Here, you’ll find content about the art and practice of theatre criticism. Many pieces grapple with questions of how to diversify the field, making it more accessible for young people, queer folx, and critics of color. This section also contains all the pieces of criticism in the Journal, which we call “NewCrits.” NewCrits analyze productions and go beyond “thumbs up, thumbs down” reviews, placing the work(s) in question in a larger, broader context—whether that’s the context of the time or place it’s done in, the artists’ body of work, or its genre. Are you interested in writing a NewCrit? Check out our guidelines and best practices!
The Latest
Essay
Black Survival and Cyclical Fate in Hang Time
by Ciaran Short
4 June 2026
Essay
On a Theatrical Pilgrimage to See Carolina Bianchi and Cara de Cavalo's Chapter II: The Brotherhood
by Amanda L. Andrei
6 April 2026
Essay
How The Last Country Amplifies Stories of Immigration and Belonging in South Africa
Cory Hinkle writes about Western Society from the British-German collective Gob Squad, and its multi-media, audience-involving production that investiages wish fulfillment, starting with the recreation of "one of the least watched videos on the Internet".
This long standing collaboration can be felt through and through the ensemble work on display. Premeditation is tantalizing with promise—a talented cast and inventive staging in a noir 1940’s-esque comedy about marriage, infidelity, and murder.
At this historic moment in which it is still quite dangerous to be a black man in the United States, Native Son offers an important provocation. For all the world has changed since 1939, the production asks us to take a good hard look at what has not.
Bertie Ferdman interviews Anne Hamburger about Basetrack Live, a multimedia theatre production inspired by Basetrack: One-Eight, a web project created in 2010 by photojournalists embedded with US Marines fighting in southern Afghanistan.
Chris Garza covers the Mu Performing Arts production Eric Sharp’s play, Middle Brother which tells the story of an adoptee searching for his roots in Korea.
Haley Honeman writes about The Kirkbride Cycle, a site-specific musical performed at Fergus Fall State Hospital, a deinstitutionalized asylum in Minnesota.
"All Our Tragic," adapted and directed by Sean Graney and produced by The Hypocrites at the Den Theatre in Chicago, features all thirty-two surviving Greek tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides compiled into a single twelve-hour epic. It includes seven intermissions of varying lengths and a vegan feast of Mediterranean food is served throughout. The result is rather like a contemporary version of a Dionysian festival.
Brighde Mullins writes about Andrei Belgrader's production of Samuel Beckett's Happy Days, and then zooms out to discuss the sucess of Beckett's work in post-Katrina New Orleans and San Quentin prison.
He fought two guys; beat the crap out of them. And I looked around, and everybody had just stopped training.. And I thought: oh, my god, this is the show. There’s that magnetic presence of the ring.
Racism and the Production of Plays that Joke about Race
25 September 2014
Stephen Quigley writes about a production of Avenue Q in South Carolina, and what arises when producing a musical which tackles race outside of its original premiere and setting: New York City.
Talya Kingston continues her look at the 2014 Edinburgh Festival and diologue on the Scottish independence referendum, here she writes about Rona Munro's triology of James plays.
Georgina Escobar writes about traveling from New York to New Mexico to see Cascarones at Teatro Paraguas, and the affirmation this production brought after she waited to see it staged.
Saved by Off-Off Broadway, Back on Broadway with Love Letters
4 September 2014
Jonathan Mandell covers the beginnings and career of playwright A.R. Gurney, as serveral of his plays are presented in New York's 2014-15 season. Mandell includes quotes from Gurney about Broadway, making old scripts work in new ways, and advice for young playwrights.