Critical thinking: European critics and arts journalists on a profession in flux
On the current state of theatre criticism and cultural journalism in Europe.
This week I’m in Athens, for the Grape Agora of Performance, a showcase of Greek work programmed as part of the mammoth Athens Epidaurus festival. I’ll be writing about this in The Stage and in future editions of this newsletter, but this week I want to talk about criticism and arts journalism more widely. For what will be the beginning of an ir(regular) series, I conducted a (very informal) survey of several critics and journalists, both freelance and those with editorial roles, from different European countries about the challenges they’re facing and how things have changed over recent years.
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It is a truth universally acknowledged that if a group of critics are together in one place for long enough the conversation will almost certainly eventually turn to the general health of criticism. Is it dying? Has it already expired? The complaints are familiar. Dwindling word counts and stagnant rates of pay. The inevitable editorial chorus of: “Sorry, I simply don’t have any more budget this year.”
Obviously, I have skin the game. In 2011, I co-founded Exeunt, a platform for experimental theatre criticism – which depending on who was writing could mean any number of things. Criticism that was playful, irreverent, in-depth, poetic, deeply personal or just plain silly, criticism that was fun to read and engaging for both readers and artists. It published things like this and this. And this. Reviews in the form of doodles. Reviews written in verse. Reviews that now seem kind of prophetic. Despite the heroic efforts of my colleague Alice Saville, who took over as editor in 2016, keeping it financially viable was always a balancing act, and it went into hibernation in 2022.
There’s something of an irony in spending a lot of time writing about precarity in theatre and the arts when journalism is equally unstable. I wanted to talk to fellow journalists about the practicalities of the profession - precarity, rates of pay, political pressures - as well as these more existential question. I firmly believe that criticism is a tool of access. I hardly saw any theatre growing up but I would read about it, avidly. I would absorb it from the page and through the screen. Criticism, however, like everything, needs to adapt. Exeunt met an appetite. It gave people something they relished. It filled a gap. Now I here I am on Substack (along with several others), playing with a new platform and a new model, but is this really the way forward? What else could we be exploring?
Amina Aziz and Marie Serah Ebcinoglu, editors-in-chief, MISSY magazine, Germany
When MISSY was founded in 2008, women and the LGBTIQ-Community weren’t as visible in the media as they are today. The aim was to intervene into the male dominated field of cultural journalism. Those writing for MISSY weren’t supposed to be cis endo male as a general rule and these days our team is FLINTA only, predominantly BIPOC, some are queer and/or with disabilities. It had a huge impact on Germany’s media landscape. Over the years, MISSY’s focus shifted from mostly reporting on culture to also reporting on politics and society. Experienced journalists and authors write for us, as do people who have not yet had the chance to try their hand at journalism. It is particularly difficult for structurally disadvantaged people to get a foothold in the industry and we want to open doors for everyone. Most of our readers are FLINTA, live in large German cities and are interested in politics.
The space for cultural coverage in the mainstream press has unfortunately definitely become smaller. In times of inflation and rationalization cultural coverage is one of the first things in media that seems to get neglected. Struggling with dwindling readership figures adds to this and cultural magazines have had to close down in recent years such as Spex and even large platforms like Pitchfork.
In general it is not that easy to sustain a career in journalism if you aren’t employed by a media outlet that pays well. For many journalists it is precarious to work in this field and the psychological effects like burn out are to be taken seriously. If you are affected by ableism, racism and classism it is especially hard to set a foot into journalism and media. There are only a few places in journalism schools and for traineeships every year and the traineeships usually don’t pay money or not as much so that you could live independently. Journalism is not a profession that pays well unless you work for a really major outlet. Otherwise it really does not pay off financially. Since the pandemic and the inflation these circumstances worsened.
Even before the last rising of costs of living, journalism, especially freelance and especially for smaller independent media outlets never paid off well. The work and performance of journalists was never as appreciated financially. Freelance journalists have to specifically ask for more money. Unfortunately there is always someone who does the job for a lower rate which keeps the market prices low which is sad if you look at how much work is being put into articles and reporting. We cannot really recommend working in this field - yet we do love our jobs and wouldn’t wanna lose them for anything.
Borisav Matić, freelance theatre critic and journalist, Serbia
Theatre criticism in Serbia is run on the enthusiasm and passion of individuals who practice it. No matter if we talk about a critic with 30 years of experience or someone who's been in the field for several years, no one can earn for a living solely from reviewing.
There are two types of media where theatre criticism can still be found. The first is the so-called traditional media (newspapers, TV and radio stations, professional periodicals, etc.) where arts journalism has been declining for decades, but theatre criticism continues to exist, albeit as an endangered species whose future is unknown. University professors, lecturers and experienced journalists mostly write for these media, almost all of them on a freelance basis, which typically implies a non-existent or a very small fee. Once those professionals retire, it's a mystery if media executives and editors will ask the younger generation to take over the critics roles or let those positions be remembered as a part of history.
And then, there are the new, independent, mostly internet-based outlets like portals, podcasts and alternative radios where a younger generation of critics finds a refuge, but also experienced colleagues whose space in traditional media has shrunk or who want to contribute to criticism in a more alive and progressive environment. The problem with these outlets is the long-term instability, because most of them rely either exclusively on their writers' enthusiasm or on short-term funding.
Nonetheless, criticism has remained an important segment of the Serbian theatre community, giving artists constructive feedback (despite the hostility that comes from certain individuals) and the audience a deeper understanding of theatre and its position withing the wider social context.
Jászay Tamás, theatre critic and editor-in-chief of Revizor, Hungary
Revizor was founded in 2008. Since then we have been publishing about 600-700 reviews and interviews every year. We have worked with over 300 authors since 2008, with a hard core of around 30-50 authors who publish regularly, including authors who have been among the elite of the critical profession for decades, and newcomers mentored by us who are starting their careers here. The biggest change in Revizor's history is that from autumn 2023 we are partly subscription-based: our subscriber base is slowly but surely growing, but we are still a long way from being solely sustained by them.
Print dailies have virtually disappeared in recent years, with their sales declining spectacularly. At the beginning of the crash, the cultural section was the first to be cut in all platforms. Culture is irrelevant in the high-reach online portals: only 'celebrities' and scandals cross the threshold of appeal.
Over the past decade and a half, Attila Vidnyánszky - the general director of the National Theatre - has worked hard to ensure that his work as a theatre director cannot be judged in a responsible way. If I write something good about his work, the liberal side labels me a sycophant, and the right-wing press suspects me of trying to get a position. The reverse is equally distorted. Today, Vidnyánszky is primarily a politician, a theatre potentate with immense power and influence, who has control over the whole (!) of higher theatre education in Hungary, and over the various theatre arts programmes and subsidies. He is also the general director of the National Theatre, where he directs 3-4 premieres a year (he is the only Hungarian director he lets into the building, as most premieres are directed by foreign directors), but his oeuvre's critical evaluation is made difficult by his crimes against theatre in Hungary as a whole.
The right-wing press tries to follow the ruling party's directive, so the work of the independent sector, if it is mentioned at all in these papers, is usually seen as perverse and exhibitionist. The independent, professional journals do their best to report on independent performances, but as the editor-in-chief of Revizor, I also see this undertaking as increasingly hopeless: as the bleeding dry of the independent performing arts takes place, so does the cutting off of the money taps to the independent press.
If we look back over the last fifty years of Hungarian theatre, we cannot name a single theatre critic who has made a living solely from writing reviews. Besides writing criticism, it is natural and necessary for someone to edit a magazine, translate, research, teach in secondary schools or universities, even in fields quite far from the theatre. Today, we are all hobby critics who have one or two full-time jobs - if we are lucky enough - and who, in our spare time, write for one or two high-quality, mainly online, magazines, if we are asked to do so.
Gregor Butala, journalist at Dnevnik, Slovenia
I work for a daily newspaper Dnevnik, one of main Slovenian dailies. I'm employed full-time, which is not really the norm for theatre critics (or even cultural journalists). I write for Arts & Culture pages, mostly but not exclusively about theatre and cultural politics (sometimes also about literature, visual arts etc. depending on events and needs); not only reviews of various performances, but also (and predominantly) interviews, opinion pieces, long reads, or just basic news and announcements. So I am more a journalist than a theatre critic at the moment.
I'd say that there is still space for theatre coverage in mainstream news outlets, but it's rather limited - just as the space for arts or cultural topics, especially in 'general purpose' mainstream media, is smaller than for general news, sports, politics etc. I don't think this has changed that much in recent years, but there is certainly some difference when compared to 20 years ago (not in a great way - available space is shrinking slowly but surely). Also nowadays there are less in-depth reviews and more announcements, short interviews and similar, because mainstream media that caters to wider audiences is somewhat reluctant to have too many 'difficult' or 'niche' texts. Still, there are regular reviews of more important shows, books, concerts, exhibitions, it's just that generally there used to be more of them.
It's quite difficult, but it's probably still possible to sustain a career- if you're flexible enough. You can't expect to be able to live as an independent theatre critic only (reviews don't pay that well and it's not realistic to write - or sell - 15+ in a month), but in combination with some other forms of writing (for festivals, different magazines, catalogues, scientific journals, web portals etc.) it's doable, though probably not for a newcomer. So while it's not that hard for younger writers to enter the profession (if you have at least decent writing skills and knowledge), it's not easy to survive without doing anything else. And consequently, most drop out of the profession after a few years when they find more stable and reliable job / source of income. Things have been precarious for years in this field.
Rikard Loman, former theatre critic of Dagens Nyheter, Sweden
I was a freelance theatre critic for the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter from 1996 to 2019, but I stopped writing mainly for the reasons implied in you questions: the reviews got shorter and shorter, the time to write got shorter, I did not in the end feel that I was doing important work or taking part in an important conversation about theatre and there was a strong sense among the freelancers that theatre and in particular theatre outside of Stockholm became less interesting to the editors. And the salary was pretty much fixed which meant that I got less and less every year and I would say that today it is not easy to sustain a career as a critic if that is the only thing you do.
In my case, I was never working solely as a critic. I was a PhD-student in the mid-90s and I kept writing reviews after I finished my dissertation. I kept doing it as a teacher and researcher, but I realized over time that it wasn't going anywhere and it became more of a hobby.
When I started out the paper had a handful of permanent employees covering everything related to theatre and opera and dance and children's theatre. I live in the southernmost part of Sweden (Skåne) and I reviewed pretty much everything in the big cities in this region (Malmö and Helsingborg) and I occasionally wrote about theatre in Copenhagen. I wrote about the things that were of interest to our editors and the things I found interesting, and that included productions in city theatres and by independent theatre groups.
The theatre reviews used to fill a large chunk of the culture section. You would always be quoted by the theatres and the paper would always be found in the theatres. It is much harder to find the reviews today and the reviews have also become less important to the theatres. In my part of Sweden, theatres do not at all take for granted that the Stockholm critics will write about the productions and the independent groups are rarely reviewed outside of the local context, unless there's some sort of a scandal that makes it newsworthy.
I would say that it is not easy to sustain a career as a critic today and there is little re-growth. A handful of older critics keep writing, but some of them are in their 80s. The "youngest" significant voice is probably Cecilia Djurberg and she is in her early 50s and is now the theatre editor at Aftonbladet (Sweden's largest daily) and their reviews are still fairly visible online and in the paper version.
I would say that interesting theatre is being done, but it is not being noticed. When I stopped writing myself I had this strong feeling that you have to do something else in order to really engage in theatre. I found that it is easier for a cultural politician to take part in what's going on, but I choose myself to get involved with the Swedish cultural council and I have been an adviser there for the last four years and that has really given me a better understanding for what's going on in the theatre world, not just in my part of Sweden but in all parts of Sweden, and I really wish I had started out here, but my experiences there confirms a lot of my impressions as a theatre critic, that it is harder to establish yourself in this field; it is harder to get noticed and talked about, and the lack of critical discussions and qualitative reviewing affects the theatre in a negative way and the less interesting the theatre productions become the less interesting the reviews become!
This week in European theatre
A round-up of festivals, premieres and other upcoming events over the next seven days.
Edinburgh Festival Fringe - Here it comes. The world’s largest arts festival, the city-swallowing, wallet-battering beast that is the Edinburgh Fringe, officially runs from 2nd-26th August, but people start previewing work from the end of July. This year’s programme currently features 3,450 performances and that number could go up. According to this piece in The Stage, it stands a chance of being the second biggest edition to date, only topped by 2019.
Thank you for reading! If you would like to contribute to this overview of European arts journalism, or discuss anything else newsletter-related, you can reach me on natasha.tripney@gmail.com