Hear, Hear

(reposted from 3/31/10)
David Cote makes an excellent and seemingly simple point: Why don't playwrights review theater the way authors commonly review books? I have to note, though, that as Time Out New York's theater editor, he's in a position to lead on this issue. Hire Mac Wellman to cover Radiohole! Kushner to cover Ruhl! Moses to cover Rapp! And so on. UPDATE: Here's a decent recent example. UPDATE UPDATE: I've posted at length on the same topic over at TCGBlog.org, and J. at 99 has an illuminating response here. I've got my share of "pop in the nose" anecdotes--but from the other side, cases where I ended up at a bar or an intermission smoke break with a playwright I'd dissed. I've lived to tell. FINAL UPDATE: How could I forget the playwright/critic whose dual career I helped complicate (or clarify, depending how you look at it)? George Hunka's comments on my TCGBlog.org post allude to an unfortunate chapter summed up well here and discussed even more here. Well-trod territory, this.