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Criticism

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
by Tonderai Chiyindiko
4 February 2026
Photo for Sweet Dreams, Mr. Heroin.
Essay
28 November 2014

Amy Merrill writes about Sweet Dreams, Mr. Heroin and the value of presenting this piece at a substance abuse recovery center in Lewiston, Maine.

Photo from Western Society.
Essay

Gob Squad’s Western Society

25 November 2014

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".

Photo from Your Problem with Men.
Essay

A Teatro Luna Comedy

18 November 2014

Vickie Vértiz writes about Teatro Luna's production of Your Problem with Men

The cast of Premeditation.
Essay
13 November 2014

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.

Photo from You Can't Take It With You.
Essay
11 November 2014

Jonathan Mandell takes a look at Broadway revivals about the theatre, contrasting them with a production of Six Characters in Search of an Author.

Photo from Native Son.
Essay
4 November 2014

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.

Essay
1 November 2014

Lou Harry offers insight on balancing the careers of a playwright and arts journalist. 

Photo from Danny and the Deep Blue Sea.
Essay

John Patrick Shanley’s Danny and the Deep Blue Sea at the Nuyorican Poets Café

30 October 2014

Emma Wiseman writes about the YOLO! Productions revival of John Patrick Shanley's Danny and the Deep Blue Sea.

Essay

Anne Hamburger on Basetrack Live

28 October 2014

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.

Photo from Middle Brother.
Essay
23 October 2014

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.

Playwright finalists and Samuel French staff.
Essay

A Big Little Festival

21 October 2014

Martha Steketee writes about the logistics and process of the OOB Festival, including quotes from an interview with the team behind it.

Essay

Past and Future in The Kirkbride Cycle

14 October 2014

Haley Honeman writes about The Kirkbride Cycle, a site-specific musical performed at Fergus Fall State Hospital, a deinstitutionalized asylum in Minnesota.

Photo from All Our Tragic.
Essay
9 October 2014

"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.

A photo from Happy Days.
Essay
7 October 2014

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.

Photo from Scenes from A Marriage.
Essay
2 October 2014

Jonathan Mandell writes about the intimacy of Scenes From A Marriage, Love Letters, This is Our Youth, and I Am Me

Photo from The Opponent.
Essay

Brett Neveu and the Magnetic Presence of the Ring

30 September 2014

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.

The cast of Avenue Q.
Essay

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.

Photo from Much Ado About Nothing.
Essay
23 September 2014

Dani Snyder-Young covers audience behavior and experiences at park performances of Shakespeare in Chicago.

Photo from I Like To Be Here.
Essay

Village Festival

18 September 2014

Jonathan Mandell writes about the second Theater: Village Festival in NYC.

Essay
16 September 2014

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.

Photo from Cascarones.
Essay
11 September 2014

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.

Photo from Don Quixote.
Essay
9 September 2014

Marcina Zaccaria looks at The Bolshoi Theatre production of Don Quixote performed at the 2014 Lincoln Center Festival.

Scene from The Wayside Motor Inn.
Essay

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.

Photo from International Hispanic Theater Festival of Miami (HITF).
Essay

The 29th International Hispanic Theater Festival of Miami

2 September 2014

Teresa Marrero writes about the 2014 International Hispanic Theater Festival in Miami and how/why Latin American theater and American theatre are embedded differently in culture

Photo from Spoiling.
Essay
28 August 2014

Talya Kingston writes about plays and events at the 2014 Edinburgh Festival which address the possibility of Scotland's independence from the UK.

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