What does it mean to be a national theatre publication? Obviously this is a question we think about a lot at American Theatre. The art form we cover is inherently place-based, the ultimate you-had-to-be-there experience, but it is also a form and an industry that circulates and replicates all over the country and the world, with impact well beyond its immediate time and space. So it makes a certain amount of sense for folks who cover theatre to keep one eye on their local stages and one eye—or a corner of their eye, at least—on what’s happening elsewhere, including in the theatre’s industry capital in New York City.
That is the logic, as I understand it, behind the theatre coverage of such major U.S. newspapers as The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, and The Washington Post, where their lead critics have a mandate to cover both their respective cities’ homegrown theatre scenes and the major fare on Broadway (and sometimes Off-). Ostensibly their local audiences are as interested in shows headed for or coming from New York as they are in the offerings at their local regional and storefront theatres (though it should be said that a lot of local theatremakers in these cities feel otherwise). And the critics at these outlets do contribute valuable perspective not only to local consumers but to a national readership as well, ideally educating both and elevating an intrinsically local art form into a broader dialogue.
That has meant a lot of frequent flier miles for Charles McNulty and Chris Jones, respectively, and until recently a lot of hours on the Acela for Peter Marks, who exited the Post earlier this year after 21 years on the job. Last week the Post announced that Naveen Kumar, whose major bylines as a critic have been at Variety and The New York Times, will be the paper’s new lead theatre critic. Like Marks, he will remain based in New York and will continue his astute coverage of offerings there, but his core job will be to cover as much as theatre in the DMV (D.C./Maryland/Virginia) as he can manage.
I spoke yesterday with Naveen about his background on the agency side of the business, what his coverage mandate will be in his new job, and his prognosis both for the theatre and for arts journalism (he will continue to serve as associate director of the O’Neill’s National Critics Institute).
ROB WEINERT-KENDT: Congrats, Naveen. You’ve been doing theatre criticism for a while, but is a full-time gig something you have been looking for?
NAVEEN KUMAR: Theatre criticism has always been something I’ve been passionate about since I started in journalism; it was always a piece of what I’ve been doing. I don’t think I ever assumed that an opportunity like this would come along, because, as you know, theatre journalism is quite niche, and there are only so many outlets that really want it. So I was diversified as a journalist in terms of what I covered, as a contributing editor at Them, where I’ve been writing about TV and film and queer culture. I never had the assumption that a full-time critic position would be in my future or given, so it’s a thrilling sort of surprise in that way.
When I interviewed Hana Sharif last year, she said she had specifically dreamt not only of being an artistic director, but of being the artistic director of Arena Stage. I’ve often heard people joke that no kid dreams of growing up to be a theatre critic. What’s your theatre critic origin story?
I think probably the only reason I didn’t dream about it as a kid is that I didn’t know it was the thing you could dream about. I’ve always been a theatre lover. I grew up in Ann Arbor, Mich., seeing tours coming through Detroit. My first few shows were the Fiddler on the Roof tour, the Guys and Dolls tour. We would also go to Toronto and see the big commercial shows. I was a director in college and I performed a little bit in high school. I’ve always just loved the form. But I also loved writing, so I studied English in college, which felt like a more practical academic pursuit, even though it was not at all. I loved literary criticism as much as anything.
When I came out of college, I worked in the theatre industry on the agency side. I spent about seven years working at talent agencies, first at a smaller agency for actors, a lot of whom are big Broadway stars now, when they were getting their start about 20 years ago. Then I worked at CAA in the theatre department, and my boss represented playwrights and directors. So I got to know a lot of how things work behind the scenes, how shows come together—all the ins and outs of how new work gets made. That was really eye-opening. But it just wasn’t a path I wanted to pursue, so I left and went to grad school for English literature again, just wanting to get back into my head and back on the page. When I finished that program, a friend of a friend needed someone to write about theatre for Towleroad, a queer news and entertainment site. I did that for 10 years, almost, and I could really sort of write whatever I wanted. It was an amazing platform for me to just figure out how to write about theatre and what my voice was. That was sort of a moonlighting thing I would do on my own time, while I also worked as a copy editor and as an editor in digital media, and eventually went freelance full-time, doing mostly writing but also some editing.
That agency background is fascinating. There’s a notion you’ll hear that critics would be better or more trustworthy if they had some background as practitioners in the field they cover, which I don’t think is true as a rule or an ideal, though I’m not opposed to folks crossing over. Having a background on the agency side is a whole other thing. How does that affect your criticism?
I look at it as an industry. I see who’s getting paid for what, which novels are in the public domain—that’s why we’re getting all these Great Gatsbys. I see which producers are working with which big talent. If you see big-name stars, directors, and playwrights all on the same shows, you’re like: Oh, they’re all repped by the same agents. I just sort of pay attention to the patterns. I’m still friendly with people from that time; I’m not super up-to-date on it, but it’s definitely very interesting to look at it from the business side, and to see how that intersects with what we wind up with onstage artistically.
I mean, it’s easy to wring your hands and say, “Why is all of this existing IP onstage?” and to imagine there’s some sort of artistic god who’s giving or not giving you what you want. But there are so many forces that are shaping what we’re getting, and a lot of it in this country is a commercial imperative—the decisions that are made behind the scenes for what we end up with onstage, a lot of them have nothing to do with art. That’s just something that I’m aware of in a lot of different contexts, including what nonprofits are programming—like, are they programming this because they have a relationship with this playwright and they’re always gonna do his plays? Are they always going to do something that brings in crowds, and then next do something that’s more experimental? I’m always looking at it from that perspective. It’s natural to me.
Since you mentioned nonprofits, that’s a good segue to ask you about Washington, D.C., specifically, where there’s a smattering of commercial theatre but where the lion’s share of theatre is at nonprofits of all sizes. What is your coverage mandate at the Post, and what sort of ratio of New York vs. DMV stuff will you be covering?
I’m very sensitive and responsive to the fact that Washington, D.C., readers and theatres, the community, really want a local critic. I’m responsive to that; I take that very seriously. They want someone who is engaged and present and seeing those shows and responding to them. That’s a really important part of the job that I’m not taking lightly, that I’m going to make a core part of what I’m doing. I think there are also no illusions about the fact that New York is the center of commercial theatre in the country, and plays that are on Broadway end up going out to the regions and vice versa; there’s a relationship that’s ongoing and goes in both directions. So New York coverage is always going to be an important part of any national theatre section, and I am well-situated and well-versed to take care of that part of it. Since I haven’t started yet, we’re going to feel out how much I’ll be traveling and covering shows around the country and in London. But I think, again, the primary responsibilities will be fulfilling that local critic responsibility in D.C., and then also covering the center of the theatre industry. We’ll see what I have the bandwidth for.
When new artistic leaders come into a theatre or a town they don’t know well, they often talk about doing a sort of listening tour to hear what’s on people’s minds. Do you plan something similar in D.C.?
I’m definitely open to meeting people and connecting with artistic leaders, getting to know them and hearing their concerns and what they want from coverage. It’s exciting for me to get to know a new city and a new scene. I think there are some people who, as I said, would have wanted someone within D.C. who knows the scene. I hear that, and I think it also can be exciting to have a fresh perspective on your scene. I certainly find it personally and professionally exciting, and I hope the community can see it in the same way—that someone coming in with a generous, open, curious mind about what the scene is can cover it with a sort of vigor and freshness that will help everyone have a new perspective.
Another thing your predecessor, Peter Marks, and other leading critics have been doing is to mix reviews with reported pieces. I know from writing you’ve done, including for us, that those skills are in your wheelhouse too. Will you be mixing it up that way at the Post?
I definitely plan to write more than reviews: essays, commentary, reporting. I think it’s wide open for what I find exciting and interesting, and in what direction I want to lead the section.
I’ve mostly read your theatre reviews of individual shows (and by the way, thank you for being one of the few Cabaret fans, as am I), so I don’t know your larger take on the health of the American theatre in general. How do you think the industry is faring overall, some years after the Covid lockdown and We See You, White American Theater?
I’ve covered the industry in crisis at different stages of it, and I was paying very close attention during the shutdown, and then all the panicking and existentialism of the moment we reopened. There’s been a lot of deep thinking and listening that has gone on over the last four or five years, and we’re still seeing where that’s leading. I think everyone has the best of intentions right now, and that bringing the urgency of the survival of the industry to the fore in the way that the last several years have done has been very productive in terms of our thinking about, who is theatre for? Who are we serving? Who’s onstage, and who’s making the decisions about who’s onstage? That has gotten a lot of considered attention, and a lot of changes have been made. We’re in such early stages and we’re still seeing how that’s playing out.
Certainly on Broadway this season, there was such a variety of things that I think it’s a testament to a really broad and varied appetite among consumers and investors and producers about what they want to be putting on. And I think that vibrancy of choice—that you could go see a very serious, prickly drama or a really fun, silly musical—is what people want. Audiences are complex, and I think we’re always going to be figuring ourselves out. It’s not an industry that is going to just find an answer one day, and think, Oh, phew, we’ve got it now. I think asking really big questions is difficult, and there aren’t easy answers, but asking them is the first step, and a lot of smart people have been doing that and applying themselves to how to answer them. I think there’s a lot of potential there to see what they come up with.
The other industry I want to ask you about is our own. As an associate director at the O’Neill critics institute, you mentor a lot of young critics. What do you tell them about the field they hope to enter?
One of the reasons I’m very honored and humbled to have this position is that I never assumed it would be possible. Ever since I have been a theatre journalist, we’ve been asking this question of who’s reading it? What is it for? What’s next? The perspective I have from working at the O’Neill and the brilliant writers we have every summer is that there’s such an appetite for writing about the arts, for thinking deeply about theatre and media and for engaging with it critically, and for helping readers understand and dig into it. This is perhaps idealistic, but I think there will always be a need and a desire to dig into the stories in our culture. Stories that we’re being told across every media have meaning, they reflect who we are and our deepest desires and fears, and there’s always going to be a need for us to understand that and to be in conversation with that. Even a passive consumer of media who’s zoning out to a TV show, that TV show still has a story it’s telling you, that’s seeping into your bloodstream and your consciousness, and it’s shaping people. So I think there is a strong and persistent need for what we’re doing.
The form it takes is obviously changing, and it needs to—it needs to meet readers where they are, and respond to the art forms as they change and to technology. I think the idea that criticism always has to look the same or have the same meaning, that it can open or close a show or get people to buy tickets—we have to think of all those things as malleable. There’s no right way for it to be. Life is change, and if you’re constantly holding onto the way things used to be, you’re going to bring yourself a lot of suffering. That’s not to say it isn’t difficult right now. We are asking difficult questions in the same way that theatre industry is, but I think the fact a lot of brilliant people are asking the same questions and applying ourselves to them means there’s potential there for figuring out a way forward.
So are we going to see you on TikTok, Naveen?
That would be another learning curve for me.
Rob Weinert-Kendt (he/him) is the editor-in-chief of American Theatre.
