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| Too hot to wear the sweater. |
We were presenting the piece in a walkdown apartment on West 11th at Greenwich that had been converted into a forty seat black box (the stage even featured a fireplace) as part of the New York International Fringe Festival. I’d had maybe a dozen audience members for that first performance, including several critics, and two days later I received a very nice write-up, front page of the Thursday arts section, below the fold.
Did this high-profile review alter my fortunes at the fringe? It did not. Audiences remained tiny, it was August, no one wants to see a show about stillbirth, etc. etc. However, many took note, and I was contacted by hospitals and bereavement centers around the nation, inquiring as to whether I might bring the show to them. Jason Zinoman’s review documented that this show existed, and gave it legs. I performed the piece, on and off, for the next several years.
Alan Barth said, “Journalism is the first rough draft of history,” but a theater review is the only draft of the history of a particular production. Decades from now, when I am dead and gone and all my social media posts have been deleted or wiped, that review will remain in the archives of the “Gray Lady”, the paper of record.
Last month, Cleveland theater critic Christine Howey attended several shows at the BorderLight Festival, and provided daily, online accounts of the proceedings for clevescene.com. That she attended and then turned around next-day capsule reviews for nearly a dozen shows was a feat, and provided a record of what was to be expected from the festival, as it was happening.
As a result, several artists received reviews, reviews which they may not even have been expecting! Reviews they can brag about for, who knows, maybe twenty years?
