Gothamist
A non-profit newsroom, powered by WNYC.
Gothamist
Listen Live
Arts & Entertainment
Essential Blog Offense
By
John Del Signore
Published Apr 6, 2007
Modified Mar 7, 2008
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
Never miss a story
Email address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .
By
John Del Signore
Published Apr 6, 2007
Modified Mar 7, 2008
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
We rely on your support to make local news available to all
Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2026. Donate today
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
There’s drama pinballing through the theater blogs this week, people! In a recent letter to subscribers, Carolyn Cantor, the director of Adam Rapp’s play Essential Self-Defense, took issue with Charles Isherwood’s “scathing” review in the Times. Isherwood has become something of a punching bag among theater bloggers for his perceived stodginess, and the review is, at times, unnecessarily ad hominem: “A self-conscious exercise in stagy attitudinizing, it could almost have been composed by a computer. Well, maybe a computer that spends a lot of time posing in funky bars in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.” [Disclosure: we once caught a nasty virus from a computer we picked up in a funky Williamsburg bar. Never again.]
Cantor’s letter went on to name other critics who “embraced” the show, emphasizing more “adventurous” theater bloggers. (We interviewed Rapp, who we like, and reviewed Essential Self-Defense, which we didn’t.) That’s when Culturebot, a great performance art group blog – don’t call it a P.S. 122 blog – edited by P.S. 122’s Andy Horowitz, dipped its oar in by suggesting that those bloggers were essentially part of a viral marketing campaign fueled by free tickets (accurate) and complimentary beer (inaccurate). Bloggers took umbrage! Perhaps the best insight came from Parabasis, who detected a whiff of “our show is just too experimental for the Man!” in Cantor’s letter, possibly prompting the P.S. 122/Culturebot crowd to go, “Hmm. Experimental, eh?” [Paraphrasing ours.]
Whew! All this in the same week that Time Out New York’s Spring theater issue cautioned readers to beware of certain unnamed theater blogs because “marketing departments have offered drama bloggers free seats…” There seem to be two distinct questions here: How does the theater community counterbalance the New York Times, which, like it or not, is a near-monolithic critical force? And if the Rise of Theater Blogging is the answer to the first question, can complimentary tickets yield favorable reviews when there’s no editor monitoring ethical standards? Anyone know of any verifiable instances of bloggers hyping a show they didn't like in exchange for comps?
(Photo by Richard Termine.)
Tagged
adam rapp
art
bar
bars
bloggers
blogs
brooklyn
Charles Isherwood
Essential Self
new york
new york times
people
performance art
spring
theater
this week
time out
time out new york
williamsburg
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
Read more
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
MORE arts-entertainment
Will Barnes and Noble in the East Village spell doom for smaller shops? It's complicated.
Independent booksellers are grappling with whether the big-box chain is a threat or an ally in the fight against Amazon.
By
Sonia Rao
Published Oct 16, 2026
Can eligible NYC singles find love with 30 minutes and some really spicy food?
We went to the Spiciest Supper Club singles night to take the temperature of New York City's dating scene.
By
Elizabeth Shwe
and
James Ramsay
Arts & Entertainment
Can eligible NYC singles find love with 30 minutes and some really spicy food?
We went to the Spiciest Supper Club singles night to take the temperature of New York City's dating scene.
By
Elizabeth Shwe
and
James Ramsay
How the NYC Marathon has changed in the last 50 years
By
Hannah Frishberg
A visit to Art of Play, the Brooklyn store in an animatronic bird beef with Kelly Clarkson
By
Sonia Rao
The hottest way to show you're an authentic New Yorker is… riding a Citi Bike?
By
Lindsay Lee Wallace
Never miss a story
Catch up on the most important headlines with a roundup of essential NYC stories, delivered to your inbox daily.
Sign upEmail address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .