[This is Part 4 of the “Theater
Education & Training” series, and the last of the six articles I’m
reposting from American Theatre. I recommend going back and reading the
earlier installments of the collection, if you haven’t already done so. As a reminder, Parts 1 through 3 were posted
on 3, 6, and 9 October 2024.
[ROTters shouldn’t be surprised if I return to the subject of theater or arts education, as it’s a topic about which I have very strong feelings.
“THE HBCU EDGE”
by Christopher A.
Daniel
[Christopher A. Daniel’s “The HBCU Edge” was published in the Winter 2024 issue of American Theatre (40.2 – 22 February 2024): “Theatre Training: Passing the Torch.” It deals, as the title states, with the unique assets offered in the theater arts by Historically Black Colleges and Universities.]
Alumni, faculty, and students from historically Black colleges and universities weigh in on how their training prepared them to take centerstage.
When two-time Academy Award-winning costume designer Ruth E. Carter [Best Achievement in Costume Design: Black Panther (2019); Best Achievement in Costume Design: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2023)] delivered the commencement address at her alma mater, Hampton University [Hampton, Virginia], in May 2023, she put both of her gold statues on the podium. The students immediately cheered and jumped out of their seats as she captivated the graduating class with a simple message: If I can do it, so can you.
Carter, the first Black woman to earn multiple Oscars for creating the Afrofuturistic looks for both Black Panther films, also received nominations for her work on Malcolm X [1993 Academy Awards ceremony] and Amistad [1998]. Originally studying to be an actress, she graduated in 1982 with a degree in theatre arts, splitting her undergrad years between performing and becoming the school’s lead designer after one of her professors gave her the key to the costume closet. Having unlimited access to that space is what changed her career path and laid the foundation for her to make history.
“Nobody wanted to do costumes, so I didn’t have anyone competing with me,” said Carter of her time at Hampton. “Everyone had the dream of becoming a star or actor in Hollywood. I was creating my own curriculum, so I was a little unsure if I had enough training. That mentorship put into my head that I had a future.”
Carter is among the plethora of film, television, and theatre professionals who either attended or graduated from a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) with an emphasis in theatre. At D.C.’s Howard University, the drama program turned out such talents like Oscar-nominated actress Taraji P. Henson [Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2009)], Tony winner Phylicia Rashad [Best Actress in a Play for A Raisin in the Sun (2004); Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play for Skeleton Crew (2022)], her multi-talented, Emmy-winning sister Debbie Allen [her latest two: Outstanding Television Movie and Outstanding Choreography for Scripted Programming for Christmas on the Square (2021), of which Allen was director, choreographer, and co-producer (shared with other co-producers); see more below], Lynn Whitfield [Primetime Emmy as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Special for The Josephine Baker Story (1991)], orchestrator Harold Wheeler [received numerous Tony nominations for Best Orchestrations and a Special Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2019; Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Orchestrations for Hairspray (2003)], and late actors Ossie Davis [recipient of many major honors; see below] and Chadwick Boseman [three NAACP Image Awards; details and other honors below].
[Also see the repost on Rick On Theater of Rashad’s memoir about working with James Earl Jones on Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in “In Memoriam: James Earl Jones (1931-2024), Part 3” (28 September 2024). Rashad was also nominated for Tonys as Best Actress in a Play for Gem of the Ocean (2005) and for Best Revival of a Play as a producer of the revival of Purlie Victorious (2024), written by Ossie Davis and premièred on Broadway in 1961.
[Allen received many Emmy Award nominations, and won quite a few: for Outstanding Achievement in Choreography for Fame (1982 and 1983); for Outstanding Achievement in Choreography for Motown 30: What's Goin' on! (1991); and the Governor's Award for “her unprecedented achievements in television and her commitment to inspire and engage marginalized youth through dance, theater arts and mentorship” (2021). She directed the 2008 all-black Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof which starred her sister opposite James Earl Jones. Allen received two Tony nominations: Best Featured Actress in a Musical for a revival of West Side Story (1980) and Best Actress in a Musical for a revival of Sweet Charity (1986).
[Actor and playwright Ossie Davis (1917-2005) was married to actress Ruby Dee (1922-2014) for 57 years until his death, and they frequently performed together. Together, they were inducted into the NAACP Image Awards Hall of Fame (1989), awarded the National Medal of Arts (1995), recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors (2004); in 1994, Davis was named to the American Theater Hall of Fame.
[Chadwick Boseman (1976-2020)] won two NAACP Image Awards as Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture (Black Panther, 2019; Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, 2021 – posthumously) and one as Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture (Da 5 Bloods, 2021 – posthumously). Boseman won a 2022 Primetime Emmy as Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance for What If . . .?, a 2021 Golden Globe as Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and a 2021 Screen Actors Guild Awards as Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. Boseman received a 2021 Oscar nomination as Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (all awards and nominations after 2020 were posthumous).]
Myles Frost, who took home the Tony for Best Lead Actor in a Musical for MJ the Musical in 2022, attended Bowie State University in Maryland. Grammy-winning singer Erykah Badu [19 Grammy nominations, 4 wins; see below] studied theatre at Grambling State University in Louisiana, Oprah Winfrey majored in drama at Tennessee State [University, Nashville], and alumni of Atlanta’s Morehouse College include [actors] Samuel L. Jackson, Brian Tyree Henry, and John David Washington, among others.
[Badu won four Grammy Awards: Best Female R&B Vocal Performance for “On & On” (1998); Best R&B Album, Baduizm (1998); Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for “You Got Me” (2000); and Best R&B Song for “Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip Hop).”]
A History of Possibilities
There are currently 102 HBCUs in the U.S and 35 of those institutions offer theatre. Students and faculty at Clark Atlanta University [Georgia] started staging plays on campus at the turn of the 20th century, producing classics such as The Rivals [comedy of manners by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Irish; 1751-1816), 1775] and The Taming of the Shrew. Dillard University in New Orleans, which trained veteran talents Garrett Morris and Beah Richards [1920-2000], created the first HBCU theatre degree program in 1936. Thirteen years later, Howard University launched its drama department.
Theatre programs at HBCUs include hands-on training to prepare students to become well-rounded and competitive both on- and offstage in the real world. Most majors are required to take courses in acting, directing, voice, stage management, improvisation, theatre appreciation, and creative writing. Enrolled students often have to perform, design sets, market and publicize their productions, and write research papers. It’s a strategy professors use to empower students to take pride in themselves as people of African descent as well as in their work.
HBCUs often lack infrastructure, available faculty, and state-of-the art facilities to perform and train talent, as they are underfunded by both state and federal government, along with relatively low alumni philanthropy because of devastating student loan debt. Still, Black students work through those limitations at HBCUs to learn the art of being self-sufficient and collaborative. “That’s a training in itself that creates drive in students,” said Garry L. Yates, Clark Atlanta University’s former speech and theatre chair-turned-mass media arts associate professor. “Because we lack equipment, it just makes us work a little harder, and the things we did have, we cherished those things.”
Tony-winning director and producer Kenny Leon has directed 15 Broadway productions (and counting [current: Our Town (1938) by Thornton Wilder (1897-1975); Broadway’s Ethel Barrymore Theatre (10 October 2024-19 January 2025)]) after completing his studies at Clark Atlanta University. Studying political science but taking all theatre electives, the director made it a point to regularly observe people in public spaces and “on the yard,” or on campus, to help actors mold characters onstage. He acknowledges one of his professors, Joan Lewis, as someone who made him appreciate discipline as part of directing.
“I was taught to not let anybody outwork you,” said Leon, who founded True Colors Theatre Company in Atlanta in 2002. “She would demand that you stay in and not go out to the party to work on your character. I was trained to believe in myself and know that anything is possible. You didn’t have to go to Juilliard, Harvard, or Yale. All you have to do is understand the practicality of what creates a character, and now I’m on top of the world.”
That type of tough love and mentorship is a cornerstone of the HBCU experience. For many students, it’s their first time having numerous Black teachers at one school. Professors in turn care for their students like their own birth children, getting to know each student by their full name and turning semesters into lifelong relationships with their pupils.
Like Leon, [actress] Keara Jones also received her bachelor’s degree in theatre from Clark Atlanta University. The 2020 graduate took courses for her major, taught by Atlanta-based actors, while balancing a work study job as an assistant in the theatre department’s main office. She noticed the way professors would acknowledge each and every student on a first-name basis in and out of class, and credits that family-oriented atmosphere, as well as her instructors’ life lessons in class and their professional experience, for setting her up for success.
“It reassured me that I was learning the tools necessary to be a working actor,” said Jones, an alumna of the American Theatre Wing [the New York City-based organization, “dedicated to supporting excellence and education in theatre,” that sponsors the Tony and Obie Awards]. “It opened doors for my classmates and I to audition for professional theatre in Atlanta, gain internships, and work under some big names, too.”
Being a student in one of these departments can be so inspiring, it’s not uncommon for alumni to return to their alma maters as faculty. Luther Wells, associate director of Florida A&M University’s (FAMU) Essential Theatre [Tallahassee], graduated from the school in 1984. Among his classmates was In Living Color [sketch-comedy television series (1990-94) created and written by Keenen Ivory Wayans] cast member T’Keyah Crystal Keymah, and the department’s alumni include Tony winner Anika Noni Rose and Emmy nominee Meshach Taylor. Wells remembers the theatre’s late director, Ronald O. Davis [1934?-2014], keeping track of his theatrical work post-undergrad and offering him a job to teach at FAMU following his thesis presentation for his MFA in acting from the Ohio State University [Columbus] in 1993.
Davis encouraged Wells to view theatre as a space for problem solving and critical thinking. “We were a small program that didn’t have a lot of money, but if we went to Dr. Davis with ideas, he would then challenge us to bring those things into fruition,” Wells said. “I wanted to come back and help improve the program and expose students to experiences and opportunities that I didn’t have while I was an undergraduate student.”
Preparation for the Future
P-Valley series regular J. Alphonse Nicholson enrolled in North Carolina Central University’s (NCCU [Durham]) theatre department in 2008 after then-Prof. Karen Dacons-Brock cast him in his first lead role because of his personality. The two-time NAACP Image Award nominee, who appeared on Broadway in the Leon-directed revival of A Soldier’s Play [by Charles Fuller; Broadway revival won the Tony for Best Revival of a Play and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival of a Play] in 2020, credits NCCU’s late theatre department chair, Johnny Alston, for teaching him to balance his studies with his professional work, since he was already doing community theatre by his sophomore year.
[The NAACP Image Awards, established in 1967, honor outstanding representations and achievements in the arts by people of color. Dubbed the “Black Oscar/Emmy/Grammy,” many people of color consider the Image Award “the one that matters.” Nicholson was nominated in 2021 and 2023 as Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for P-Valley.]
“It was like having a grandfather or an uncle as your professor,” said Nicholson. “He had a very low tolerance for anything. He didn’t want you to be late. Your clothes had to look a certain way, and he didn’t want you coming in smelling a certain way. He cared about you and wanted you to do well, and even when you did wrong, he still loved you.”
Alabama State University [Montgomery] alumnus Anthony M. Stockard is the founding artistic director of Norfolk State University (NSU) Theatre Company in Virginia, and founder of the HBCU’s drama and theatre degree program. Responsible for the school constructing a new state-of-the-art theatre in 2017 with full support from the school’s dean, Stockard takes pride in building partnerships among NSU, Equity actors, and theatre companies to help students learn how to put a price on their contributions to various stage productions. [Actors’ Equity Association, known as Equity, is the union that represents stage actors and theatrical stage managers in the United States.]
“The students will eventually have agents and managers,” said Stockard, “but they have to start learning how to negotiate and set the bar for themselves, because once they get paid, it puts the monkey on their back, because now they’re being treated like professionals.
“I was taught to be in control of our own narratives, to make our own opportunities, know my worth and to teach people how to treat me,” Stockard continued. “The university can block whatever they want to at any time, but they gave me my wings and really supported me to make it happen. I was so used to asking for permission to do everything, but there was a confidence and trust that was there.”
That infectious energy from Black students is often reciprocated, motivating the faculty to bring their best selves to the department. Being in the company of hip, youthful energy, whether in class or during office hours, empowers the instructors to incorporate more up-to-date terminology and spirit into their lectures or face-to-face engagement.
“The students are very enthusiastic,” said Karen Turner Ward, artistic director of Hampton University Repertory Theatre in Virginia. “They keep you young and working. It keeps you wanting to influence them to have successful careers themselves. They know from the very first moment they step on campus that they’re going to be really supported and pushed to their limit to be creative.”
Learning Beyond the White Gaze
Advancing to conservatories and graduate theatre programs to pursue advanced degrees at predominantly white institutions (PWIs) can be a challenge for students coming out of HBCUs. The family-oriented atmosphere, intercultural diversity, and being the majority on the yard gives way to Black students typically being the first or one of few in the classes.
Auditioning for roles usually results in Black talent being pigeonholed, typecast, or not considered at all for full production seasons. “It’s Black privilege here at HBCUs, because everything is about them,” said Morgan State University’s [Baltimore, Maryland] theatre arts coordinator Janice Short. “Black students don’t have to wait for a role to come to them. The role that looks like or speaks to them is all created for them. We get to share stories from us, for us, by us with our community.”
By contrast, white professors’ lack of cultural awareness, classist attitudes, and tendency toward micro-aggressions at the conservatory level can make Black students uncomfortable, leading them to second-guess their abilities. Playwright and screenwriter Mansa Ra, formerly known as Jireh Breon Holder, studied theatre at both Morehouse College and at the all-male college’s all-women sister campus next door, Spelman College [Atlanta, Georgia], before earning his MFA in playwriting from Yale School of Drama in 2016 [New Haven, Connecticut; known as the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University after 2021].
Describing the change of environment as “a hard culture shock,” Ra—who would go on to become a staff writer on the NBC medical drama New Amsterdam [2018-23] and have his play . . . what the end will be premiere at Roundabout Theatre [New York City; 2022]—often clashed with the graduate faculty over his writing style and voice. It was the supportive and nurturing energy that he had experienced at the Atlanta University Center campuses that kept him encouraged enough to persevere, defend his creativity, and complete the Yale program, though he considered leaving.
[The Atlanta University Center Consortium is a collaboration formed in 1929 among four HBCU’s in Atlanta, Georgia: Clark Atlanta University, Spelman College, Morehouse College, and the Morehouse School of Medicine.]
“It was like night and day,” said Ra, who changed his name in late 2020. “I had to advocate for myself as a Black man in a way that I never had to do in school. It was new to me, standing in front of 60-year-old white men and women who had a very specific goal for my story, and to refuse what they wanted me to do.
“It’s the type of environment where you really have to have a degree of grit and personal fortitude to really survive, because Yale is the type of place that wants to break you down,” added Ra. “At HBCUs, the goal is always to build you up as high as you could go.”
Grambling State University assistant professor of theatre Prince Duren spent 10 years teaching theatre at his alma mater, Jackson State University in Mississippi. He too experienced culture shock and felt inadequate as the only and first Black student to earn an MFA in playwriting and screenwriting from University of Arkansas [Fayetteville] in 2013. Duren, the recipient of the Lorraine Hansberry Award from the American College Theater Festival [2012 – third place award for Delta Secret], struggled with imposter syndrome as he received white colleagues’ feedback and notes about both his writing and his racial identity.
[The Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award, established in 1977, recognizes the outstanding plays written by students of African or Diasporan descent that best express the African American experience. The play must be produced by a college or university or publicly presented in a “rehearsed” or “staged reading” format following a significant development process. The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival provides the awardee with an all-expenses-paid professional development opportunity and the Dramatists Guild Award provides the recipient with Active membership in the Guild.
[The annual Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival is a national theater program for students from colleges and universities across the country. In January and February, eight Regional Conferences showcase the finest regional productions, offer workshops, and celebrate students' work. The National Festival takes place each April at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.]
“If they told me my name was wrong, I would’ve changed that, because at the time I didn’t know any better,” said Duren. “I didn’t feel like I belonged there, because the other people there had been practicing theatre for so long. There were several instances where I was overtly reminded that I was Black.” He remembers it all as a “nightmare.” What saved him, he said, is that he had still had people in his life “who believed in me and saw things in me that I very much didn’t see in myself.”
Recruiting high school students to consider HBCU theatre programs can be challenging for professors and staff, who sometimes experience anti-Blackness from teens at college fairs who may have been advised by guidance counselors that they won’t benefit from a Black college experience.
“Black students will intentionally divert themselves away from the booth or table because they are told that going to an HBCU is less than,” said Wells. “Some students will go other places and then find themselves at an HBCU, because they go to those other places and they’re not seen or have opportunities to get on the stage.”
Jones, on the other hand, believes her time at Clark Atlanta “gave her the tools to strengthen her Black voice.” She went on to train and catch numerous performances in London’s West End, crediting her professors’ constant encouragement to be her unapologetic self as the element that will help her land opportunities and future roles.
“I’m equipped to make theatre out of anything, whether it’s a black box with two chairs or fully immersive theatre with the top sets,” she said. “I can take nothing and make it whatever it is I need to tell a compelling story.”
Stockard’s intense preparation and ongoing conversations with his students past and present allows them to own the room, unlike what Black students typically face in predominantly white spaces. Christopher Lindsay, who went on to earn his MFA in Acting from Brown University’s Trinity Rep [Providence, Rhode Island] program in 2021 after finishing at NSU in 2017, originally shared the stage with his mentor in his first Equity acting job while he was in undergrad. The experience allowed him to perceive himself as just as talented as any professional or his grad school instructors onstage.
“A philosophy Prof. Stockard has imparted to his students is that regardless of what a space might be, predominantly white or otherwise, it is your job is to stay true to yourself and tell the best story possible,” Lindsay said. “It’s impossible to portray someone else authentically when you’re still discovering who you are.”
Reaching Back for the Next Generation
There’s a misconception at HBCUs that their theatre programs only read and produce plays written by the likes of Lorraine Hansberry, August Wilson, and Suzan-Lori Parks. HBCU professors beg to differ: They often reimagine Greek drama and works by [Edward] Albee, [Anton] Chekhov, [Arthur] Miller, and [Thornton] Wilder with a more modern perspective by setting the stories in Black neighborhoods, giving the characters more familiar names, or incorporating current events, pop culture references, and historic moments relevant to Black folks, so that their students can better relate to the subject matter and find the universal themes in the storytelling.
“HBCU programs allow us to discover who we are not only as
human beings but as African Americans,” Wells said. “We do William Shakespeare,
Tennessee Williams, Moliere, and Sophocles, but we approach those with an
Afrocentric lens instead of a European lens.”
Tajleed Hardy, an NSU alumnus currently in the final year of his MFA program at University of Louisville [Kentucky], concurs. “HBCU theatre gives students a chance to find their identities as Black artists in the world,” he said. “It allows students to recognize their Blackness and make it their greatest strength when operating professionally.”
Nicholson shares Wells’ and Hardy’s sentiments.
“A lack of resources doesn’t mean we lack the knowledge,” he said. “The professors who are there are well-versed in their understanding, and I wouldn’t be the actor I am today without the HBCU theatre department. The care, love, and understanding are irreplaceable at an HBCU, and you won’t find that anywhere else.”
HBCU theatre programs also often encourage students to be productive citizens who reach back to uplift the younger generation once they become successful. Professors recommend their star pupils for gigs and various off-campus opportunities. In other cases, alumni will also reach back, whether through guest lectures in individual classes, shadowing, or apprenticeships. Not only does this create pipelines; it also helps current students have an idea of what’s possible for them.
“PWIs can’t tell our stories like we can tell them,” said Duren. “Yale, Harvard, Columbia, or NYU can do a Black play, but we have the Black and HBCU experience to bring these stories alive. It’s not just the cast or director; it’s the environment and the support that can never ever be duplicated.”
“The magic from our programs brings our students back,” added Short. “Graduates are going on to work at these theatres, and they reach back because they know that the students are being trained, and trained well.”
As such, HBCUs can provide the ideal incubator for change agents and game changers in the entertainment industry. They allow Black and brown students to dream big and strive for excellence in everything they pursue, especially, but not only, in theatre.
“You have to have a tenacious spirit, exceptional work ethic, respect for the work, and a heart filled with gratitude,” said Bonita J. Hamilton, an Alabama State University alumna who’s portrayed Shenzi in The Lion King on Broadway for the last 19 years.
“Students from HBCUs offer unfiltered, honest experiences from our culture, and half of Black Hollywood wouldn’t exist without it,” said Stockard. “It’s about realness, connection, bringing yourself to the stories, being bold about it, pushing yourself to your limits, and remembering who it’s for: representing your culture and all that comes with it.”
[Christopher A. Daniel (he/him/his) is an award-winning journalist, cultural critic, ethnomusicologist, and college professor based in Atlanta. Daniel is a Black Culture reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and has taught at Morehouse College, Clark Atlanta University, and Georgia State University.]
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“CRITICAL STEPS: UNDER COVERED”
by Alexis Hauk
[The article below is also from American Theatre’s Winter 2024 issue (40.2 – 28 March 2024): “Theatre Training: Passing the Torch.”]
Even with arts journalism jobs in decline, emerging theatre critics keep training and finding new outlets for their voices.
The way critics are depicted in pop culture, you might mistake them for mortal enemies of the striving artist (or at least as the shadowy nemeses of plucky rat chefs in Paris). But the reality is that the relationship between artists and those who magnify and examine their work is much more symbiotic.
Take it from New York Times critic Wesley Morris, who put it beautifully in his Pulitzer Prize remarks in 2021: “Criticism champions, condemns, X-rays, and roots out,” he said. “It explains and appraises and contextualizes. It also dreams and marvels and mourns. You need some kind of knowledge to do it, sure, and maybe (hopefully) some humor, but really—truly—you need feeling. You need feelings.”
[The rat chef in Paris is a reference to the character Remy from the 2007 animated film Ratatouille. His nemesis is probably Anton Ego, the food critic.]
This emotional connection between the theatremaker and the theatre digester is all the more poignant of late, as journalism and the arts have both been struggling for their very existence over the last few decades, with the sustained pattern of cutbacks in state and federal funding for the arts, the corporatization of local media, and then—boom—the pandemic.
Measured in layoffs, this past year was the worst year to date for journalists. According to employment firm Challenger, Gray, & Christmas [an outplacement and career transition services firm based in Chicago], as of December 2023, the media industry had already slashed 21,417 full-time jobs.
The good news, though it’s cold comfort to anyone out of a job, is that people continue to appreciate the arts—as an idea, at least. This has been confirmed by the latest economic and social impact study from the nonprofit organization Americans for the Arts [seeks to advance the arts in the United States]. Their report found that 86 percent of attendees to arts and culture events state that “arts and culture are important to their community’s quality of life and livability.” The report also noted that 79 percent of that same group think the arts are “important to their community’s businesses, economy, and local jobs.”
This belief in the arts, of course, doesn’t necessarily translate into widespread support for full-time theatre critics. Many major theatre markets no longer have anyone being paid to write about performing arts at all, let alone for a legacy publication. But just as there is still theatre to cover, there are still folks finding ways to cover it.
Amid these daunting financial and industry realities, what does forging a path in theatre criticism even look like these days? Where does one go to learn best practices? To learn how to craft an expert pitch? Is it all learning by doing? If so, how and where do you get started?
To examine these questions, we spoke with six rising critics, all graduates from one of three theatre criticism programs, each designed to give cohorts real-world, boots-on-the-ground experience. They are:
• The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center National Critics Institute (NCI), a two-week workshop designed for arts writers and critics to sharpen their tools of the trade. Founded in 1968 and based in Waterford, Conn., the program is framed as a “boot camp” experience, owing to the intensive amount of writing and workshops with a variety of leading industry professionals.
• The BIPOC Critics Lab, a program founded in 2020 by veteran arts writer Jose Solís with the mission to train and create work by emerging critics of color. The program is designed to travel to various cultural organizations, and it has been hosted by the Public Theater, the Stratford Festival & Intermission Magazine, and the Kennedy Center.” [The acronym BIPOC refers to “black, indigenous, (and) people of color.”]
• The Kennedy Center’s Institute for Theater Journalism and Advocacy (ITJA), launched with the mission “to provide writers the opportunity to grow at the same pace as the artists whose work they review, celebrate, and interpret.” Eligible college students are required to be enrolled at a learning institution at the time of the program, or to have graduated within the last year. This program also provides a national scholarship to attend the NCI.
What have young writers learned from these programs? What
have they learned on their own out in the market? And what new opportunities,
if any, remain in this shrinking market?
When Billy McEntee [theater editor at The Brooklyn Rail] was studying theatre at Boston College, it was a feature writing class with [Boston Globe] critic Don Aucoin that sparked his interest in criticism. Mentorship from an experienced writer “opened the door to the potential of arts journalism, criticism being a thing that I could pursue,” McEntee said.
Like many young critics, McEntee was a theatre kid. Growing up in New Jersey, he quipped, “I was not the best at sports. And I was fortunate to grow up in a school system that had pretty good arts extracurriculars.” His grandfather would also take him to see “Golden Age” musicals like Oklahoma!, Paint Your Wagon, and South Pacific—trips that were “kind of my gateway drug, so to speak,” McEntee said.
McEntee attended the National Critics Institute (NCI) in 2018, about three years after moving to Brooklyn, having completed a fellowship at Berkeley Repertory Theatre [California]. At the time he relocated, he was attempting to freelance as a writer while working a day job as a communications associate at Playwrights Horizons, an Off-Broadway theatre [in New York City] focused on new work.
While he had assembled a few clips at HowlRound [theater website] before NCI, that program opened McEntee’s mind about what was possible—not only in terms of how and where to pitch his wares but also in terms of how he could up his game as a writer. The writing boot-camp aspect of NCI, in which young critics must file a review every night for two weeks, gave him a chance “to see a show, get out at 10 o’clock, file a review that night, and then look at it with everybody the next morning at 10 a.m. That was foundational and helpful.”
He recalled a few high-pressure moments—like the time a critic from The New York Times was going to be the evaluator the next morning, and the play McEntee had under consideration was eluding his comprehension.
“That was definitely my worst writeup, and I felt so upset,” McEntee recalled. He needn’t have worried: The Times critic “gave very candid, honest, and helpful feedback,” he said. Gaining access to and feedback from seasoned writers through the program “made the bridge between my career and theirs feel shorter, and that was really meaningful.”
Since then, his writing has made it into The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Playbill, the Washington Post, and American Theatre. But even a thriving freelance career still involves cobbling together a myriad of hustles. While stringing as a writer [working as a freelance journalist (not a staff reporter) who contributes work to a news organization on an ongoing basis], McEntee also works as theatre editor for the nonprofit publication The Brooklyn Rail, teaches and tutors, and occasionally writes copy [writing text for the purpose of advertising or other forms of marketing]. His main part-time teaching gig is with the School of the New York Times, which hosts students in high school and those doing a gap year before college.
One thing he teaches all his students is to be relentless with where and how many times you pitch—something he learned both from conversations and networking with the contacts he built at NCI, and by simply trying and failing, over and over again, until he finally landed assignments. One rule of thumb McEntee has picked up: Send your ideas to what may seem like an absurd number of outlets before you throw in the towel. “I think my record was, I sent a single pitch to nine different publications before I said, ‘Okay, fine, nobody wants this story. I’ll move on,’” he said.
[‘To pitch’ or ‘to throw a
pitch’ in journalism is to send a brief description of a proposed article idea
in order to convince an editor, agent, or publisher to commission the piece.]
Journalism wasn’t something Brittani Samuel thought she’d pursue when she started college at SUNY [State University of New York] Geneseo. On the other hand, she said, “I’ve always had a fascination with art in all capacities.”
Fast forward to today, and journalism is what Samuel is all about: She’s co-editor of 3Views on Theater [online theater journal], a contributing critic for Broadway News [online theater journal], and a freelance theatre reviewer for The New York Times. She participated in the BIPOC Critics Lab when it was hosted by the Kennedy Center, as well as the National Critics Institute. In 2022 she was the inaugural recipient of the American Theatre Critics Association’s Edward Medina Prize for Excellence in Cultural Criticism [intended to honor theater critics and journalists in the United States from under-represented backgrounds who write about theater].
It was a winding path that brought her here. Immediately after graduation, she had a “ridiculous job in the fashion industry that I was unqualified for,” which she left pretty quickly. She picked up blogging and landed on the radar of a woman who owned an e-commerce site that sold Tarot and affirmation cards and was looking for content. “I would write articles for her about pop culture or about women in the arts or anything that was kind of trendy in bringing people to her website to ultimately buy her products.” At some point, she recalled, “It just kind of clicked for me that all the articles I’m reading online are written by regular people. You don’t have to have a PhD in writing for the internet to do this.”
She then moved into a marketing assistant role at Signature Theatre [Off-Broadway theater in New York City] and began to build up her connections and pitched her first article to American Theatre. Arts journalism at first was an opportunity to engage with work “that I would’ve probably been talking about all night anyway.”
Most of the practical nuts and bolts of freelancing, Samuel said, were self-taught: how to seek out editors online, how to create and send invoices. Through it all, she said, “I was very against the notion of calling myself a critic. I thought they were the enemy.”
What changed her mind was building a network of like-minded peers through the BIPOC Critics Lab and then the NCI, where she realized “we all come to it as champions and fans first, but the job is to critically engage. It’s a wonderful privilege to have your thoughts be the labor that you do.”
What’s more, Samuel sees tremendous value in the historical
record that criticism creates around theatre, especially given that by its
nature it is fleeting, only living onstage for a short time before it closes.
“In that way,” she says, “you’re contributing to a kind of archive that people
can turn back to in a hundred years.”
David Quang Pham is all about reaching for the stars, literally and figuratively. As a kid, he attended both theatre and space camps, and was encouraged to aspire by his parents, both of whom emigrated to Michigan from Vietnam.
An astrophysics and theatre major at Michigan State University, Pham went on to apprentice with the 2020-21 New Play and Dramaturgy cohort of Working Title Playwrights, based in Atlanta, where he said he absorbed the value of being “open with your quirks or niches, because there will always be someone out there who wants to hear another unique thought.”
Then, in 2021, Pham was a moderator of Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas’ “Dramaturging the Phoenix” Zoom forum, the topic of which was “BIPOC Reflections: Critic/Dramaturg Relationship.” Jose Solís of BIPOC Critics Lab and David John Chávez of the American Theatre Critics Association were the guest speakers at that virtual event. Pham connected with Solís, who shared that the BIPOC Critics Lab application was open-ended—you could send in a sample work “of literally any kind,” as long as it was personally connected to your interests.
“As an astronomer-songwriter, I wrote a music composition expressing my desire to be a part of Solís’s orbit,” Pham said. He got in, as the program is by design extremely open to a wide range of creative responses to theatre.
Throughout the course of the 10-day program, Pham discovered that journalism can be a lot like the scientific fields of astronomy or physics, in that they both involve “a lot of reading, a lot of research, a lot of meticulous, careful consideration to make sure the facts are right, everything’s correct,” as well as bringing in context and empathy for those doing the work you’re looking at.
It was through this program that he got his very first shot at an interview with an artist: Carrie Rodriguez, the composer and lyricist of the musical Americano, when it ran Off-Broadway [New World Stages; 1 May-19 June 2022]. The BIPOC Critics Lab partnered with TheaterMania [theater-review website] to compensate Pham and cover his trip to complete the article. Originally, he told his family that he’d be back in Michigan in a couple of weeks.
Then another week went by, then another. Enchanted, as many writers have been, by the artistic delights at one’s fingertips in the Big Apple, he signed a one-year lease to stay in the city. Since then, he’s been working as a playwright and arts journalist. Of course, relocating to an expensive town like New York City takes some financial finagling, and Pham combined his income from a yearlong Playwrights Foundation Literary Fellowship [organization dedicated to the development of the creativity and careers of contemporary playwrights], freelance dramaturgy work, and a full-time job at Great Performances Hospitality [catering and events company] toward a move to Washington Heights.
Thinking back to his inaugural trip to New York, Pham recalls taking in The Music Man revival on Broadway [Winter Garden Theatre, with Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster (10 February 2022-15 January 2023)], a canonical American show that he’d never seen before.
“I was like, ‘Oh, wow, I didn’t know this play was about scammers,’” he said with a laugh. Pham realized that many of his fellow critics may have seen “thousands of plays and dozens of versions of The Music Man,” but that he could bring a fresh set of eyes to the well-worn subject.
One angle Pham could bring to the brass-heavy show, though
as yet no one has hired him to write it: As it happens, he is an accomplished
trombonist.
Write for Your Community
At 32, Kelsey Sivertson knows she’s an outlier from her classmates at Hope College in Holland, Mich. But there are some benefits to going through undergrad after several years in the working world. Now a senior, Sivertson said that taking time in her 20s to work full-time in economic development while taking courses at Grand Rapids Community College [Michigan] taught her valuable time management skills. And it gave her the room to realize her true passion: creative writing.
To pursue that calling, she quit her full-time job, trying to ignore the pain point of losing the full-time income. After all, she had grown up most of her life grappling with factors well out of her control. Her mom died when she was 13, and she grew up in “survival mode” economically. Her early exposure to performance came through her family’s church, which would “put on these big productions for Easter or Christmas, like a Passion Play or a commemorative drama. That truly was my theatre,” she said.
Sivertson didn’t become a Shakespeare fan until her mid-20s, but it happened thanks to a community college literature professor. “I’m such a dork, but King Lear changed my life. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is what theatre can be,’” she said, remembering how she thumbed through a thrifted copy of the 500-year-old tragedy, marveling at the writing.
“From a more allegorical lens, what Shakespeare is saying about sight and blindness and mental capacity is fascinating,” she added. “I think it was a credit to my professor for illuminating the text to us.”
Through her advisor at Hope College, Sivertson connected with Kennedy Center’s ITJA, winning the competition for her region, which allowed her to attend the program. “I just said yes, which has been the philosophy of my life the last couple of years—just saying yes to the opportunities that check the boxes of what I’m even slightly interested in,” she said.
When she attended NCI later, she began to realize that she was most drawn to criticism as a way of getting to write for her community and those like her, who might not automatically feel comfortable articulating their thoughts on art. In communities like the one that raised her, Sivertson said there can be a great deal of stigma around the art of live performance. People don’t want to feel dumb or uninformed, like they “didn’t get it,” she said.
“I found myself wanting to write in a language that people like me could understand,” she said. “The idea of making a review accessible to people who may come from backgrounds like mine, who were not afforded the opportunity to go see theatre growing up but have a desire to understand it, and to engage in that critical conversation—that is what I’m most interested in.” She added, “Writing in this way would’ve helped me growing up.”
The growth continues: Sivertson is looking into MFA programs
to pursue after she graduates from Hope.
For most of Sravya Tadepalli’s life and career, she’s been keenly aware of how social justice and art are interwoven—and also cognizant of the unequal amount of attention that some artists get over others.
Since elementary school, she’s been writing plays, and in fact writing theatrically stretches back through her family roots. Her great-grandfather, a playwright in India, wrote works condemning British colonialism—something she said landed him in jail for four years and got his plays banned. “To this day, we don’t know what the plays said or where they’re at, because they were probably destroyed by the British,” she said.
Tadepalli will tell you that she does not consider herself a theatre critic, but a journalist and a writer. Under that broader umbrella, she contributes regularly to Prism Reports, an independent nonprofit newsroom run by journalists of color, focused on reflecting “the lived experiences of people most impacted by injustice,” including people like her great-grandfather. “One of the things I’ve tried to do is figure out ways that journalism can be used to help whatever entity I’m writing about,” she said.
When she was in college at the University of Oregon [Eugene], she said she “really loved journalism,” but realized that it would require long, intense hours in return for an insubstantial salary if she decided to pursue it full-time. Not only that, but the pace and amount of work in a full-time gig seemed “super, super intense” and “exhausting,” especially the prospect of daily assignments she wasn’t necessarily interested in.
Tadepalli said that one of the valuable questions she was able to examine when she attended ITJA as a college senior was the question of what constitutes the theatrical experience for populations outside of hubs like New York City.
“Almost all Americans have an experience with theatre, but it’s not Broadway—it’s not even a professional theatre,” she said. “It’s maybe their high school theatre or part of a festival. What does that kind of theatre, and theatre that most Americans experience—what does that look like? What are those trends?”
It all came full circle last year when she wrote for American Theatre about Off-Kendrik, a Bengali theatre company in Boston that strives to make Bengali stories from the early 20th century relevant to contemporary culture in the United States. Raising awareness of this kind of theatre company is mission critical for her.
She also said that working jobs outside of journalism while freelancing gave her “breathing room” to be able to pitch what she wanted when a story truly interested her. It has also helped pay the bills lately, while she pursues a Master’s in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Full-time graduate coursework at Harvard combined with
freelance journalism sounds like it might get hectic, and Tadepalli affirmed
that the juggling act can sometimes get overwhelming. “I feel like I’m
constantly not doing something I should be doing, or like I’m behind on
things,” she said. “I think editors have been really generous with me about
deadlines, so that’s really helpful, because in the non-freelance world, you
don’t have that.”
Writer, director, and actor Ana Zambrana’s dad was a doctor, so naturally she gave pre-med a shot at the very start of college. But—“clearly,” she jokes—it didn’t last. She was already way too invested in theatre.
Since her earliest days as a Puerto Rican kid growing up in South Dakota, Zambrana recalls being enamored with the way theatre allowed her to communicate in “real time” with a gathered crowd. “The feedback you get immediately from the audience as a performer—that’s the thing that got me.”
She earned a BFA in Acting from the University of Central Florida (UCF) [Orange County] and is currently a Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers Directing Fellow [SDC is the union that represents stage directors and choreographers in the U.S.], a Kennedy Center Directing Initiative alumna, and a Van Lier Directing Fellow at Repertorio Español. As an actor, she recently completed her first lead role in a feature film [Don't Turn Out the Lights (2023); Oops Doughnuts Productions].
While she was still completing her undergraduate studies at UCF, she connected with the Kennedy Center to do a couple programs with them. It was through the Kennedy Center that she met Solís, who encouraged her to apply for the BIPOC Critics Lab. Zambrana said that one of the major highlights from her time as part of the Lab cohort was being reassured that her “voice and opinion were valid,” she recalls. Before the program, if you had said “critic,” Zambrana might have conjured a stock image of a “man with white hair and a beard and a little pipe,” she said.
One of Zambrana’s first assignments through the Critics Lab dispelled that image forever: She was assigned to interview Carmen Rivera, a playwright whose La Gringa has been running for more than 25 years at Repertorio Español on East 27th Street in Manhattan. Though she didn’t know Rivera’s work going in, Zambrana said she went to see the show with her mom and walked out sobbing. “It was exactly the experience I had gone through as a Puerto Rican woman born in the United States and the trouble I had connecting with my roots,” she recalled.
Zambrana, who is now based in New York City, has also come to realize the value of her background as an artist in fostering empathy and respect when she’s writing a critical appraisal of a theatrical work.
“When I see a show, I know what it’s like to be in the creative process,” she said. “I know if something gets messed up here and there, I don’t chalk it up as like, ‘This is the worst show I’ve ever seen.’ Putting up a show is hard work.”
Still, she has also come to appreciate the need to speak up when something onstage is offensive or demeaning. “Sometimes women of color who are critics, there’s a fear of talking about things that should be criticized, like, maybe I’m not going to get work after this,” she said. “I think it’s important for us to never be afraid to use our full voices, because odds are, if we’re thinking it, there’s probably someone else in the audience thinking the exact same thing.”
The Last Word?
The uniting aspect of all of these emerging arts writers’ journeys is that our careers as theatre critics, or as freelance journalists, are constantly in flux. Life sometimes places opportunities in our path that demand to be pursued. Sometimes a voice cries out for us to take a pause or to go in a different direction for a while.
Coming out of the pandemic lockdown, with the move toward more sustained remote work, ideas are continuing to shift around what the structure of work in general even looks like. Arts journalists and freelancers know this gray area well, which may give us the nimbleness to adapt.
As audiences slowly but surely return to theatres, they will seek out new voices to guide them. And just as there is no single linear path to recovery for our nation’s theatres, there is no one way to become a critic or arts journalist. Writers who do make a go of it share three key traits: talent, drive, and a belief that even the seemingly impossible and thankless career path is worth pursuing.
[Alexis Hauk (she/her) is an Atlanta-based writer whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, Bitter Southerner, Time, Mental Floss, Washington City Paper, ArtsATL, and more.
[In “Critical Steps: Under Covered,” Alexis Hauk writes about ‘critics’ and ‘criticism.’ As a rule, I make a distinction between a ‘critic’ and a ‘reviewer,’ and what Hauk is discussing is ‘reviewers’ and ‘reviewing.’ Many, probably even most people use the words interchangeably, but I try not to. I’ll uphold that distinction here.
[Just to keep the distinction clear, let me set it out briefly. My friend Kirk Woodward, who, among his other talents and occupations, is a writer—both a writer of plays and a writer of essays and other prose pieces (many of the posts on Rick On Theater are Kirk’s work)—and wrote a book in 2009 entitled The Art of Writing Reviews (Merry Press/Lulu, 2009). Since he, too, makes the same distinction I do, I’ll base my definitions on what Kirk says in his book.
• A critic
primarily views works within a larger cultural context,
• A reviewer primarily looks at works as single objects in themselves.
What’s more, critics and reviewers write for different reasons:
• A critic
writes primarily in order to expand awareness of the art, or even of
life.
• A reviewer writes primarily to tell people whether or not it’s worth their while to see a particular performance of artwork.
[So, in the lists of posts on this blog I’m about to compile, you’ll observe that I write about reviewers more than critics (except when the article’s a republication and the title’s a quotation). First, a list of posts on ROT having to do with reviewers and reviewing:
• “On Reviewing,” 22 March 2009
• “The
Art of Writing Reviews by Kirk Woodward,” 4, 8, 11, and 14 November 2009;
this is my commentary on my friend’s book
• “The Power of the Reviewer – Myth or Fact?” 23 and 26 January 2010
• “’Dante update neither divine nor comedy’” by Kyle Smith (New York Post), 1
December 2010
• “Reviewing the Situation: Spider-Man & the Press,” 20 March 2011
• “Joan Acocella: Critic, Historian, Or Critic-Historian: An Interview,” 31
May 2019
• “Reviewers,” 6 July 2020
• “Max Beerbohm’s Theater Reviews” by Kirk Woodward, 2 November 2020
• “‘On Criticism’” by Maria Popova (The Atlantic), 24 October 2021
[Now a shorter list of posts on dramaturgs and dramaturgy:
• “Dramaturgy: The Conscience of the Theater,” 30 December 2009
• “A History of Dramaturgy,” 31 December 2022 and 3 January 2023
• “Dramaturgy Analyses,” 22 and 25 January 2023
[The
is the final installment in my “Theater Education & Training” series.]
