The Critics Say...: 57 Theater Reviewers in New York and Beyond Discuss Their Craft and Its Future by Matt Windman Page A

sometimes include features on theater, like my notorious profile of Arthur Laurents. I also wrote a lot of nontheatrical stories about sad people doing sad things. At the same time, I was getting to be known (at least by shut-ins and insomniacs) from appearing on that silly TV show Theater Talk . (I shouldn’t say it’s silly. It’s actually quite good, but I feel silly on it.)
    In March 2013, Scott Brown, my predecessor, decided that he wanted to take a sabbatical because his wife was about to give birth, so the magazine asked me to take over for him for three months. New York magazine covers every Broadway show as well as a certain algorithm of non-Broadway shows, and this was happening in March, April, and May, when the Broadway season is insane. It was sort of a trial by fire, and also a tryout because there was a possibility that Scott would eventually leave the job permanently.
    Scott came back for three or four months and then decided that he wanted to give his other writing a good try, which meant giving up theater reviewing. Because he was going to work with people who were being regularly represented in the kinds of shows he had to review, it was also becoming a conflict of interest. So Scott resigned the position. He was not forced out or anything like that. I didn’t poison him. Then they asked me to take over, which I did starting in October 2013.
    Steven Suskin: I came about it in a roundabout way. I spent about 25 years working in the Broadway theater as a company manager, general manager, producer, actor, and stage manager. In my spare time, I wrote books about the theater. After several books, I moved into reviewing. I did a series of books called the Broadway Yearbook , each of which covered a full season’s worth of reviews. Those books were more about analysis and after-the-fact reviewing. After that, it seemed natural to become an overnight critic. I had also been doing CD reviews for many years for Playbill.com . Eventually, Variety called, and I went to work for it.
    Adam Feldman: When I was a kid, I was really interested in the history of musicals. I would go to the library and look up what people said about them when they opened. I did some theater in college, and later I was associated with a publication called the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review . There were things that I wrote for it that could, in a sense, be called reviews. When I moved to New York, I had a day job. And when I was bored or had extra time, I would go online to a Usenet discussion group called rec.arts.theatre.musicals . There were a lot of interesting people there, including a young Jeff Marx, and we would have spirited conversations about shows we loved or didn’t love. And through that, I ended up being recruited into theater criticism.
    Someone from Show Business , a news publication which was sort of like Backstage , contacted me and said, “Hey, we like what you’ve been writing online. Would you be interested in writing reviews for us?” I said, “Sure. That sounds like fun.” Then I ended up meeting Paul Wontorek, the editor of Broadway.com , at a party. We started talking, and it came up that I was writing reviews, and he suggested I send him some. He liked them, and I started writing for Broadway.com . This was back in the day when Broadway.com had reviews; they don’t anymore. (You’ll see that as an emerging theme, unfortunately.) At that point, I decided to take the bull by the horns. I quit my day job and started freelancing as much as I could. In 2003, a space opened up at Time Out . They hired me, and I’ve been there ever since.
    Michael Schulman: I grew up in Manhattan and always went to the theater. I acted in plays in high school, and I directed at Yale. When I graduated and moved back to New York, I had this sense that I would go to film school or pursue theater directing. Then I started looking around. And within five minutes, I thought, I have no idea how to do that professionally.
    Then I got a job