Presented by The National Arts Journalism Program
and Columbia University's School of the Arts

Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
October 29–30, 2001

Summary | Program | View the publication

Hypothetically Speaking: New Media Coverage in the 21st Century
Tursday, Oct. 30, 2001, 4:15 p.m.

Moderator:
John Callaway, television host, WTTW-TV/Chicago

Panelists:
Chris Boneau, principal, Boneau/Bryan-Brown
John Darnton, culture editor, The New York Times
Frank Deford, author and sports commentator
Jeff Folmsbee, executive producer, EGG the art show, Thirteen/WNET
Barry Grove, executive producer, Manhattan Theatre Club
Elizabeth I. McMann, producer
Michael Reidel, theater reporter, New York Post and host, ìTheater Talkî
Gerald Schoenfeld, chairman, The Shubert Organization
Robert Viagas, editor, BroadwayOnline.com
Linda Winer, Newsday

Michael Janeway, director of the National Arts Journalism Program: For those of you joining us only now, we have had a very jam-packed conference. In this case, we have an enormous panel, which isn¨t really a panel. It¨s going to be a conversation and an exploration. We have been bypassing the usual ìopening statementsî and going straight into the meat-and-potatoes of serious discussion about the future of theater in New York.

In what I call my ìprairie yearsî • my eight years in Chicago • it was a great privilege to come to know and work with John Callaway, who was at that time the only news anchor of a regional version of the ìMacNeil-Lehrer NewsHourî called ìChicago-Tonightî on WTTW/Chicago. John really made himself a legend in Chicago. It came to be known that you didn¨t go on ìChicago Tonightî with John Callaway if you hadn¨t done your homework. You didn¨t go on there just in order to spout. We thought it would be fun to invite John, who has worked with us before here on panels, to come to New York, where his two fabulous daughters, Liz Callaway and Ann Hampton Callaway, perform, and help us to have some fun and think anew about the relationship of theater in New York and media¨s coverage of it. There is detailed information about our various participants in your program materials, and John will do the rest.

Callaway: Mike, thank you very much and good afternoon. I¨m humbled to be asked to come in from Chicago to do this deeply New York story and subject that we¨re dealing with today. I think we can be candid with each other: I was not Mike¨s first choice as moderator. But Jerry Springer simply was not available. So I¨m here.

In the written material stating the purpose of this conference, in the press section, it was suggested that there was an uneasy relationship between the press and the theater. I think if you talked with many people in this room, a harsher word would be used. The press really represents a serious impediment to the goals and aspirations so beautifully articulated by so many people who were here and who have spoken prior to this panel about how to make the theater in New York live, thrive and prevail, particularly after Sept. 11.

But long before Sept. 11, the same question essentially existed, which was, ìWhat can we do to make theater better?î There are those in the press who resent being invited to have a discussion about how to make something better. ìWe¨ll just describe it, thank you very much, and you have a nice day.î So we have, on this wonderfully experienced panel today, people from various aspects of the theater and from various aspects of media that can really mix it up.

I thought that we might posit a scenario. I invite the panel to go as far with this as they wish. But if they find it irrelevant to what they really want to say, just say, ìJohn, thank you for the question. But here¨s what I want to say.î Because life is short. Tell me what you know and tell us what we need to know to make the media better, as it relates to theater.

One of the questions I like to ask people, whether it¨s in a family or in a corporation, is ìWhat do you know about your life, your family, your corporation, your company, that isn¨t working • you know it isn¨t working, you know what you need to do to correct it, and you are not doing it?î With me, it¨s the consumption of fat. Just as an example.

Here¨s our scenario: A very wealthy women is seriously exploring the possibility, through acquisition or with deep-pocketed partners, of the start-up of a major newspaper and, to whatever extent possible, other media units of what she hopes will become a New York City-based media empire. She and her partners are prepared to make a multi-billion-dollar investment in this venture, if indeed they wish to go forward with it.

This woman • we¨ll call her Mrs. X, that¨s what I call all my ex-wives, Mrs. X • loves the arts in general and the theater in particular. And she hopes that somehow, her newspaper and other media outlets will excel in this area. She is convinced, particularly in terms of theater coverage, that much is not being done that needs to be done. With all due respect to existing New York outlets, she hopes that her coverage can improve over what¨s available today in New York City. She thinks the press¨s treatment of theater is going to have to improve if theater is going to improve.

This woman is wealthy, but she is humble. She feels that she needs help. She has asked us today to assemble a panel of the most experienced, gifted, wise persons from the theater and media to help her think about the questions she must face if she is truly going to mount this excellent new presence in the arts and theater.

Gerry Schoenfeld, one of the first questions that is on her mind is: she has this notion that there is an over-reliance on objectivity. She doesn¨t quite even know what objectivity in the press is. She¨s wondering, to what extent • with her newspaper, her TV station, her Internet, her radio station • does she need to be a booster? Is that what you¨re looking for from the media as we move forward?

Schoenfeld: In part, yes. Especially now, more than ever.

Callaway: So this post-Sept. 11 is a new context for this?

Schoenfeld: It should be.

Callaway: What do you want to see that you¨re not seeing, Mr. Schoenfeld?

Schoenfeld: Well, I would go back before Sept. 11. What I would like to see is a clear statement, for whatever media we¨re talking about • a statement about their critic or their reporters, whatever their background, on what they see as their role. Is there role to just write what they feel about a particular thing that they may see? Is their role to comment in any way about audience reaction, to what the general public might see? Is their role to inject some kind of comment of a derogatory nature, of a personal attack?

Callaway: What if she says ìyesî to all of the above?

Schoenfeld: Then I wouldn¨t hire her.

Callaway: In other words, you would hope that she wouldn¨t come into this market.

Schoenfeld: If that¨s her vision, yes. I am not looking for a Pollyanna, mind you, not at all.

Callaway: But you don¨t want someone to be negative?

Schoenfeld: I don¨t mind them being negative in a constructive way. But I don¨t believe they should be negative in a way that holds someone up to ridicule, that is destructive of the people they¨re writing about. I am not looking for someone who was there when Oscar Wilde¨s first play was presented in England, as many of them attempt to say they were there. I am not interested in their views of other shows that they might have seen in the past, in them using that as a barometer for the show they may be writing about. For instance, I¨ll be current. There was a review inÈ I am trying to think of the play, it was a musical, it was in the last day or twoÈ

Winer: ìBy Jeevesî

Schoenfeld: Yes, ìBy Jeeves.î Exactly. Not our show. Not in our theater. I thought the gratuitous reference to ìCatsî and [the reference to] ìSunset Boulevardî was extremely gratuitous, totally unnecessary and in a sense totally contemptuous of the public who has enjoyed the show for 18 years. I didn¨t know why it was in that review, and what the point was.

Callaway: Your point, I think, is well-taken, and let me just follow up with you for one second. Do you think that what I think you think are those cheap shots • editorial merit aside • are real impediments to the growth and nurturing of theater?

Schoenfeld: I think, first of all, the Broadway theater, and its counterparts throughout this country, is a unique institution. It is totally self-dependent. It receives no support of any kind from government, from media in general • especially the television media. It is an essential aspect of the economy as well as of the cultural life in this city. Its work is emulated by most nonprofit theaters throughout the United States, especially the larger nonprofit theaters • all of whom have what they call now a ìBroadway Seriesî and feature Broadway shows as part of their season, primarily for economic reasons. They are not originating, which I feel is their mandate.

[Cavalier theater criticism] is an impediment. If it was not an impediment, you would probably would have the 80-some-odd theaters that once existed on Broadway.

Callaway: You mean, in those days, they didn¨t write that kind of smart-alecky stuff?

Schoenfeld: Well, I think they didn¨t like it. After all, Alexander Walcott, who wrote for The Times, was barred by the Shubert Brothers because he criticized one of their plays.

Callaway: Did you admire that?

Schoenfeld: They even went to the lengths of publishing their own newspaper for about eight or nine years as a countermeasure. No, I would not go that far. I want the reviewer to have credibility.

Callaway: Gotcha. Mr. Darnton, I know that Mr. Schoenfeld was not making any references to The New York Times in that criticism.

Darnton: No, I didn¨t catch any. It went way over my head.

Callaway: But just generally speaking, what is your response to what you just heard?

Darnton: I found it very interesting. This notion that somehow the burden of the responsibility falls on the press or on the media to improve the theater is a strange one. With all due respect, I think the theater will improve when you have great playwrights, great producers, great directors and great actors. From that will flow more interesting press coverage.

Callaway: Haven¨t you seen reviews in which you say, ìYou know, this critic is probably pretty right, generally speaking, he¨s taken shots at ÿCats¨ and so forth and we should reign that ego in a little bit?î Isn¨t there a kind of a smart-alecky tradition that really doesn¨t foster audiences and make them want to come out and see?

Darnton: I don¨t think it¨s the responsibility of the reviewer. Ego is not necessarily a bad thing. I see some of them here in the audience today. The responsibility of the reviewer is to provide context, to provide the meaning of the play, to tell you whether or not it¨s good, bad or ugly, and to tell you whether you might want to go see it. And it kind of stops at that.

First of all, you described Mrs. X as wealthy but humble. That stopped me right there.

Callaway: Mrs. X is an extraordinary woman of my invention.

Darnton: I think she should rethink the whole enterprise, frankly.

Callaway: She wants to know best practices. Now you have a new editor at The New York Times. You have a new day. We all have a new day.

Darnton: Is this a hypothetical?

Callaway: No sir, this is the real thing.

Darnton: Because we do have a new editor.

Callaway: You have a new editor. You have a new context after Sept. 11. Mrs. X wants to know, even from The New York Times: are there things that you want to change, that you think will improve what you do? Forget about Mr. Schoenfeld¨s criticism. What about what you all are saying to each other on the inside as we go forward now in these next months?

Darnton: We¨ve had a lot of discussions about Sept. 11, especially in the culture departments, in fact, in all departments. They do not include anywhere the assertion that we should somehow walk gently when it comes to treating the theater, or write interesting, sycophantic theater reviews. Far from that. Our notion is that we have to be alert to changes in the culture that will reflect the events of Sept. 11. It¨s odd to say that because it¨s a watershed, that means that we should then treat theater as if it were a wounded stepchild. The theater should be strong and should be strong enough to take it. The only thing we did after Sept. 11 was to print on the front page every day of our section, the daily section, this little ìWhat¨s Doing In Townî to try to boost the industry a little.

Callaway: Wait a minute. I thought you weren¨t trying to be a booster?

Darnton: That was our one concession. We thought it might help. It didn¨t work very well because the whole enterprise was really aimed at the theater. We threw in other events to kind of camouflage it • concerts and benefits • but it was aimed at the theater. We basically wanted to tell people there were tickets out there that they could go and buy. Trouble is, that was true for every production except for ìThe Producersî and ìThe Lion King.î Basically we wound up rotating the names of the various shows in town. That was the only thing that we have done to change our operation.

Callaway: Is there anything else, even prior to Sept. 11, for those of you who sit around the table, saying ìHere¨s what we can do to make this better?î My Mrs. X, for example, she has this idea • she know that she¨ll be told that it¨s too expensive, there¨s not enough newshole, etc. But she has this idea that maybe there should be multiple voices that review the same production, instead of the lead critic? Do you all talk about that?

Darnton: No, not this time. We have in the past. There¨s a problem with multiple voices, though. From time to time, people say, ìWhy don¨t you get two reviewers on the same page on the same day writing about the play?î That¨s got several problems. That¨s a double-edged sword. You¨d be surprised how often there¨s a kind of uniformity among critics, even from different papers in town. Chances are if we had two critics reviewing the same play and they both panned it, it would be a double blow, like a roundhouse to the head and then an uppercut to the jaw. Nobody in the theater would like that. They always imagine that somehow, there¨ll be these divergent views.

Callaway: She¨s not thinking necessarily of two critics. She remembers when The New York Times would send a drama critic to cover the political conventions. Another perspective. She¨s thinking that on ìCopenhagen,î maybe you have a physicist write. She¨s thinking of maybe like that museum curators • the people that make the presentation of the production • could write a piece of what they intended and what their view of it is. To start to round out this coverage, as opposed to the Olympian one voice.

Darnton: Actually, what you are describing is pretty much the function of the Arts & Leisure section, which is to find someone who will write about an upcoming piece and take an historical view or a specialist writing about the accuracy of it. I don¨t think, though, that you would get a divergent critical opinion. A physicist might write about whether or not Nils Bohr really said what he is thought to have said or whether the Heisenberg Principle stands today, but he couldn¨t tell you whether it¨s a really good piece of drama at the end of the day.

Callaway: So what I am hearing is that there is not really much going on inside of The New York Times in the vein of, ìHere¨s some stuff that we, who think we¨re probably at the top of our game most days, would like to change for best practices,î that would interest this woman.

Darnton: We do not sit around the table and have these kinds of discussions.

Callaway: You do not.

Darnton: No, no.

Callaway: Your editors don¨t ever say, ìLet¨s stop for a minute and take a look at theater coverageî? They don¨t do that?

Darnton: No.

Callaway: How do you feel about the fact they don¨t do that?

Darnton: I feel fine.

Callaway: Status quo is fine?

Darnton: No, that¨s not quite the same thing.

Callaway: What¨s the distinction?

Darnton: Everyday, we try and reinvent it. Everyday, we¨re thinking of ways. We watch critics very carefully.

Callaway: What do you watch?

Darnton: We watch what they write. We watch for accuracy; we watch for profundity; we watch for use of language. But we don¨t interfere unless on very rare occasions they cross a certain line. The ad hominem attacks that Mr. Schoenfeld was talking about are not something that we permit. We do permit reference to other plays. We do permit context. But there are regular standards to the paper that I wouldn¨t want to see abused.

Callaway: Do you permit one-liner dismissive notices of things like ìCatsî in the middle of an otherwise contextual review?

Darnton: Sure, sure.

Bruce Weber, New York Times theater critic (from the audience): Excuse me. As the author of the review under discussion, I should point out that review was of a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, who also happened to write ìCats.î And the reference was that the score was similar, and I think the phrase was, ìIt¨s just as dull but not as grand.î

Callaway: Mr. Schoenfeld, that¨s fair, isn¨t it?

Weber: Gerry, I didn¨t mention ìPhantom of the Opera,î which is still running, and in one of your theaters.

Schoenfeld: I was expecting it but I didn¨t see it. There is a certain degree of contempt with respect to public reaction. The Times at one time used to repeat a negative review about ìCatsî every week in the guide. After about five or six years, I went over to see the then-executive editor of the paper, Abe Rosenthal, and I said, ìIsn¨t there something to be said about the 500,000 people who have gone to see ÿCats¨ and have enjoyed it?î He said, ìYou got a point.î The rule now apparently is that after a show a year, they do not write what the critic said about it years before. To me, there is a certain degree of • I wouldn¨t call it arrogance • dismissiveness.

Darnton: Could I just correct that one thing? He¨s talking about the listings. In the lisiting, the general rule is: if a play opens, gets a very negative review, we carry it for two weeks in the listings • you know, those little paragraph-long summations • and then drop it.

Callaway: Ms. McCann, you heard the opening salvos here. Mrs. X is looking for best practices. She¨s taking very seriously Mr. Darnton¨s advice not to get into this business, but if she does, she wants best practices. You¨ve been at this for a long time with a lot of great productions. You must have one or two points you really want to make.

Elizabeth McCann: She¨s very rich?

Callaway: For our purposes at this moment in the discussion, she is.

McCann: Well, the owner of the Denver Post was a very rich woman. She died and she left all her money to a man named Donald Sewell, who invested in theater. That¨s a possibility.

Callaway: This, by the way, is a choice that is on her list of things • to invest in the off-Broadway and the off-off Broadway with the money instead of going into media. As a choice. But for the time being, she wants your best advice. What is it that you want the Darntons of the world and the Riedels of the world to do that they¨re not doing? Or do you want something new? Do you want something from the Internet? What is it that we can help you with?

McCann: Since she has all this money, can we discuss her advertising rates?

Callaway: If it¨s relevant, you discuss it. What¨s your point?

McCann: Advertising on Broadway shows is one of the fastest-growing items of our budget. I don¨t want to attack The New York Times on the basis of its advertising. But the best thing I could say about The New York Times is that I was 45 before I found out what a parsnip was. I found what a parsnip was because I knew a playwright and producers never admit to playwrights that they don¨t know what anything was. Gerry Schoenfeld had introduced me to Peter Schaefer. Peter Schaefer was cooking a Sunday roast. Mr. Schaefer asked me to cook parsnips. I didn¨t know what a parsnip was. I know this sounds silly but I didn¨t know what a parsnip was. I didn¨t know how to cook it. I got out the ìJoy of Cooking.î I looked up the parsnip recipe. I then went up and down the West Side looking for parsnips. Fairway, the whole Broadway Market, everybody. Finally in desperation, I said to somebody, ìAre parsnips a seasonal vegetable? Are they out of season?î And he said, ìNo, lady. The New York Times had a parsnip recipe this morning,î the result of which was there was not a parsnip to be had on the upper West Side. And everybody who had dinner that Saturday night on the Upper West Side ate parsnips.

Now that¨s a kind of silly story, but you cannot miss the fact that, unfortunately, we are one-newspaper town. Interestingly enough, other critics with longer deadlines are influenced by The New York Times.

Callaway: That said, what do you want?

McCann: I want to go back to the days of Frank Rich and Walter Kerr and Mel Gussow, when The Times had three very established, very respected critics. One was on the radio, one was in the Sunday paper, and one was in the daily paper. And I¨d go to an ad meeting, and some poor producer would be sitting in front of a stack of negative notices, and someone would say ìWell, why don¨t we wait and see what Walter says on Sunday?î

Grove: You¨re right. Frequently Walter agreed with the trend. But that was the healthiest trend, I thought. When you had both Frank and Walter, I knew what absolutely had happened, because Frank was impeccable on text and Walter was impeccable on production. That to me was a perfect combination in that paper.

So all I¨m saying is that given what you know, given the power that you have, it would be well-served if you had some way to have more than one voice.

The other thing I would say about cheap shots is something that I don¨t think many critics realize. People who do movies • they make a movie and they go off to the South of France. So when the movie comes out and the movie is reviewed, they¨re working on their next picture, they¨ve got a multi-picture deal with Paramount. That night that the negative reviews come out on ìThou Shalt Not,î you¨ve got Susan Stroman sitting there with Harry Connick. It is a brutal ritual, a powerful psychological torture. And when you get a smart comment going, chances are that person or that talent you dismissed today • you are going to want to have that person writing for the theater in two years. You¨ve got to be aware of that. The damage of bad reviews is very intense if they are smart-alecky because it comes at them when they are at their most tired • physically, emotionally and psychologically. They cannot take those smart hits.

Callaway: As someone who spent a lot of time in this town in the years when Frank Rich was writing drama criticism, I am surprised to hear somebody talk about the good ol¨days of Frank Rich. I had friends in the theater here who are still bleeding.

McCann: Would you like my collection of negative Frank Rich reviews? He once closed a play of mine in one night.

Callaway: The interesting thing here is • and Mike Janeway, correct me if I misstate this or your colleagues on research • I saw some research here by the National Arts Journalism Program assuming that ìYes it¨s The New York Times, The New York Times, The New York Times,î and we didn¨t want to have a session to beat up on The New York Times • that was too much of a clichê. So we failed already on that.

But the research shows that at least in terms of coverage, that when you put the Newsday, the Post and the Daily News in there, that it¨s almost equal to The New York Times in terms of length. Another clichê is that is broken by that research is that, ìOh, you know, The Times is always negative.î The Times was more positive than almost anybody else that was studied during this period. I wanted to throw that out.

Mr. Riedel, I am surprised you are even here.

Riedel: They don¨t usually let New York Post reporters in the august Columbia Journalism School.

Callaway: What would Rupert Murdoch say? Are you going to have to cover up the fact that you came up here to do this?

Riedel: He¨d be appalled that I¨m taking two hours of my day to come up here and participate on this panel.

Callaway: The reason I ask is that I assume that you don¨t go along with this notion that the press ought to somehow be supportive of the theater.

Riedel: No, of course not. Any good reporter will tell you that his job is not to be supportive of the industry or the beat he¨s covering, but simply to go out and cover it as insightfully and as incisively as he possibly can. I¨m not a critic. I¨m a reporter and a columnist covering the theater. I try to uncover good and interesting stories.

Callaway: But should you love the theater?

Riedel: No, it¨s not a requirement to do what I do.

Callaway: I know it¨s not a requirement, but should you?

Riedel: Actually, the reporters who get into trouble • the ones who don¨t write tough enough stories • are the ones who were in love with the theater as young kids, who were, you know, lip-synching to ìHello Dollyî in the rec room when everyone else was out playing softball. They¨re the ones who wanted to be playwrights or actors and they have a gooey-eyed way of looking at the theater. I have no theater background and no journalism background, which should be apparent to anyone who reads my column.

Callaway: And that¨s good journalism?

Riedel: I am able to write about theater in a tougher way than a lot of people precisely because in the past I wasn¨t in love with it. Now, I¨ve come to like the theater very much. I find the mechanics and the finances of it fascinating. That¨s what I really write about. I write about what¨s happening behind the scenes. Plays that are making money, plays that are losing money, producers who are fighting with their stars. I think that kind of coverage, far from being detrimental to the theater, is good for the theater because it makes the theater seem interesting.

I would much rather read, for example, a very good piece that Robin Pogrebin had in The Times last week about two of George C. Wolfe¨s funders pulling out of the Public Theater than I would some long interview with George C. Wolfe blathering on about how important it is to have minority voices in the theater. That¨s the Arts & Leisure section • full of those padded, boring kinds of things.

Callaway: What¨s boring about George C. Wolfe talking about minorities in the theater?

Reidel: George C. Wolfe has been talking about that for the longest time. The problem is that while he has been talking about that, his endowment has dropped millions of dollars, he produced two flop shows on Broadway, and only now is he being held accountable for that.

Callaway: Okay, so we have a fresh, uneducated voice. A powerful voice in the tradition of Larry King. ìI don¨t read the book, because I don¨t want to know too much.î I don¨t want to know too much: I want to ask the questions the average person would ask.

Riedel: I can¨t object to cheap shots, because the front page of the New York Post is a cheap shot everyday. That¨s what we do.

Callaway: But I was taking you seriously. You may be articulating a standard that we should pay more attention to. Fresh, unadorned with either love for theater or too much knowledge of it, too much precious acceptance of it.

Linda Winer, doesn¨t that sound like a pretty good standard that our Mrs. X could go for when she starts hiring her critics?

Winer: I came from Chicago, as you know.

Callaway: Nobody¨s perfect.

Winer: That¨s right. It was a good city to have been from. I was at the Chicago Tribune for a long time. In a community like that, we had to deal a lot more with whether or not boosterism was desirable. I always felt that to tell people that things are better than they are [isn¨t a good idea]. Then they go there, people who don¨t know anything about the theater, and they say, ìThis is really good theater: I must not like really good theater,î and then not go. It works against itself and eventually backfires.

I remember when I was ìthis big,î Mr. Schoenfeld and Mr. Jacobs would come to Chicago and they would have press conferences and they would sort of lecture all us that if the press didn¨t give the shows that they brought it good reviews, then they weren¨t going to bring any more shows to Chicago. The implication there was that if we didn¨t like them, we¨d be ìkilling the road.î The word was always ìkilling the road.î

Callaway: What did you think of that, at the time you were told that?

Winer: I thought that it was their problem, not mine.

Callaway: You still think that?

Winer: Yes.

Callaway: Charming of them to suggest that, though.

Winer: Yes, of course. And he loves me.

Schoenfeld: And I do - is that after you gave ìChorus Lineî a bad notice?

Winer: I was actually going to start on ìChorus Lineî right now. Working in Chicago at the Tribune • there were four very competitive newspapers there • but, in fact, the Tribune was sort of like the big boy there. I would go back and I was very uncomfortable sometimes, because I suspected that I was going to have a minority opinion about something, that something was not to my taste. I always thought ìChorus Lineî was a smart, manipulative little soaker, but I knew that I was going to have a minority opinion. All I have is my credibility. There is a reason that I have the job and someone else doesn¨t. I have to say what I think.

Callaway: Is there anything, however, for Mrs. X and the rest of us in this room that you can suggest self-critically? I have to tell you, I am amazed at what we haven¨t gotten so far. If the purpose of this discussion today was to discuss how to improve public television programming and to be self-critical, I could start with about a three-hour monologue on my own station • and we¨re the best in the business in local programming in this country in public television. I am amazed at the lack of self-criticism that I¨m hearing so far.

What is it on your mind that you know could be better? Do you need help? Do you need a different perspective? Should your work be on the Internet instead of the paper?

Winer: We need readers.

Callaway: No, but you!

Winer: Yes.

Callaway: What about those of you who perform the editorial functions? Is everything just fine?

Winer: We have to be a lot more competitive than we are.

Callaway: How would you do that?

Winer: We would do that by the way we used to in Chicago. Which is that you get up in the morning and read all the papers. And if somebody has the story you don¨t have, you get a better second-day story. The moment I moved to New York, I was shocked that although there were three newspapers and Newsday, people did not consider that themselves competitive with The Times. There was a certain assumption that The Times was going to get the story, we¨d read the news in there, and then we¨d just go about doing our jobs.

When New York Newsday was in existence, we actually tried to compete in terms of breaking news and really covering the beat. We got very, very little help from the press agents • do you notice something squirm at the bottom in there? • from the theaters in general. Basically there was a denial of access to basic information. I would find out the schedules of theater seasons by reading it The Times. No matter how much we would go after stories, doors would be closed in our faces because they didn¨t want to anger The Times.

Callaway: One quickie follow-up. Should Mrs. X consider not only multiple reviews • which, with all due respect to Mr. Darnton, she¨s really interested in • but also consider hiring, as an experiment almost, a top, hard-nosed investigative reporter to look into theater?

Winer: I think that¨s delicious.

Callaway: There¨d be some good stories there, right? Mr. Grove, you¨ve been listening patiently to all this. Can you give us either your perception of what you¨ve heard so far or something constructive that the press and media can do?

Grove: I¨d like to shift the conversation slightly and pick up on something Linda just said in saying what she needed most was readers. We¨re almost halfway through this conversation, and we are still talking print. But I¨m not sure that in the end what we don¨t want Mrs. X to do is open a cable television station to take NY1 all the way to the tri-state area instead of, essentially, to the Manhattan cable market. [We need] to look at the radio outlets, and the web outlets, and the direct-mail opportunities we might have in partnering. And to come back to what Liz said, free listing in the ABC¨s • not listings that cost $2,000 to 3,000 a week. Multiple ways to get out to the audience.

I am not interested in challenging The Times¨ dominance of the demographics they already own. They actually do a pretty good job of that. What I am interested in is finding younger people who don¨t tend to read newspapers, audiences of color who tend to look in different directions perhaps than The Times, in addition to that market, to try and find ways to widen the audience that we are reaching, rather than having the old debate of ìwhat we can do better within the existing sources we have now.î

Callaway: Mrs. X is very interested in that and she thanks you for bringing up that context.

Mr. Deford, Mrs. X is a widely-read woman. She reads a lot of sports pages from around the country. She sees the Chicago Sun-Times last Friday with a 46-page sports section. 10 pages on football, 10 pages on baseball, 15 pages on college and high school sports. Women¨s golf. Soccer. All of this stuff. And she¨s saying to herself, ìI see that the Downers Grove left halfback gets great coverage. But what about the great Downers Grove actor? What about the great kid from Huntington that going to be the next Al Pacino? Maybe I should mount a sports-pages model of cultural and theater criticism.î You¨ve been in the business a long time, Frank. What would you tell her?

Deford: Well, the first thing she¨s gotta learn is how you can bet on the theater. If you could run a point-spread everyday in some way.

Callaway: On ìWill this show open? Will this show close?î

Deford: Well, whatever it would be • that would be the first step in the right direction. People don¨t just read about the sports for the aesthetics of it. They do have a rooting interest. It¨s interesting • most sportswriters love sports. I don¨t know of any sportswriter who ever comes into sportswriting who doesn¨t love it and probably, in the back of his mind, wished that he could be a halfback.

Callaway: Or a book reviewer who didn¨t love books.

Deford: But I also know this, John. That doesn¨t mean that they¨re necessarily not going to be critical. If you love something, you tend to look to improve it.

Callaway: ìI love you, you¨re perfect, now change.î

Deford: Yeah. How can I make you better? Because I love something so much I don¨t want to see it scarred or tarnished in any way. The boosterism has the particular, and there¨s the general. You can be a booster of theater or of sports. You can be a critic of one particular team or one particular play. The two are consistent: they¨re not naturally opposed to one another. As for cheap shots, sports thrives on controversy and cheap shots. That¨s what keeps it going. In the long run, it¨s probably good to have a critical press if you have got somebody who can respond.

Callaway: That¨s why the sports pages have all kinds of voices.

Deford: Everybody keeps going. Somebody says, ìFire the manager.î Somebody else says, ìOh, no, he¨s wonderful.î And you keep that dialogue going, and what it serves to do is focus interest on the team.

Callaway: You love the theater. I know you love the theater. As a reader, are you looking for more than you are getting in this city?

Deford: Yes, absolutely.

Callaway: So would you likeÈ for example, when the Giants play somebody you¨ve got the description by the guy who covered the game. Then you¨ve got maybe two or three columnists that weigh in. These are columnists who write about the Olympics one day and softball the next, but they weigh in on the Giants game, if indeed they wish.

Deford: It¨s called ìkeeping the story going.î Advancing the story. That¨s what you don¨t tend to see in the theater. The odd thing about theater is that the reviews come out the first night, and it¨s all over. How do you sustain it? How do you keep interest in a production? Maybe you should not so much have the two conflicting reviews on the same day, have someone review it a month later. That would be a much more valuable tool. In the same way that we constantly, in effect, review a team in sports over and over again. A production doesn¨t stop. It continues. It gets better. Word of mouth picks up. Let¨s go back and review it again.

Callaway: Why do we review and comment on high school and college athletics but we don¨t see coverage of college theater?

Deford: Athletics scholarships are given. Effectively, sports is an extracurricular activity. They¨re given extracurricular scholarships to play football and basketball. Nobody gets extracurricular scholarships to sing on the school choir or to write on the school newspaper or to be in the dramatic club.

Callaway: But you¨re in Huntington, Long Island and Amy Smith is the budding champion, 16-year-old golfer. Amy gets a story. Now even if history will show that you are on your way to Broadway, you don¨t get a story. Now there¨s not that many people in Huntington, Long Island that are frankly interested in either one of them. But why does one get the coverage and the other one doesn¨t?

Deford: Sports just simply has more glamour. In our society, sports has more glamour.

Callaway: But should my new owner take a leadership position on this?

Deford: We are the only country in the world where sports is directly connected with high schools and college. Everywhere else, it¨s sports clubs. So it¨s built into our system. I think that¨s the reason it gets so much attention.

Winer: I think it has to do with money. Sports people get so much money and arts don¨t.

Darnton: Also, I think every newspaper editor sees coverage of local sports as a way to build circulation.

Callaway: Even though the millions of people who go to the arts are out there as consumers, purchasers and citizens.

Grove: But there¨s another reason why that is. Ted Berger spoke at an earlier session about this. We took the arts teachers out of the schools in the ¨70s. We didn¨t take the sports out of the schools. You¨re not just struggling to turn people into audiences. Every single kid growing up in the American public school system becomes a participate in sports from Day One. To the extent that they become participants in the arts from Day One, they will demand a kind of coverage of those activities that they won¨t necessarily get now, because we¨re just fighting to get the arts back into the schools.

Callaway: Robert, Mrs. X is a realist. She knows that she could just be throwing away millions of dollars with a big newspaper sort of thing. She¨s also thinking maybe she wants your advice on the Internet. Because she¨s hearing stuff like, ìnewspapers used to have the buzz. But the real buzz is on the Internet.î That¨s the good news. The bad news she hears is that if you think the critics from The Times are tough, on the Internet • if you¨re in Boston trying to bring a production into New York • they¨re brutal. Robert, what¨s the story?

Viagas: I would tell her that right now she has a good chance to come in and do something important. All the major media • not to single any one out in particular • just do not give theater the coverage that it deserves in New York. And I¨m not just saying that as somebody who loves theater or doesn¨t love theater. There¨s a lot that is going on in the theater business.

When I started Playbill Online, we thought, ìWell, maybe we¨ll move four or five stories per week. We¨ll only cover the major stories.î For a long time, both at Playbill Online and subsequently at Broadway Online • theater.com • we move 20 to 60 stories a day. We barely cover all the things that are going on.

The theater community is not just one thing. People tend to treat the theater community as one thing. But the theater has an uptown, it has a downtown, it has a business district, it has malls, it has ethnic neighborhoods. Very few of these things get covered. Most of the coverage that you get is kind of a monotonous lubdub of advance, feature and review. Advance, feature and review. Sometimes there¨s some gossip. Sometimes there¨s a little bit of business news. If ìThe Producersî decides to start charging $480 per ticket, yes, that gets covered.

Callaway: She absolutely agrees that with your depiction. She wants to go beyond.

Viagas: 99 percent of the news is being lost and it¨s interesting news.

Callaway: 99 percent!

Viagas: I think I¨m being a little bit conservative as far as that¨s concerned.

Callaway: Be specific about something that¨s being lost that we really should know about.

Viagas: We were talking about the reviews • should we have one critic, should we have two critics? None of the places that I¨ve ever worked have we ever had a voice-of-God critic. We let the readers write their reviews, which addresses what you say. When a show opens, I have something called ìHow are the reviews?î and I link to all the reviews. But I also say, ìIf you¨ve seen this show, write your review.î And we keep that live, we keep that ongoing. So it¨s not something that only appears the next day. It¨s a living document that goes on and on. As people see the show 18 years into the run, we¨re still posting reviews because shows do change over time. They¨re not one thing. They¨re not like a movie.

Callaway: But can those readers be sharp enough and contextual enough to tell us that Oscar Wilde actually wrote that production long before the current one was written?

Viagas: I can¨t vouch for intellect of the people writing them. I can¨t vouch for the intellect of the critics writing, either. This is people¨s opinions. A lot of the way that people get their information is by word of mouth. We are printing the word of mouth.

Callaway: So it¨s a really powerful electronic democratization of theater observation.

Viagas: That is correct.

Callaway: Would you advise her to put some real resources there?

Viagas: You don¨t need a staff of 100 people.

Callaway: That¨s what I¨m saying.

Viagas: When I was at Playbill Online, we had a staff of six. We were able to knock out that many stories everyday.

New York theater is not just in New York. People are interested in New York theater all over the country and all over the world. When I was at Playbill Online, we got an e-mail one day from the state Web site of Croatia saying that Playbill Online was chosen as the ìsite of the week.î This was in 1995. They were fighting a war at that time. I was trying to imagine what could they possibly • you know, ìHey Slobodan, Whoopi¨s going into the Forum!î

There¨s that interest everywhere. People all over the country are interested. One of the pleasures of theater is that it is not centralized. Broadway is a center. But there are many centers. There are many places where interesting things are being done. Things are being brought to New York, things are being sent out from New York. The problem with covering that for traditional media is that they tend to be anchored to a geographic location. That makes that very difficult. This is an area where the Web or a broadcast outlet can really do a great deal. I am hoping that now, in a 500-channel universe, that there will be a broadcast outlet that will cover all theater, all the time.

My background is in hard news. In fact I did my internship at Newsday covering politics, crime, etc. I always used to think, ìWhy don¨t theater stories get on the front-page more frequently? Sports stories get on the front page all the time.î And aside from the very considerable betting aspect, sports stories are always the same. Every sports interview is the same. ìHow are you going to beat the other team?î ìWell, um, we¨re going to try to score more points than them and to stop the other team from scoring as many points as us.î Every interview is exactly the same.

Callaway: ìWe¨ll take this game a day at a time.î

Mr. Folmsbee, Mrs. X also feels that not only is the Internet a potentially potent step forward in arts coverage and theater coverage, but she sees television and theater as one of the great media disappointments of her lifetime. She knows everybody watches TV and that TV is the thing, but then when she sees the Channel 7 theater piece, she sees crappy visuals, muddy sound, and it¨s almost like if she were running the production, she would pay not to get on Channel 7. Help her. Should she make a major initiative in television?

Folmsbee: She¨s absolutely right. She¨s not a dumb lady, Mrs. X.

Callaway: You produce this stuff.

Folmsbee: We produce it. We spend a lot of money when we produce it. Local news, which is what we¨re talking about, can¨t make theater look good on television. The lighting is different. They come in with one camera. The sound is boomy. The actors seem like they¨re overacting because people are used to watching people act on TV. You have some idiot talking over it, digesting for them in a way that you just don¨t get. Out of context, theater does not play well on local television. I¨m not saying it¨s impossible to sell theater on television. You have to spend money. You have to take time. When we do the Tonys, Chris [Boneau] knows.

Callaway: You do the first hour of the Tonys.

Folmsbee: We do the first hour. Chris runs one of the biggest publicists who let us in and make the arrangements. It takes weeks to come in and survey the show, to find the camera angles that are going to make the show look good, and get a tap from the soundboard so the sound is good, and the cameramen go in a day before so they can watch the lights go up and down so they can anticipate how to adjust their cameras, and we shoot it, and still our ratio is very low. It takes a long time to make theater look good on television.

Callaway: So should she just hire Riedel?

Riedel: Yes

Callaway: No, I mean it. Hire Riedel and me, and we¨ll talk about theater and we¨ll make fun of it and we¨ll be serious about it, we¨ll pay tribute to it.

Folmsbee: She should give out free tickets.

Winer: I think Michael [Riedel] already has that show.

Riedel: I do a show on Channel Thirteen.

Callaway: That¨s why I mentioned it.

Riedel: Television coverage of the theater is pretty much, I agree with Gerry, nonexistent. Our show is a rinky-dink little thing that for the life of me I can¨t understand why it continues on, but it just sort of does. I was approached once by a national network about putting together a show about the theater, based on the show I do on Thirteen. I had about two meetings with them, and then their number-crunchers, their demographic people, came in and said, ìThere is no interest nationally in a show about the theater. None. Zero.î The discussion stopped. We toil in a tiny, tiny world and there is not a great deal of interest in it beyond

die-hard theater lovers around theater. And it¨s always going to be that way. I mean, you talk about why they cover sports more than the theater? Look at the ratings for the Super Bowl! The ratings for the Tony awards are ridiculous compared to that.

Folmsbee: I think there is a ceiling in America on the number of people who want to see theater. It¨s in the millions • I¨m not saying it¨s a teeny group of people • but when you¨re in television, that¨s not enough. The Tony¨s get an 8 rating, which is millions of people, but that¨s sometimes a disappointment for television.

Callaway: I am sorry, but let me suggest that that¨s changing. In the old days of a three-network, couple-of-independent-stations television, yes, you had to have the great big numbers. But when you talk about today¨s 60-70 channels, you don¨t have to have a 30 share in order to win. And when you talk about broadband coming in, you¨ve got yet another thing.

Now, Mr. Boneau.

Boneau: Finally.

Callaway: The reason I came to you last was because to me, you are somehow in the middle of all of this.

Boneau: Absolutely.

Callaway: You¨ve been listening patiently or impatiently. Give us a little response to what you¨re hearing, and tell us what¨s been on your mind all these years that you wish someone had listened to you about press, media, coverage of theater that just hasn¨t happened but could happen.

Boneau: When I sit in a room with the people who hire me, who are the producers, and then I talk to the people I speak to everyday • Linda [Winer], Michael [Riedel], Robert [Viagas], the people who don¨t hire me but my relationship to them is priceless • I¨m in the middle, absolutely. When we do these focus groups, we find out that people don¨t know the difference between a review and a feature story. They don¨t know.

I have friends I think are educated and smart and have good jobs call me up and say, ìWow, your New York Times review today • wow, congratulations!î And I¨m ready to kill myself. I had to read it to the producers in the bathroom of the theater and they didn¨t want to go to the party. And yet my smart friends thought that was a good review. The review, the feature story • ultimately, they don¨t matter. What matters is what the ladies in the cul-de-sac say when they see their friends and they decide they¨re going to go spend their $95 on the theater evening.

Callaway: I¨m sorry I have to stop. You¨re saying that the reviews and the feature stories don¨t matter?

Boneau: One by one, they don¨t. Otherwise, I¨d be out of business. Any producer that counts on a New York Times review should go home. It¨s dumb.

Callaway: Frank, let¨s say you¨re going to start a magazine. Why don¨t we take one of Luce¨s departments and turn it into a sports magazine. Maybe we¨ll call it ìSports Illustrated.î We budget in about eight years of losses, don¨t we? But a Broadway show comes out, they get a bad review: ìOh, we have to close.î That¨s ridiculous, isn¨t it, as a business model?

Boneau: Absolutely. Some people still do it. The smart ones don¨t and most people working today are pretty smart. The folks who come in • and let¨s hope Mrs. X isn¨t one of those people • who say, ìif I get one bad review, I¨m gonna go home.î If she decides to invest that way, or if she decides seeing a bad review in her newspaper is bad for the theater, she¨s wrong.

The fact is, people will start talking and they will decide for themselves who it is they want to see. A bad review has not stopped people from going to see a show. I¨m sorry, Mr. Schoenfeld, ìCatsî was not universally loved by the critics but somehow it managed to stay on for 18 years and people continue to go. I represent a show called ìAida.î The reviews weren¨t great. People like it. Now, it¨s No. 5. It¨s continuing to run because word of mouth is good.

The problem is, though, that our audiences • and they are dwindling in the newspapers • aren¨t educated. They don¨t know. They just wait for someone to tell them something and usually, it¨s a friend.

Callaway: So are you saying that all this stuff we¨re talking about today • about improving journalism¨s coverage of theater • is essentially irrelevant in the real world?

Boneau: No, it¨s a start. It¨s just that people aren¨t paying attention to every word. Barry [Grove] is going to look at me and wonder why I am saying this. When we get a really bad review at Manhattan Theatre Club, or a negative review or a mixed review, no one reads it as closely as he and I will. No one. The playwright will, the director will, the actors will. The next morning, it¨s kind of forgotten. No one is walking around Bergen County going, ìWow, did you see what they said about Suzie Smith? She¨s never going to work again.î They¨re not thinking that. They¨ve made up their mind.

Callaway: What about these 300 or 400 companies that don¨t have budgets, etc., and who need a press or media coverage that gets them somehow acknowledged at least by the communities that they could serve? Any advice either for the press media or for them?

Boneau: Well, make it good. The reason that ìThe Producersî got as much coverage as it did • there were five stories in one Arts & Leisure section alone about ìThe Producersî • they were interested. It was a story that people wanted to cover and continue to write about. Now, one thing that did upset me a little bit is the story about the $480 ticket. All the local television stations were on that night saying, ìHey, Broadway costs $480 now, Mr. Consumer. Are you coming back?î The problem is, all the good work we¨ve been doing in the last four weeks to get people to come back to New York and somehow survive • and that was an important time for all of us banding together to get people back to Broadway • might have been negated by that story. People now think, ìOh well, Broadway¨s costing $480 now, I¨m not coming back.î

Deford: They don¨t think that when the New York Knicks top ticket is $2,500. You never hear anybody saying, ìWell, I¨m not going to go to the Knicks games because tickets are $2,500.î

Callaway: Is that a scalper¨s price?

Deford: No, that¨s the price you have to pay if you want one of those tickets in the front row. Same thing for the Lakers. Luxury boxes, if you figured out how much they cost, would be huge three figures for one seat. That doesn¨t scare anybody away from going to a baseball game.

Callaway: Mr. Schoenfeld.

Schoenfeld: I want to clarify a couple of things that I have said before. First of all, I have the highest respect for The New York Times. That is why I think it has a higher responsibility, because of its position, to be supportive of New York¨s fundamental institutions. I think it has a responsibility in that regard to elevate them by attracting audiences for them. The readership there is certainly not enough to sustain a play. There has to be an enlargement of that audience.

It gets no support from television whatsoever. Television has brainwashed America with sports. And the print media has now expanded on that. Imagine an 80-page pull-out in the Post last weekend for the World Series games. Unheard of.

Schools have abandoned art and culture. It doesn¨t exist. Now, when they¨re talking about more cuts for education, whatever might be left will probably be diminished.

In that regard, I think that I do look to The Times • whether it be dance or music or theater or whatever • to support the idea that these are basic to this city and indeed to this country. We will not get reviews on television today. You¨ll get four or five minutes of weather telling you that a front is moving in over Seattle, and nobody knows what a front is!

Callaway: But Mr. Schoenfeld, do you not have many occasions when you finish reading a piece in The Times and you say to yourself, ìThat was beautifully doneî?

Schoenfeld: Sometimes. Sometimes. The arts, whether profit or nonprofit, are a business. If I¨m reading something in the financial section of The Times or in some other section, I have a tendency to rely on the expertise of the writer. If I read something anywhere about the business of the theater • maybe because I am close to it and involved in it • I don¨t have that same reliance. If somebody is going to write about a business, it¨s incumbent upon them to be knowledgable about what they¨re writing. They should be versed in it. You don¨t see that many stories about the business of the theater. And without that business there is no art.

Museums now charge $10 or whatever it is for admission, and if they didn¨t have the garages, and if they didn¨t have the restaurants, and if they didn¨t have other events and bookstores in the most expensive locations in the city, they wouldn¨t be able to survive. If sports didn¨t have television, it wouldn¨t be able to survive. The theater has none of these ancillary, supporting factors to deal with. I do look to the media, not only The Times • I single The Times out because I think it is axiomatic, that it is the most influential. It¨s the old story: Is it my obligation to write as damningly as I feel I have to, and if in the process it destroys the institution, so be it? I said once that if that happens, your men will go down with the ship, too.

Darnton: Just one observation. We cover a lot of arts in The Times, as do other publications. We have constituencies. Think of them as separate constituencies. There¨s architecture. A lot of money is riding on buildings. Architecture students and architects care passionately about what¨s written. They get pilloried often, especially by our critic who¨s very strong, who¨s got very strong views. You rarely hear them complain. Classical music is in a deep crisis. There are never forums about what the press can do to help classical music. Pop music, as you know, is also in trouble. Dance, the head of ABT had to leave. The head of Carnegie Hall had to leave. All of these are different constituencies. The only one that consistently stand up and kind of whines a lot is the theater.

We all love theater. We recognize the importance of theater to the economic well-being of this city. But theater is not our backyard, it¨s our front yard at The Times. But I always get this sense when they say ìyou have to be supportive,î that it¨s code for ìWhy don¨t you write more positive reviews about our shows?î The point of The Times is that we¨re supportive the way a good newspaper is. We¨re critical when we should be critical. We render judgments about the productions. We try to get the best critics that we can. I think our critics now rank with Walter Kerr and Frank Rich. There is a great nostalgia • there always is for past critics. I¨ve looked back at Brooks Atkinson¨s. They¨re actually a lot worse than you remember them. He was a truly great critic. I¨m not denigrating him. There¨s this odd sense that theater feels it¨s special. It¨s a kind of middle-child syndrome. I wish it would grow out of it.

Schoenfeld: If you think I am a whiner, by the way, I don¨t think you ever heard me disparage a critic or complain about a review of a particular critic. It may be that you interpret my remarks in that direction. I can¨t speak for the other constituencies.

Callaway: All exceptions aside.

Schoenfeld: Yes.

Callaway: And there are a few.

Schoenfeld: There are exceptions. Of course, there are exceptions.

Callaway: You¨ve mounted a few.

Schoenfeld: The exceptions in the main, though, the shows that we¨ve been talking about, have come in here under some kind of jet propulsion. They were major events in London. They have major stars in them. They have means of overcoming, because of those factors, this negativism. I believe, as you have said, there are many things that can be said about a show after it opens. It doesn¨t get coverage after it opens: it¨s finished. I believe that one article about a show • I am not necessarily saying it¨s got to be a great article • is worth more than a review, because it is perceived to be more objective, for some reason. If the others don¨t complain, music or whatever. They are multiple events, different kinds, not that dependent as we are. We are vulnerable more than most.

Callaway: Ms. McCann.

McCann: We have been all over the place. I find myself disagreeing mentally. I don¨t think that the media is responsible for making our theater better. I think we¨re responsible for making it better. I wish that sometimes some of our good writers in the theater would do more ìthinkî pieces instead of just critical pieces or interview pieces. By that, I mean that we know that the theater goes through golden ages and golden periods. We know it goes through times when there are great writers. And by the way, I thought is this panel was about theater, and not show business. Why do they come along at certain times?

One of the smartest men I ever ran across was a man named Herman Shumlin. He was Lillian Hellman¨s producer, and I was just a kid. I used to follow around behind him. And he used to say, ìYou only get great writing, you only get great theater, in periods of challenge, in periods of social unrest.î Well, he was a little bit of a Communist and so I kind of tucked that away in the back of my mind. There is some reason why theater flourishes in certain times and not in others. Thinking about that and addressing it • I thought about it the other night when I went to go see a little play called ìThe Shape of Things.î I realized that it was a play of eight scenes. Every scene was exactly the same length as a sitcom moment. The musical interlude was exactly as long as a commercial. That writer who had been raised in front of a television set did not know how to sustain a long scene or a long emotion. There are reasons why theater is not getting through, or that the great writers are not putting themselves in the service of the theater.

That¨s what I yearn for from all our writers of the theater • I yearn for them to start thinking in terms of what it is about our society that theater doesn¨t take root. Don¨t just tell me it¨s because there¨s more money spent on football. Franco said there would never be a revolution in this country because people played football instead of revolting! Don¨t just tell me it¨s just about lack of education in the schools. Where are the writers? If the writers are there, the audiences will follow. I don¨t understand that that Tennessee Williams is not in our midst. Or why a young Arthur Miller is not out there. I don¨t understand it. Or even the minor ones • what we think of as a minor one • William Inge. Or Clifford Odet. Think of those years. Think of those directors. Why did they flourish in a particular environment, at a particular moment?

I¨d like to see the media give astute theater writers, be they critics, a little bit more space to go at that kind of ìthinkî piece.

Callaway: I want to go to the audience for a couple of questions. But first, are there any final comments from this panel before we go to the audience? Anything you want to say to Mrs. X or to this audience that you haven¨t said?

Boneau: I want to say to Mrs. X again, because we forgot about her for a second, if Mrs. X is going to start her newspaper right now.

Callaway: And/or other media.

Boneau: And other media. In the last six weeks, the media has been great, because Broadway was in crisis. The story was, Broadway¨s in crisis, we¨re going to lose some beloved shows. ìPhantom of the Opera,î ìRent,î ìLes Mizî are going. Suddenly, everyone paid attention. The word got out there and the shows didn¨t close. The unions cooperated. Everyone got together. The press was writing about the theater in ways they haven¨t.

Do we have a crisis every single time? Or can we just say to Mrs. X, ìthink about your newspaper and your media empire being founded on keeping Broadway alive? How can you do that?î And it¨s through all the various voices and some clever ideas.

The problem for Mrs. X is, she¨s going to find that the theater producers are going to still just spend their money in one place until her empire becomes, you knowÈ Can she sustain the loss that you¨re talking about? Can she stand the fact that our shows are still going to advertise in The New York Times? Our precious advertising dollars: we don¨t have a lot. And the fact is people still read The New York Times. Mrs. X may be a lovely woman and may mean well, but is anybody going to read her? And at the end of the day, isn¨t that what it¨s about? You¨re selling newspapers and hoping people will watch the program.

Callaway: Barry Grove.

Grove: There are ways that we have begun to try to think out of the box. Nothing has been better, certainly, than the work, and Chris has played a major role in that over the past six weeks. But I¨d like to thank Liz as well for putting the plays back on the Tonys. It was conventional wisdom for awhile that you couldn¨t do the plays on the Tonys, that it was impossible to excerpt a scene and make it good. But for all the reasons you were talking about, it¨s hard to do, and yet PBS has done a terrific job with the first hour going behind the scenes. There¨s no questionthat we saw ìThe Tale of the Allergist¨s Wifeî get a bump coming out of the Tonys as a result, even though it didn¨t win the award.

Callaway: It reaches several million people.

Grove: Èof audiences experiencing that work first-hand. Yes, there is more to be done, perhaps in the print area, but there is no question that the loss of the television media and the limited use of the radio media and our early infancy in the Web sites has to be pursued diligently to get out to wider audiences, to not just focus on print.

McCann: The ìAllergist¨s Wifeî segment on the Tony awards was brilliantly performed by three actors who understood the television medium. We had nothing to do with it, but they moderated their performances. Unfortunately, some of the other people doing dramatic scenes, most notably ìKing Hedley II,î did not modify their scenes. I am getting what Jeff said. One of the things we don¨t do in the theater is figure out where our story is going to appear, shoot footage that will work on a television news show. No NBC anchorman wants to sit there while dreary, hand-held, B-roll is presented. Barry has hit it. ìThe Allergist¨s Wifeî worked because that moment he shot specific coverage and spent the money.

Folmsbee: It was adapted to television. And that¨s how you sell theater. You restage it. You change the syntax because you can¨t use what is essentially only good in a live, real-time event. You just can¨t expect that to work on a small box.

Callaway: Questions or comments from the audience. Go up to the microphone and tell us who you are and what your question is.

Ira Bilowitz, Backstage: I wanted to comment on Mr. Darnton¨s explanation of whining and of the disciplines he mentioned. Other than pop music, the theater is the only discipline that relies on actual ticket sales to exist and to prosper. Dance, music, opera any of the other cultural things, are so highly subsidized. Their ticket sales are a very small amount of how they exist.

Callaway: Thank you very much. Yes. Let¨s get you over here to the mic.

Carolyn Albert,Theaterreviews.com: Thank you to The New York Times for not having a star rating, not dumbing-down. In order to find out what the critic thinks, you have to actually read the review.

Somebody said something about keeping interest in the production. One of the functions of the small press or Internet writers, people who write in magazines which may come out a month later or several months • it depends on their leads • is that these renew interest. Thank you to the press agents, Chris right here is the representative, who continue to invite writers from the small press so that they can continue the interest in the show. Sometimes an extra 2 or 5 percent makes the difference between profit and loss in show.

Cyberspace is unlimited. One of the things that didn¨t come up is newspaper space is very limited. You have to have a certain amount of space for your ads and you only have this much space for your actual features and your reviews. The Internet is used in very interesting ways. First, people use it for research. They want to know, ìis it good, is it bad, should I spend my money?î But then, features can be written if there is interest in the show. Whether it¨s The New York Times or any other publication that also has an Internet site, you can have additional features that you didn¨t have room for in your publication.

I would love to see The New York Times give a wider voice to other opinions on shows. I think the only regular female reviewer you¨ve had for the past number of years is Anita Gates. I like Anita Gates but I¨d like to see more female representatives writing reviews.

Callaway: Let¨s wrap it up. Thank you very much.

Randy Gener, Theater.com: I have a question for Mrs. X. She has unlimited amount of moneyÈ

Callaway: Well, not unlimitedÈ

Gener: But she has all these choices, whether it¨s print or TV or Internet. What if she only has one choice? What should the panelists say? She has money. She will start something. She has one choice. What, at this moment, is the most effective medium?

Callaway: I just talked to her over there. Let me tell you what her feeling is as she has listened to all these people. She¨s not inclined, Mr. Darnton, to take on The New York Times after hearing everything, and particularly, Mr. Boneau, after hearing you. Robert, she is very interested in the Internet now. She thinks that for an extraordinarily limited amount of money she can make an investment that can really have power. She is particularly interested in what went on here before this panel when we talked about the hundreds of theaters in this community that don¨t get the recognition, who don¨t have the marketing, who don¨t have the budgets. She¨s decided • she¨s not quite sure how she¨s going to do it • but she¨s going to put money into that. Maybe even give you some advertising money for that. Outreach money.

Then, she was very taken, Ms. McCann, with what you had to say at the end. Because in the end, she¨s with you • that you must start with great writing. If that great writing emerges, then everything will follow. She is not quite sure if it¨s the Yale School of Drama or whatever it is.

McCann: Shakespeare did not go to the Yale School of Drama, nor did he have a word processor!

Callaway: That¨s why she¨s not sure she wants to do that. She wants to talk with you and others about how to foster that.

McCann: Every great playwright started out as a poet. Absolutely true. They have a love affair with words before they have a love affair with the theater. That¨s why their language comes off the stage floor. Let them write their poems and get them out of their system. Edward Albee started as a poet. Tennessee Williams started as a poet. Shakespeare started as a poet. The world needs poets. It doesn¨t need priests or politicians.

Karina Miller, Managing/Producing student, School of the Arts, Columbia University: It kind of saddens me going into, hopefully, this industry that • unlike Mr. Reidel • I have grown up loving [theater], and I do think it¨s interesting on its own and doesn¨t need things to make it interesting. I think we are all part of a community within this city, especially because we are so known for it.

I think we can all do a lot of things to work together. I think the theaters have a responsibility to make good art and to understand that they are part of a business model that doesn¨t work. There are so many things we could do to make it better. And by the same point, I think we have the guts to live up to the critics whose job it is to tell us when we aren¨t putting up good art and aren¨t doing a good job.

I just noticed that Ms. McCann said that she liked Walter Kerr and Frank Rich because one of them could speak well about production and the other one could say good things about text. And Mr. Darnton was talking earlier about finding context and meaning in their reviews. If the reviewers can do it in a way that is respectful, insightful, and intelligent, that there is so much we can do work together as an industry without so much in-fighting. I think if we all stop griping so much and go back to why we¨re actually here, we could do a much better job.

Callaway: Thank you very much. The experience and talent represented by this panel is much more than I could ever describe in my introductory remarks. These are very busy people. These are people with a lot on their minds. We are blessed by their agreement to take time out of their lives to be with us for this dialogue. Let¨s give them a big hand.

Janeway: Thank you, John. Thank you all very much. We¨re a little ahead of schedule. I am going to try to distill from a day and a half just one thought that I have heard running through in all the discussion. I think it was Fran Reiter who said that in talking about more coherent and sustained public support for the arts, you¨re talking about reaching politicians who need winning political strategies, and the arts aren¨t it.

That has certainly been the case over the years, although much was said about the paradigm of the 1960s in which we were building the artistic infrastructure of the country and sharing it. That was then.

Now we¨ve been hit. In Tuscany during the war, in the worst of the shelling, citizens came out of their homes to put sandbags in defense of the walls of the town where the great frescoes of Piero della Francesca were painted. To defend their cultural heritage.

So we¨ve been hit. And it seems to me that a good question after Sept. 11 is the question everybody¨s asking: ìWhat do we care about?î We care about our kids. We care about their vulnerability • that¨s been said several times in several ways in the wake of this horror. We care about them in school and at home, growing up in a culture that¨s learned that it¨s leaned much too much toward violence and exploitation, especially in film and television and the profit-driven entertainment field. It¨s said that we care about our communities and about place.

We need our defining arts and culture. Theater in these hundreds of venues and neighborhoods around the city help us define what our community is. We¨ve been hit and we need to do something about it.

It sounded to me since yesterday that there is a story there, and maybe the beginning of a winning political strategy. Thank you all very much.

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