In the immediate future, the UT won't replace me, but I'm certain the editors won't let theater go uncovered. It's just too important. They're likely to fill the position from the inside, perhaps with Jim Hebert who's a wonderful writer and has done quite a bit of theater reviewing and feature writing. However, neither he nor I know that for sure. We do know that Jim Chute, the arts editor, is committed to getting the beat covered, whether with two or three staffers or Jim and a free-lancer. I just don't know.
Are you going to continue writing about theater in San Diego?
I certainly intend to continue reviewing and writing about local theater, and I hope about dance and performance as well. I am juggling several possibilities and really do want some time off -- to sleep, for one. This was a radically life-altering decision to make in a short period of time and that proved pretty exhausting, especially because the beat goes on. But I also want to make a considered decision about how to proceed in ways that are best for me and also for the arts community in San Diego.
Are you concerned about the future of long-form, serious arts criticism in the newspaper industry?
I am concerned about the future of criticism in newspapers. We've already seen too much thumbs-up, thumbs-down criticism of movies, fewer and fewer classical music and book reviews everywhere, and a terrible blurring of the distinction between features that are borderline PR and reviews that can be called truly engaged and informed criticism. Serious critics are as passionate about the art they cover as artists are; we see ourselves as independent sources, not as the publicity arm of any organization. In order to write with any degree of intelligence and style about work that is intelligent, subtle, psychologically true, thematically complex, and especially NEW, a writer needs space. The irony, of course, is that space is infinite on the Internet, yet blogged reviews tend to be short and snappy, almost inimical to real criticism. I personally am an Internet junkie, getting almost all my news and commentary online. But editors and arts journalists haven't quite figured out how to keep the content serious, intelligent and informed in that medium. It's happened already with a great political blogger like Josh Marshall on Talking Points Memo . It happens sometimes on Salon , and of course in the online versions of great magazines like The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books . It will happen eventually, I hope, with arts reporting and criticism at the local level. Hey, maybe that's what I'll do -- solve that conundrum!
You've been covering theater in this city for many years, what are some of the highlights from your career at the paper?
There are so many highlights I don't even know where to begin. Maybe at Sushi in the 80s where night after night, wild performance artists like Rachel Rosenthal, Tim Miller, Rhodessa Jones, Holly Hughes, and Guillermo Gomez-Pena showed me that San Diego was far from the conservative town it was so often depicted as being. At the Globe, John Hirsch's brilliant "Coriolanus" surrounded by video monitors blew me away, along with -- at the opposite end -- Jack O'Brien's sweet and hilarious "Kiss Me Kate." The Playhouse did Brecht's "A Man's A Man" with clowns Bill Irwin and Geoff Hoyle that year, I think, and there was Peter Sellars' "Ajax" and later Des McAnuff's "Tommy," also at the Playhouse. And two amazing Russian works during the Russian arts festival -- one at the Rep, brand new and mind boggling in its honesty and adventurousness -- and one much more steeped in tradition, the epic "Brothers and Sisters" at the Globe, and a modest, devastating Russian production of Chekhov's first play done by Blackfriar's at State. Then there's Mac Wellman's "Albanian Softshoe" at the Rep and Maria Irene Fornes' ravishing "Abingdon Square" there too.
And Sledgehammer, what can I say? Love the work or not, it was out there in the early days -- bold and vigorous with playwrights like Erik Ehn getting a hearing there. Naomi Iizuka's work downtown at the pre-ballpark Hard Times Billiard Parlor. And the short, happy lives of alternative theaters created by UCSD grads, and an outfit like B-Attitudes producing when the Fritz was in its heyday.
In dance, there was a big spurt when Three's Company broke up and then Jean Isaacs and Nancy McCaleb teamed and later had companies of their own, and John Malashock arrived, full of ideas and emotionalism that had been missing from postmodern dance, little of which we saw here until McCaleb and later Lower Left emerged. And now, UCSD has gotten serious about its dance program and has brought more nationally known artists here, even as the dance presenting is skimpy.
I could go on and on, in fact I already have and I'm still in the eighties! There have been slumps as the economy slumped. And a period of drift at the Globe and commercialism at the Playhouse and the struggle at the Rep and several midsizers went under -- but there was also Michael Greif's production of "Therese Raquin" with a boat floating the murderous lovers across the stage -- and another there, "The Cosmonaut's Last Message to the Universe" with a pair of Russian astronauts above the stage, lost in space sending love and fear to those below.
There was Jefferson Mays, in many plays before New York caught on to him in "I Am My Own Wife." And stars at the Globe -- and all those musicals -- "Damn Yankees" and the recent, somber Harvey Fierstein piece -- and, of course, "Jersey Boys." Oh, what an opening night that was! This is one hot theater town that seems to keep replenishing itself, despite a certain resistance to edgy work (ion and Lynx are trying), with dance in a growth curve, and money always short, but it's been a joy to be able to see and cover so much of it including all the newbies like Cygnet and Moxie, Mo'olelo and New Village Arts, ion and Lynx. (If I were one of my son's teachers I'd give that answer an F for run-on sentences. I need an editor.)
What are some of the bigger picture changes you would like to see happen in the San Diego theater community?
What's missing are the following: enough money to support bold visions; enough audience members willing to be startled awake rather than lulled asleep by live theater. Also, mid-sized Equity theaters and along with them, respect, economic support and health insurance for local actors and all theater artists. In Ireland, writers and artists don't have to pay taxes because their value to society and its culture is a given. Imagine that in our current national nightmare of waiting for this terrible, belligerent and incompetent political period to end! If it does.
I know one of the things you want to do is finish a novel -- what's it about?
My novel is called Stillborn and it's the fictionalized story of a real 18th century poet named Elizabeth Thomas who has been misrepresented, actually cruelly libeled, throughout literary history, if she's mentioned at all. She's discovered by a contemporary literary scholar whose own life and struggles prove parallel. Though it sounds gloomy, it's a very lively, character-filled story about women seeking autonomy and fulfillment against great social odds, yet with wit and a kind of relentless intelligence. Elizabeth Thomas spent most of the last three years of her life in debtor's prison. That's the place my novel opens -- London's Fleet Prison in 1727. I hope debtor's prison is not my fate. So, I'm negotiating with an agent.
Best of luck to you in this new chapter of your career.
Best to you too, Angela.
