonexistent layer of irony?
Hiram Foster and Britt Robson nail it for me. Thanks, guys! Most entertaining and most informative writing I've read about the Guthrie in months.
David--just to be clear (and I thought I was). I didn't say I think A&E critics aren't journalists. I said that editors and management often believe that to be the case.
Yes, there are exceptions. But overall, my experience (and that of a lot of colleagues I've spoken with) is that the average arts critic is generally considered to be less journalistically talented than their "hard" news brethern.
It's not fair, and often not accurate. But that attitude does influence what gets covered and why.