Enjoy This EP | BorderLight 2026

With book, music and lyrics by Paige Scott, Enjoy This EP is a one-hour play from Indianapolis that chronicles the lyrical annihilation of a twit. Zachariah Stonerock is the picture perfect embodiment of a critic, specifically a music critic. 

But this isn't Sideways, the white male snob slouching towards middle age does not charm the attractive younger woman in spite of his many unpleasant attributes. At least, not for long. Not only does Lisa M. (gorgeously voiced by Hannah Boswell) put up with very little of his shit, unbeknownst to him she is an artist, a musician, a good one, and she does not require his validation. 

Not that she wouldn't like it. She just doesn't need it. Or him. It's a really great takedown of the myth of the put-upon, self-styled intellectual snob who really, really deserves love, a character that Paul Giamatti has played several times, actually.

BorderLight Theatre Festival at Playhouse Square, July 8-11, 2026

On (Local) Criticism

Ian McKellen in "The Critic" (2023)

I am only going to explain this one more time.

For a time—a very brief time—we had newspapers. And the newspapers hired journalists, and paid them appropriately for their work. Some of them covered City Hall, some the local sports teams, others the arts. If you can imagine, some covered more than one "beat." And people subscribed to these papers or bought them at the corner store. And so, for a while, we had critics. And we hated them.

Then came the internet. And it was possible to tell exactly which of these journalists' work was actually being read. 100,000 clicks for an article about the latest city council meeting. 1,000,000,000 clicks for the minutiae of yesterday's game. And 10 clicks for the review of the latest show at your neighborhood professional theater.

On top of that, their bottom line was decimated by Craig's List. A quarter for a pape is nice. A dollar a line for a classified ad is money. Their legs were cut, and so, then, was it necessary to eliminate staff.

Tony Brown was cleveland (dot) com's last full-time theater critic, though by the end of his time there they had him covering additional beats. He left in 2011. Andrea Simakis, their style critic. was then also required to cover multiple beats, including theater. Now they pay whoever will do it on a by-the-word basis.

You get what you pay for. Theater criticism does not pay, so it is not paid for. Every theater critic currently working in our area is doing it because they enjoy doing so (in spite of the abuse they receive on social media from certain members of our theater community) and that is hardly a place to negotiate from. 

Class dismissed. I expect your papers on my desk first thing tomorrow.

See also:
On Criticism
Single White Fringe Geek (blog)
Criticism Is Dead! Long Live Criticism!

On Criticism

Too hot to wear the sweater.

Twenty years ago today, I woke up to find I Hate This (a play without the baby) had been reviewed in the New York Times.

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?

Single White Fringe Geek (blog)

American Theatre magazine produces a podcast I have been enjoying called Three On the Aisle, for which critics from the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal (Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli and Terry Teachout, respectively) weigh in on the national theater scene.

In this most recent episode, they began by discussing staff layoffs at the New York Daily News, and listeners were treated to the unusual sound of Marks losing his shit, loudly and profanely lamenting the fate of American theater criticism.

This is not a subject I am unfamiliar with. In this blog I have also asked what will happen when theater criticism is no longer a profession unto itself, but is a minor responsibility relegated to journalists who have numerous, diverse beats, freelance community writers, and blogging theater fans.

At the turn of this century, John Vacha wrote Showtime in Cleveland, the history of Cleveland theater up to the year 2000. For this book he leaned heavily on newspapers and the work of theater critics, not only to discover what details could be gleaned about specific productions and performances, but also the behind-the-scenes history of the business of theater in one large American city.

Without a written record, our work may be lost to future generations. And in the present, audiences and potential audiences suffer from a lack of sources of good theater criticism. And yes, we as artists miss out on having a variety of critical eyes assessing us, holding a mirror to our work.

Fifteen years ago today, we concluded our run of I Hate This (a play without the baby) at the Minnesota Fringe Festival. At this festival I attracted audiences, met new colleagues, and received plenty of praise and encouragement on the local online message boards.

I also received my first actual pan for this play. Matthew Everett had only just started the blog Single White Fringe Geek, a record of MN Fringe reviews he keeps to this day. On my way out the metaphoric door, I read his review and it was not exactly glowing.

Red Eye Theatre, Minneapolis, MN (2003)

Everett felt that, in spite of the play's unique male perspective on the subject of stillbirth, it suffered from not including the grieving mother’s voice.

He said that the narrator (me) was the only fully-developed character, and that of those other characters represented, the kind ones were casually dismissed while much more attention was focused on those who were unkind, insensitive, or -- to use my own word from the show -- evil.

“There was,” Everett wrote, “a lot of anger in this play. It bordered on being unsympathetic.”

This was a lot to swallow. When you stick your neck out to create something so intimate, you know you are taking a risk. And yet, you can’t imagine someone actually criticizing you.

I hadn’t read his review these fifteen years, though I never forgot the gist of it. Reading it again, however, was eye-opening.

Because now I understand it was the single most important review I think I have ever received.

Remember, this is was at the beginning. He attended the eighth public performance of a show I went on to produce regularly for almost five years, and have returned to several times since. And it was with comments like his in mind that I revised the script, and more importantly, modulated my performance.

I didn’t change a lot of the script, a few words, light editing, nudging the piece in a certain direction. What would have happened at the New York Fringe Festival the following year without Everett’s observation? If I had received a notice like his in the New York Times, instead the positive review I did receive, due perhaps to the changes I made at his suggestion? That might have been devastating to me.

I do not believe I am overstating this when I suggest that Matthew Everett's highly-critical review saved I Hate This.

We need criticism; thoughtful, engaged, intelligent, professional criticism.

Playhouse Square presents the premiere of the video adaptation of "I Hate This (A Play Without the Baby)" by David Hansen, directed by Chennelle Bryant-Harris and performed by James Alexander Rankin, in the Westfield Studio Theatre on Saturday, October 15, 2022. 

References:
"A Cornucopia of Questions," Three On the Aisle, 7/26/2018

"Closing the Fringe With Mom - Part 6," Single White Fringe Geek by Mathew Everett, 8/12/2003

"I Hate This (a play without the baby)" now available for Amazon Kindle.

Cleveland Critics Circle

When the subject of Tom Hanks formative years at Great Lakes Theater (née Shakespeare Festival) comes up, inevitably someone mentions the fact that he won the Best Actor Award from the Cleveland Critics Circle for his performance as Proteus in Two Gentlemen of Verona. But what was the Cleveland Critics Circle?

Before its demise in the late 1980s, the Circle was driven by Cleveland native and Sun Press critic Jackie Demaline (currently chief theater critic at the Cincinnati Enquirer) and its membership included Plain Dealer critic Joanna Connors and Northern Ohio Live's Marianne Evett before she assumed her position at the PD. Also on board were Chronicle Telegram critic Shannon Jewel, Art Thomas of WestLife and Roy Berko. Anyone who wrote criticism that was printed was welcome to become a member.

Their primary purpose as the Cleveland Critics Circle was to grant annual awards to area theater artists, meeting several times a year to debate the merits of all of the local theatrical productions, including productions that toured through Playhouse Square Center. These awards followed the traditional categories of Best Actor/Actress, Best Director, Best Musical, etc.

One interesting point I learned was that in order to have a voice in any given award, you must have seen all of that year's productions. If you hadn't seen every nominated performance in the Best Actress category, for example, you were not permitted to have a say in that category.

At the time of the Circle's disintegration, the Cleveland theater community itself was in the doldrums. With the demise of the Cleveland Press, there was only one daily paper with the facility to employ full-time, professional critics. Cleveland Play House and Great Lakes Theater were the only Equity houses in town, and the grand old days of high-quality, big name, professional drama coming through Playhouse Square were done. Every theater that you think of as a second-tier Cleveland theater (Dobama, Ensemble, Karamu, Beck Center) were either little more than community theater with high pretensions or in a period of awkward transition into the more-respected houses they would become. None of those companies at that time employed professional actors nor paid any of their staff.

This was all before my generation came on the scene, of course. Just saying.

The Cleveland Critics Circle has recently been revived, announcing last week the premiere of a new website Cleveland Theater Reviews. Their mission, as stated, is to "raise awareness and increase visibility of Greater Cleveland's vibrant theater scene." The fact is, there are more Cleveland theater critics now than there ever have been. The difference is, most of their readership is online. Most who are even published in the old fashioned way are carried in community papers with ever-dwindling subscriptions. Providing this website gives those interested in reading theater criticism one-stop to check out what everyone is saying.

Well, not everyone. While papers like the Cleveland Jewish News, the Akron Beacon Journal and various neighborhood Sun papers are represented in their membership, the Cleveland Plain Dealer is not. It has been over nine months since the PD retired their last chief theater critic, and has yet to name a successor, relying instead on writers from other departments. Through posts I have made on this subject other area critics reassured the community that they would take responsibility for filling that gap in area theater coverage. The reemergence of the new Cleveland Critics Circle promises to be positive step in that direction.

Criticism Is Dead. Long Live Criticism!

William F. McDermott
Plan Dealer Theater Critic 1921-1958
37 years, bitches.
In August, the Plain Dealer began a national search for a new "full-time theater critic" which has become something of a joke among the writers there. They have flown a few potential candidates into town for interviews, and the paper even sent representatives to PlayhouseSquare to meet with members of that organization -- the nation's second-largest performing arts facility -- and its newest tenant, Cleveland Play House (two major advertisers) to reassure them that there would be soon be someone on staff whose main responsibility would be to cover the theater beat in Cleveland.

Not that the theater scene was the main responsibility of Tony Brown. He, like everyone else in their shrinking bullpen of writers, was recently called upon to cover ... well, everything. Anything, really. Brown was also writing travel pieces and covering the trial of a serial killer at the time he was let go. The Plain Dealer isn't in the business of creating paid positions any more, buying out contracts from writers left and right, and shrinking benefits for everyone who remains. Besides, since June they have gotten along just fine handing out assignments to fashion editor Andrea Simakis, columnist and reporter Joanna Connors, can't-live-with-him-can't-fire-him columnist Donald Rosenberg, and freelancer Christine Howey.

In July Bob Abelman, critic for the News-Herald assured me that:

The theatre critics who write for smaller, more localized newspapers have and will continue to cover Cleveland theatre. The papers and their websites and blogs may not have the reach of the PD, but they are well positioned to offer the same coverage--and more--and take more creative risks. Cleveland theatre is being covered.

The paper Mr. Abelman writes for, the News-Herald, originates out of Port Clinton, and has a circulation of 2,910. However, spare-time critics like him and Roy Berko reach three times that number posting their work on blogs and through reposts on Fred's List.

It is, in fact, the online posting of reviews (and everything else) that has brought us to this pass. If the past fifteen years have proved anything, it is that no one ever bought newspapers to read the columnists. Well, they did, decades ago. But the idea that people would spend money to get any one specific person's opinion on anything has been a lesson hard-lost. Newspapers were purchased for the want ads and when these became freely available on Craig's List, subscriptions to papers like the Plain Dealer cratered.

Do we need a well-paid, professional, educated, savvy, full-time theater critic in Cleveland? The audiences should demand one (or at least one) because they write better, they establish long-term relationships with artists and companies, they can afford (time-wise) to see everything, to have the long-view, to judge growth (and its opposite) and to present a point of view and a consistent personality that the reader can judge themselves. And as Mr. Brown often reminded us, he was writing for his readers, after all, and not for the artists.

Do the theater companies need a full-time critic? Hmn. Tricky. Like a lot of artists, I am concerned that lack of attention to the arts by the media will kill interest in the theater. But media does still pay attention to theater -- a lot of attention. However, it is the new media, the personal media, the websites, blogs, and social networks through which theater companies connect with their audience, in a personal and sometimes exciting way.

Great Lakes Theater recently reported a 11% increase in ticket sales for the 2011-12 season. Eleven percent! Without a full-time theater critic at the Plain Dealer.

Here's the big question ... Why do you see plays? Why do choose this play or that play to see? Did you read a critical review? See an advertisement? Get something in the mail? Or was it because a friend recommended it, someone sent you a YouTube video, you saw a friend of a friend's comment on Facebook?

Does it matter, after all, who it is that recommends a show, so long as somebody does?

UPDATE: For the past several years, the most-awesome, daily, local NPR arts program "Around Noon" has started the New Year with a week-long series looking back at past year in the arts. Each day, for the entire program, critics and journalists are invited to comment on the year in books, dance, music, moves and theater. In Tony Brown's absence, "Around Noon" chose not produce a Best of Theater 2011 program.

Tony Brown (critic)

Whither goest, Gurney Man?
Just prior to the celebrated Millennium, in the waning months of 1999 when everything seemed possible but nothing appeared to be certain, the Plain Dealer threw a retirement party for Marianne Evett, who for fifteen years had served there as theater critic.

The event was held at Windows On The River in the Powerhouse, back when the Powerhouse was a place people liked to go to. The theater community was invited - which I was delighted to discover now officially included me, as Artistic Director of the fledgeling Bad Epitaph Theater Company. The most influential people in Cleveland theater were there, to show respect for a woman who took her role as guardian of taste and professionalism in her purview very seriously.

This was the Marianne Evett who had championed the tenure of Josephine Abady, the end of the residency company at the Play House, and who eviscerated Peter Hackett. She was a champion of the rise of small, semi-professional houses like Dobama and Ensemble. She was not afraid to call out the often sloppy work produced at that time by Cleveland Public Theatre -- as Jim Levin reminded everyone in the room that night he made an unannounced grab for the mic to read a poem he had written for the occasion which may have been written to be amusing, or perhaps simply audacious, but in the end came off as inappropriate for the occasion.

My own relationship with Marianne had been one birthed in awkwardness. In a desperate attempt to get the PD to give much-deserved (we believed) ink to Guerrilla Theater Company, we sent daily, abusive faxes to the newsroom. When the diminutive Mrs. E. finally appeared at our theater to grant an interview (she absolutely refused to ever attend any of our performances) I was admonished and lectured that that was no way to get attention from a newspaper.

Get it?

Having proved a certain degree of competence over the 1990s and emerging as a thirty year-old with a promising new theater company in my charge, Marianne was a supporter of Bad Epitaph's preliminary offerings. After ten years, I had won over the most important voice in Cleveland theater.

Then we got another voice. Alas.

Twelve years on, with no party, no fanfare, no announcement in the largest daily paper in Ohio (wait, is it?) theater critic Tony Brown has disappeared. Just vanished. He hasn't written a theater review for a month, and I understand there still are plays going on around here. He's not tweeting, there's nary a peep from the man who has proudly invited controversy from that first night when he was introduced at Marianne's farewell party and we all sat on the edge of our seats to learn who would be creating the first draft of Cleveland theater history in the 21st Century.

"Criticism is by its very nature adversarial," he warned us, "Let's mix it up."

And mix it up he did. Sometimes literally. I need not elaborate. But where does that leave us? For the past several years I have been poring over old newspapers to learn my Cleveland theater history, history written by the critics. All theater history is written by the critics. And in Cleveland those critics have loomed large, from Tony Brown and Marianne Evett, Peter Bellamy and Tony Mastroinni (who double-handedly closed a Play House production of Lysistrata after three nights and got at least one person fired), Arthur Spaeth, Archie Bell and the legendary and much-beloved William F. McDermott ... for over a century, newspapers landed on doorsteps and people looked at them over breakfast or took them to work and there was a name attached to the opinions which told you which plays to see and which to avoid.

And today, there is no one. The theater people know the names of those who write about theater today, but no one else does. The PD gives as little space as possible to theater, doling it out to stringers like Don Rosenberg and Christine Howey. There are a few blogs dedicated to theater criticism, I would be interested to know what their traffic actually is, it can't be much. They certainly aren't paid.

The problem with theater criticism in the digital age is that the onus is on you to find it. A newspaper had the day's events of your community typed up and put in front of you. If I received a daily paper, I might even know how the Tribe is doing, but I don't. And the average baseball fan is not occasionally confronted by the photo of an actor doing their business with a writer telling you what to think about what they are doing.

Who will speak for Cleveland theater?

November 21, 2011 UPDATE.

January 1, 2012 UPDATE.

March 28, 2012 UPDATE.

Sources:
Showtime in Cleveland: The Rise of a Regional Theater Center