Critics & Playwrights: In It Together

3Girls Theatre Company in San Francisco presented Critics and Playwrights: In It Together livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Tuesday 8 July at 7:30 p.m. PDT (San Francisco) / 9:30 p.m. CDT (Chicago) / 10:30 p.m. EDT (New York).

A significant debate over how to approach new works has energized theatre-makers in the past year. Should critics publish their reviews of new plays with a different standard than time-tested works?  What kind of interaction should playwrights expect to have with critics?  What are critics looking for (and thinking about) when it comes to judging new works? A panel of prominent Bay Area theatre critics—including the San Francisco Chronicle's Rob Hurwitt, SF Examiner/Arts Monthly's Jean Schiffman, and SF Weekly/Theater Bay Area's Lily Janiak—will talk about how they see the issues in an open discussion with our audience of playwrights. Each critic brings a unique perspective to the discussion. Directing traffic for the panel will be 3GT Artistic Director and Resident Playwright, AJ Baker.  

We expect the conversation to  be entertaining, thought-provoking and maybe even a little bit dangerous!

In Twitter, comment @3GirlsTheatre & use hashtag #howlround.

Critic Bios

Robert Hurwitt came to The San Francisco Chronicle as theater critic in 2000 after serving in the same position for the San Francisco Examiner for the previous decade. As a critic and reporter, he has covered the remarkably active and diverse Bay Area theater scene for publications ranging from the East Bay Express to California Magazine and the Los Angeles Times since 1978. A graduate of New York University, with a master's degree from UC Berkeley, he has served several times as a juror for the Pulitzer Prize for drama and is a recipient of the George Jean Nathan Award for dramatic criticism.

Jean Schiffman is a full-time freelance arts journalist with a theatre background. She writes a biweekly actor’s craft column and feature stories for Back Stage West (Los Angeles) and Back Stage East (New York). She also writes about music, visual art, dance, film, and theatre for the San Francisco Examiner and  San Francisco Arts Monthly and about actors’ issues for Theatre Bay Area, Northern California’s theatre trade monthly. In the late 1970s, Jean cofounded a mid-sized one-act theatre company in downtown San Francisco, where for ten years she was publicist by day and actor by night. Following that, she edited Callboard magazine for eight years, also compiling and editing a biannual Northern California theatre directory, and helping organize theatre conferences and programs.  Jean has a B.A. in French from the University of California at Berkeley.

Lily Janiak studied theater at Yale and San Francisco State University, where she wrote her master’s thesis on Young Jean Lee. She writes about theater for SF Weekly and Theatre Bay Area (where she is also the Listings Editor) and about film for The Village Voice, and she is the listing editor for TBA Magazine. At SF State, she taught the course “Writing About Theatre” and is currently teaching “Sam Shepard: A Retrospective” as part of SF State’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.  She’s also a playwright, director, dramaturg, blogger, and guinea pig for makeup artists. In her spare time, she cooks a mean gumbo and rides slowly but with dignity on bike tours. View her HowlRound work.

About 3Girls Theatre Company
San Francisco’s 3Girls Theatre Company is putting “women’s work onstage . . . where it belongs.” Our not-for-profit group has a singular mission: to create theatre experiences that let the voices of women and girls be heard, loud and clear. Founded in 2011, we are a company of women playwrights in the truest sense of the word: co-conspirators, partners, enthusiastic supporters of one another’s work. Women artists are still an astonishingly under-served (and under-heard) community, even in 21st century America, where the possibilities should be endless. We started 3GT to ensure our work—and the work of our collaborators—gets the high quality development and production it deserves, giving  audiences the chance to see just what happens when the female perspective makes it to the stage! Join us on our journey! For more information visit our website at www.3girlstheatre.org.

About the 3GT New Works Festival
3Girls Theatre Company celebrates women’s work on stage at our third annual Festival of New Works. We’re presenting a whole week of special events: staged readings of four new plays, a non-stage discussion between critics & playwrights, the debut of our LezWrites! performance series, an art exhibit of work by women veterans, and more. All events are free to the public but advance reservations strongly recommended. At Thick House Theatre, 1695 18th Street, San Francisco (between Arkansas and DeHaro). Reserve on-line at www.3girlstheatre.org. Information: [email protected] or 415-327-0301.

About HowlRound TV
HowlRound TV is a global, commons-based peer produced, open access livestreaming and video archive project stewarded by HowlRound, a knowledge commons by and for the theatre, arts, and cultural community. The channel is at howlround.tv and is a free and shared resource for live events and performances relevant to the world's live arts fields. Its mission is to break geographic isolation, promote resource sharing, and to develop our knowledge commons collectively. Follow and use hashtag #howlround in Twitter to participate in a community of peers revolutionizing the flow of information, knowledge, and access in our field. Our community uses the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Become a producer and co-produce with us by going to our participate page. For any other queries, contact @HowlRoundTV on Twitter, email [email protected], or call Vijay Mathew at +1 9176863185 Signal/WhatsApp. Host a watch party and let us know about it. Click here to see past programming.