Critical thinking II: Passion and precarity
On the perennial question of whether or not "theatre criticism is dead"
This week’s newsletter is the second part in an occasional series in which I speak to 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 in their profession over recent years. Here’s the first part:
This time around I’ve asked critics and journalists from Germany, Portugal, Croatia, Poland and France to talk about their work, the reasons they do what they do and the increasing precarity of the profession.
Speaking of which, here’s the predictable bit where I mention the fact that Café Europa is free, for now, and I would love to keep it that way, but it also takes a lot of time to research and write. If you’d like to help keep it going you can do that in a number of ways, by subscribing if you don’t already do so, by sharing it with others who might appreciate it, or by becoming a paid supporter, which currently you can do for just £4 a month.
Nathalie Eckstein, online editor, Theater Der Zeit, Germany
I work as an online editor for a German-speaking, nationwide theatre trade magazine. The print edition is published monthly, and we publish about one new article online each day. Thematically, we cover everything that concerns the theatre world—people, topics, theatres, productions, as well as (cultural) political conditions and political issues with a focus on East Germany, musical theatre, and specialized topics. I have also written smaller articles and reviews for a German-speaking weekly newspaper.
For years, theatre reviews in the arts sections of major daily and weekly newspapers have been declining, positions are being cut, and even in public broadcasting, colleagues are being forced to do more and more for less and less money. However, in Germany, we are still fortunate to have wide-ranging theatre coverage that reaches a relatively large audience, because the theatre scene in Germany is so large and well-subsidized. But even here, there are cuts, fears, and increasing job insecurity. Unfortunately, there is still a lack of truly new ideas in cultural reporting.
All theatre magazines also cover major productions in the independent scene. Many renowned theatre makers in Germany work exclusively in the independent scene. Reporting is usually essential for independent theatre artists when applying for funding to get approval for a new project.
However, there is currently a significant debate: The new federal budget plans to cut 10 million euros from the funding of the independent scene, which will primarily affect production houses and the artists working there. There is growing resistance to this.
It's definitely not an easy career to sustain. It's not possible to make a living from writing reviews. Because I have a position at the magazine's publishing house and also work as an editor, I can take on editing work for publications, but it's still quite precarious. Everyone has to work other jobs on the side.
Nora Čulić Matošić, freelance critic, Croatia
I’ve been writing cultural criticism, with a main focus on theatre, on a regular basis for three years now. I write for both ‘traditional’ media and online portals and after doing it for some time now, I noticed that I have developed different styles of writing (or critical voices) depending on the type of media. For example, these portals are often much more open to experimental critical writing and aren’t limited by space like papers are. Although, I must admit, it is nice to have some published work too, something you can hold in your hands instead of reading on a screen, my favourite ‘paradox’ is that the writing fees are often higher for many of these independent portals are higher than in ‘traditional’ institutional media. At least from my experience.
I frequently contribute to Vijenac, an established Croatian biweekly literary magazine for art, culture and science. These reviews are rather short, around 700 words give or take, as it is a printed magazine (with digital copies available online too). I also write for SEEStage, an online magazine dedicated to South Eastern European theatre, and Kulturpunk.hr, one of the most prominent portals in Croatia dedicated to independent cultural journalism and criticism.
In terms of space, in line with the decreasing interest in cultural news, the coverage has dropped off in my opinion, even as the number of productions in the institutional and independent scenes have continued to increase. It can be hard to follow everything that goes on in the capital city Zagreb, let alone the rest of the country. However I feel like the interest in the independent scene has grown over the years, mainly due to hyperproduction and the diversity it brings. It’s more likely that alternative independent platforms are going to cover the independent scene more frequently and in more depth than the mainstream media.
It is impossible to make a living from just being a critic and cultural journalist, unless you’re employed full time at a mainstream news media outlet. Writing provides extra income, like a side hustle (haha!) but definitely not as a main source of income in this economy.
Unfortunately, being a critic has become more precarious (as if it wasn’t a priori). A lot of young writers experience exploitation, writing without previously establishing fees and deadlines, waiting weeks and even months to get paid or even working voluntarily. A supposed lack of work experience and age is used against young writers, as if young people should consider themselves lucky to be given these opportunities, and not that they have earned it through their work and knowledge.
Michał Centkowski, cultural journalist and curator, Poland
I write for several titles including the Polish edition of Vogue magazine and for Tygodnik Przegląd, a weekly newspaper. I also wrote for the Polish Newsweek for almost a decade.
Under the socialist government in Poland, up until the late 1980s, almost every town used to have few newspapers and almost every newspaper had a cultural department with their own critics, so the situation was quite comfortable. Then we became a capitalist society, which was quite devastating for culture in the media market. The space, not just for theatre but for film, literature and music coverage too, has got smaller. Recently almost every title has transformed into an online publication. I started out with help from Theater Institute, one of the big government institutions which runs this portal e-teatr.pl and also has a programme for young critics and, while they do not pay, they give you money for transport to allow you to travel, tickets for spectacles. It’s like a scholarship, because they give you the opportunity to train and to publish your work on a big, influential portal. I got lucky in this respect. I think it’s important, especially now when the media is really crumbling, that there is a government-funded programme for theatre criticism, because otherwise it won’t survive.
Some of my colleagues combine their criticism with work as programme consultants for certain theatres and it can sometimes feel as if the theatres are paying for good publicity, which I think is controversial. Some influential critics in Poland also work as dramaturgs and then they also write about the performances from that institution. In some sense, I understand this, because the space for cultural coverage in the media is getting smaller so it's hard to make a living just from writing. I write for some well-paying titles but even so I am not sure if I would get the minimum wage in Poland from my writing alone. I also do workshops and other things to supplement my writing.
It’s even more precarious now than it was when I was starting out. With a lot of these online portals, you’re encouraged to write for almost nothing because it's good for your portfolio. But there are no other spaces. It's a really hard situation. Many of my older colleagues remember when things were easier and more comfortable, and the market was larger, but we just have the leftovers of this system now.
Statt Miller, performer, dramaturg and theatre critic, Portugal
In Portugal, an all-new artistic landscape emerged at the end of the Estado Novo, the authoritarian and autocratic political regime that had been in force in in the country for 41 years without interruption, until its overthrow by the Revolution of April 25, 1974. Since then, theatre practitioners have become increasingly creative and free, with all the thoughts that were prohibited before providing the motor for fresh dramatic perspectives. This new dawn of Portuguese theatre, coupled with the arrival of the internet, also brought with it a new wave of criticism.
Besides my work as a theatre critic, I also work as an actress and performer. These days, it’s very common to hear among the arts community that “the theatre critic is dead.” The truth is that there is no big interest in the media or the mainstream to work with a professional theatre critic. There are just a few individuals who are paid to write criticism, but this is not a profession that could stand you for life! The space in publications is really short, and most of the time the critics are called upon to write in promotion of a show, rather than to criticize it.
The spirit of theatre criticism has, however, moved online, whether through the blogs of individual professionals, or on-line arts magazines associated with universities, or via portals like Sinais em Linha from the APCT (Portuguese Association of Theatre Critic), in association with the Theatrical Studies Center of Lisbon University. Here, most of the authors are students or researchers of theatre, there is no limit of space for the texts, and there are vastly different styles of theatre criticism. The most interesting thing about this platform is that you can find on it different perspectives about the same performance.
I set up my own website to publish my criticism. It is called O CALCANHAR DE AQUILES and the concept is that it is the job of the critic to find the Achilles’ heel of each performance, though in a way that is constructive. For me, it is very important to respect the show, and all the creative team.
Unfortunately, is not easy to sustain a career as a theatre critic. It is not a profession in Portugal. It is more like the kind of work you do at the same time as working as a dramaturg or a theatre researcher. This means that it is precarious, and it is not very easy to find a place to publish your work. It requires time, study, and resistance in order to keep writing your articles, and to make a name for yourself.
Samuel Gleyze-Esteban, freelance critic and journalist, France
I’m a 27 year-old French journalist and I’ve been writing about the performing arts for almost three years now, after studying film theory and journalism. My status as a « pigiste » — more or less equivalent to freelance — allows me to juggle between two different types of media. I work for a website specialized in performing arts, now publishing around 900 articles per year, with a high involvement in the life of the publication beyond article-writing. I also write for the culture section of a national daily newspaper, where the quantity of articles is restricted.
Most mainstream generalist news outlets, today, have space for cultural criticism, including theatre. Most national newspapers in France, for example, still have more than one journalist dedicated to covering performing arts. However, their space and funding have shrunk over the years, following the general impoverishment of printed press as a whole, and they are seen as threatened editorial spaces at this point. Consequently, the role of the theatre critic in their field has been reconfigured, shifting to a much less prescriptive position, which in turn influences, to a certain extent and depending on the outlet, the way we apprehend writing reviews — less definitive, less harsh.
On the other hand, there are a few web-based outlets — blogs and websites since the 2000s and mostly the 2010s, and social media accounts most recently — of growing importance in the ecosystem of performing arts. Even in the case of most serious and qualitative titles, only a few of them are able to pay their workers ; a lot operate with limited to no income and rely, to an extent, on the personal involvement of those who participate in it.
In France, the field differentiates between « Théâtre privé » and « Théâtre public », though this line is increasingly starting to blur. The public theatre has more exhaustive coverage in the media. Private theatre encompasses a lot of different things, from blockbuster-like shows to extremely modest ones, and thus benefits from a more selective coverage often following the economic rule — the more identifiable commercially, the more talked-about — but not always. That said, a lot of journalists consider the effort of discovering less identified artists as an integral part of their work. But this effort is limited by material factors — time, publishing space, also the ability for a festival or a theatre outside Paris to pay travel and accommodation for journalists : all public structures have a budget for this, but many small independent ones don’t.
It is not easy to sustain a career as a critic and cultural journalist. A few of us are able to dedicate most of our time to this activity, but it often requires us to accept precarity in our personal situations. In the performing arts, only a few do this as our main job right now. The positions of cultural journalists in news outlets has diminished over the years, and the roles are very prized. Most of us who do this live in precarious situations, and most (probably all) are animated by passion and enthusiasm — paradoxically, this work comes with rather unique upsides : we travel a lot for work, there is a certain stimulation to it (professional, social and artistic), and it grants us access to desirable and interesting areas of experience, I would say.
I am part of the youngest generation of theatre and dance critics working professionally in France right now, and each generation has to face greater difficulties accessing the field than the previous one. We young journalists all know it and talk about it. To an extent, writing about culture is now an intrinsically political fight : it is a way of defending plurality of thought towards cultural production, and ideally making a way for a reasoning that goes against a purely capitalist or populist understanding of it. Therefore, I think the vitality of cultural criticism at least reflects and magnifies that of its attached field. With this in mind, I think that hailing the death of criticism and discouraging future critics is an error.
With that said, I think it’s necessary to approach this professional sector with an understanding of its material limitations, as well as to think of the possibility, in the long-term, that its form changes drastically — which thus requires us to put a lot of thought in, basically, avoiding to just end up talking to ourselves in obsolete formats.
Today, in France, at least for the performing arts field, we are a few young journalists trying to make a living of it against the announced death of the critic, and paradoxically, we are met with a certain level of demand on the part of the institutions, venues and festivals through their press attachés, which could be my conclusive statement : though its raison d’être is increasingly questioned, and the conditions of exercise highly deteriorated, cultural criticism is still integral to cultural life, granting visibility for a historically high amount of creation in a context of crisis.
This week in European theatre
A round-up of festivals, premieres and other upcoming events over the next seven days
Divadlo International Theatre Festival – The Prague festival presents a mix of international productions and a selection of the best Czech productions of the past season. The programme includes Tiago Rodrigues’ Hecuba, Not Hecuba, Julien Gosselin’s Extinction and the Czech production of Suzie Miller’s Prima Facie (which I discussed in an earlier edition of this newsletter). The festival runs from 11th-19th September.
Mrs Yamamoto is Still There – German director Jette Steckel makes her Zurich Schauspielhaus debut with a new play by Dea Loher, a story of interweaving lives which is premiering simultaneously in Zurich and Tokyo on 12th September.
The Days Out There – The German theatre season kicks off in earnest this week with Berlin audiences having the opportunity to watch Lola Arias’ new show, the second part of a project that began with her film Reas, which explored the lives of a group of cis women and trans people in the Argentinian prison system. It premieres at the Maxim Gorki Theatre on 14th September.
Sarajevo Fest – The 6th edition of the festival of work from Bosnia and Herzegovina and the ex-Yugoslav region includes work from the Belgrade Drama Theatre and the National Theatre of Sarajevo, including pieces by festival director Haris Pašović. It runs from 15th-22nd September.
Thanks for reading! If you have any feedback, tips, or thoughts about this newsletter, you can reach me on natasha.tripney@gmail.com
Fascinating to see how different political landscapes on each country have affected the life of the critic. What an interesting read.