Must your criticism be so male?

There’s a rift in the theater community, and anyone who reads reviews can see it. If you want an opinion about a show, you can get it from two kinds of people: the critics or the bloggers.

There are plenty of differences between the two groups. The critics get paid and the bloggers don’t. The critics often have more journalism degrees and more years of experience than the bloggers. But that’s not the rift that I’m talking about.

In the Twin Cities, when you make the choice to get your information from a critic or a blogger, you’re also choosing whether you want to read a review by a man or a woman.

Of the critics writing regularly for major publications, we’ve got Rohan Preston and Graydon Royce at the Star Tribune, Dominic Papatola and Chris Hewitt at the Pioneer Press, Ed Huyck at CityPages (up until recently), and John Townsend at Lavender Magazine. The blogs – six of which have recently formed a group called “Twin Cities Theater Bloggers” or TCTB – are run by Mary Aalgaard (Play off the Page), Liz Byron (Aisle Say Twin Cities), Kendra Plant (Artfully Engaging), Jill Schafer (Cherry and Spoon), Laura van Zandt (One Girl, Two Cities), and Carol, Julie, and Keith (no last names given, of Minnesota Theater Love). Minnesota Playlist and How Was the Show? are both online-only publications that accept advertising – not quite newspapers, not quite blogs – and both have a fairly even split between male and female reviewers.

As for outliers on the newspaper side, Lisa Brock writes for the Star Tribune, but only around once a month. And Renee Valois is still writing reviews for the Pioneer Press, but recently she hasn’t been getting her own byline. Unlike her male colleagues, her most recent reviews have been appearing on their website as being published by “Pioneer Press,” with no mention of her name anywhere except the small-print titles on my RSS feed. Anyone want to explain that one?

It’s not like there aren’t local women interested in theater. We actually have a number of female journalists who cover the theater scene, but don’t write critically about it –Marianne Combs of MPR, Sheila Regan of CityPages, or Pamela Espeland of MinnPost, to name a few.

What is it about criticism, in particular, that has made it such a male-dominated activity?

There are obvious structural factors behind gender gaps in professional fields, and the phenomenon is not isolated to the world of theater criticism, of course. We know that there are vast gender disparities in all areas of the arts, including both other theater-related careers and journalism in general. More specifically, an organization called VIDA is tracking women, and also specifically women of color, in the literary arts, and it found similar issues in the world of literary criticism. 

Aside from the systemic institutional problems within journalism, the arts, and the world as a whole, though, Twin Cities Theater Bloggers have branded themselves in a way that might actually make it more difficult for them to be taken as seriously as the newspapers. On its Facebook page, the TCTB defines itself as “a bunch of people who write about theater and don’t get paid for it.” They aren’t promoting their strong and focused opinions or their accessible, DIY approach – both of which would be selling points for the group – but rather their willingness to work for free. This is despite the fact that some bloggers, like Jill Schafer of Cherry and Spoon, see more of the local theater community per year than many professional critics. Last year, for example, she saw over 200 plays.

The Confidence Gap

Does focusing on the TCTB’s unpaid status undermine its perceived authority in the theater community? Regardless, this type of behavior is strikingly gendered. Women tend to shy away from claiming their own expertise, particularly when their opinions may offend others, and often downplay their achievements or question whether they deserve an honor or promotion. (Many studies have been calling this the “confidence gap.”) By identifying themselves by their casual status, both in their self-definition and similar language in their reviews themselves (“I’m no expert, but…”), bloggers allow themselves to be dismissed as mere hobbyists or enthusiasts, rather than people whose opinions and credibility deserve to be taken seriously.

But even if the bloggers aren’t promoting their opinions as strongly as they should, this does not excuse newspapers for not hiring female staff writers or giving bylines to all of their contributors. The problem isn’t about some abstract ideal of parity for its own sake, although of course parity is important. There are real, practical issues in not giving bylines to professional female critics.

Female critics might be more likely to notice broader trends such as plays that don’t pass the Bechdel test or theater companies that don’t include any plays by women in their season programming. They also may characterize female performers differently than their male counterparts. Recent reviews of the Park Square’s production of Great Expectations are an all too easy to find example of these disparities at work. Graydon Royce, Brad Richason, and John Olive all focus their articles on Pip’s evolving character and Ryan Colbert’s portrayal of him. Renee Valois’s (uncredited) review for the Pioneer Press, on the other hand, specifically names Ms. Havisham as one of Dickens’s “most memorable characters.” And while Royce and Olive describe Berlovitz as “pasty” and “creepy” and leave it at that, Valois credits her with a powerful performance.

The whole point of having multiple critics see a show is to gain access to different perspectives, but when these perspectives are so clearly divided by gender – and when these divides could impact whose performances get celebrated and what kinds of theater get produced – we have to wonder who else’s perspectives are being overlooked. This applies not only to the scarcity of female critics, but also to the need for more people of color, GLBT, and non-cisgender participants in the critical dialogue.

Extra responsibilities

Disparities in theater criticism also affect how critics approach their own work. Once I moved over to MinnesotaPlaylist from Aisle Say, a smaller blog, I started to feel a nagging obligation to seek out gender issues or plays that deal with women’s stories, simply because I know that I might be the only female critic with a larger readership to review them. I love the perspective my gender provides, but just as male critics don’t seem to feel any obligation to point out “men’s issues” in theater, nor should I have to be a spokesperson for “women’s issues” if I don’t feel so inspired.

In the end, this isn’t just about the theater world either. Everyone – not just people directly involved with theater – is affected by whose name is in the byline of a strongly-worded article. Critics are identified as having not only expertise in their field, but the discernment to express a strong opinion about it with the potential to have an impact on the arts community.

It should be obvious that men are not the only ones with that kind of authority, but is that really the message our local newspapers want to send?