Talk:Jesse Green (theatre critic)

Extraneous material in the New York Times section

I deleted some sentences in the New York Times section that I thought were irrelevant, and added some detail to the Ms. Magazine article section. @Dizzycheekchewer could we discuss why you think they belong there? The passage about Head over Heels, for starters, I wrote "This is really about Brantley - Green shouldn't get special praise for correctly gendering the characters in a play" I have doublechecked the original article and I still think that - it strikes me as an offhand mention that is only there to critique Brantley, "Green defined the gender identities of the two non-binary characters with perfect clarity". BrightVamp (talk) 23:34, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

I see you've already started the discussion in the edit comments. I'll copy that here:

> adjusted some wordingng in response to BrightVamp, who, I feel, turned minor quibbles into major deletions 1)it is relevant if major playwrights publicly criticize Green by name for his reviewing history 2) is is equal relevant if, while his co-chief Brantley is under fire in a review fracas, Green is lauded by name 3) the critique of Green's Gunderson review was not as simple as "sexist" for talking about Gunderson's personal life 4) Green's bad review arguably closing KPOP is notable as well. BrightVamp (talk) 23:38, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Responding to this: "it is relevant if major playwrights publicly criticize Green by name for his reviewing history" The source only mentions a single tweet, that only mentions the name "Green" without any explanation. He didn't review either play. I feel the statement that he has been criticized for "representing patriarchal irrelevancies" really needs more support than that. Perhaps the playwrights expanded on their critique somewhere? Removal of the 3Views on Theater material is an improvement! BrightVamp (talk) 23:46, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

I would've started a Talk message to say the same, but I wasn't sure if it merited it. I did keep out the 3Views on Theater stuff, not because I think it's irrelevant (if you referred to the source that was cited, it was an industry piece with quotes from prominent people like Pulitzer-winner Sarah Ruhl and implicitly connected 3Views to the failures of a theater-critic-system that only seems to privilege the white male viewpoint, which Jesse Green has been the sole mascot of for the four years since Brantley left), but because I don't have the energy to find anything additional. I am sure more is out there somewhere and 3Views may merit its own page, but not worth the uphill battle it unfortunately seems to be.

There is a significant strain of anti-critic criticism that is reflected in the anti-patriarchal critiques from Vogel and Nottage. They likely cared more about Brantley, but they still named Green and he is in the same position of being a white male critic in an industry that is vocally dismayed by critics, especially the white male ones. If it were a callout from playwrights who do not, when combined, share 3 Pulitzer Prizes, I would better understand the questioning of it. Or if this was a public figure who was less fame-shy, as a theater critic naturally has to be.

If you want to change the wording there to something more accurate to your interpretation, by all means, but cutting whole paragraphs and details because they don't jibe with your sensibility feels a little foolhardy. I would also welcome you or anyone else's continued research and contributions, outside of cutting for the sake of cutting. This is arguably one of the more, for better or worse, powerful people in the largest live theater landscape in the U.S.. If there's additional instances of public acclaim or criticism, I think that would have a place here. Dizzycheekchewer (talk) 01:34, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Pulitzer nominee Sarah Ruhl, rather than winner. Dizzycheekchewer (talk) 01:35, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

I get that Green is in a powerful position, and substantial criticism of him should be in there, especially from publich figures such as Vogel and Nottage. It's just that at this point, it's one word in one tweet, and fleshing out what they meant by it takes interpretation which this isn't the place for. If they felt strongly about it, and it isn't just an impulsive swipe, surely they've spoken about it somewhere else substantially, and we can include that. BrightVamp (talk) 02:35, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

I think it would be wonderful for people to search for that information. I have not and would not know where to start as someone that doesn't particularly follow their writings.

I believe I had a separate reference—removed from the article either after a review or by a separate contributor—that noted Green as a key part of the Brantley&Green pairing since he explicitly and unfavorably compared Sweat and Indecent to JT Rogers's Oslo in a review he wrote for NY mag. To quote, from right after he praises Oslo in the first graf of an Indecent review:

"Less convincing, though it just won the Pulitzer prize, is Lynn Nottage’s Sweat, which is based on intensive research into Rust Belt deindustrialization but attenuates its power in the very process of forcing the facts into drama. And now comes Paula Vogel’s Indecent; taking a huge slice of cultural and social history as its subject, it is in some ways the most ambitious of the three, and in all ways the least convincing."

Maybe that could fit in this article to build out the Vogel and Nottage piece, maybe (probably) not. But when I did have references to specific reviews Green wrote, reviewers unanimously wanted them removed.

Either way, whether they had more to say—or whether they didn't mean what they did say—feels like it's more interpretative than quoting them and citing an article documenting the interaction. If you find something that further explicates their feelings or that indicates this instance was, what, a typo? it would certainly be better to replace this with that. But if you want to interpret in the instance that they didn't really mean it, or that they were more fixated on Brantley than Green, I don't think that that carries enough reason to take out a two-sentence reference to the affair.

Also, for what it's worth, I don't particularly care about having more positive or more negative criticism of him in the article. I searched for the times when people talked about his impact and/or loudly complained about his reviews. Unfortunately it's hard to claim that Green giving Musical A a rave review helped it stay open or that Green giving Musical B a middling review made it close, without instances of playwrights or actors complaining about it. Dizzycheekchewer (talk) 03:29, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

About the critique of the Gunderson review, am I misunderstanding that the Ms. writer is implying a sexist double standard in Green's criticism of the play as too personal?

"We all remember the Times when Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Horton Foote and Neil Simon were (excoriated) lauded for their (unseemly, overwrought) intimate explorations of their own lives through their plays. So, Gunderson, in telling the story of her husband, also makes herself and her observations on life and death, parenthood and childhood, available to us"

As it reads now "A 2021 review of Lauren Gunderson's play "The Catastrophists, was noted...for unduly focusing on the playwright's personal life" means that the review focused too much on the playwright's personal life, rather than that it *critiqued* that focus, which I don't think is intended (and I don't see evidence of that in the review) BrightVamp (talk) 02:50, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

The Ms. Mag writer is certainly referencing a double standard of plays about personal lives. There is frustration at the objectionable word choice, but seems equally frustrated on the bemused way Green takes the Wolfe-Gunderson marriage. So Green's "review...unduly focusing on the playwright's personal life" would to me include the references to their dynamic, such as:

"...which means imbuing Wolfe with a kind of heroic prescience. I’d call it self-serving except that in a play that isn’t autobiography the question of “self” has been fudged."

"As written by Gunderson, though, he comes off as a science snob with a serious case of I-told-you-so smugness."

"It gradually becomes clear that the voice is Gunderson’s, chattily keeping Wolfe and, through him, the audience abreast of her compositional tactics. At one point he tells us that his wife has changed the play’s title, formerly “The Virologist,” to “The Catastrophist."

The Ms. writer is almost only writing in coded language as a writing choice, but I would take that quote to mean "when Arthur Miller wrote plays about true-to-his-life characters, the Times focused on the craft and didn't titter about Marilyn Monroe the whole time." My reading of that passage is anti-word choice AND anti-focus-on-their-dynamic.

I think if you read the Green review, it doesn't necessarily critique the personal life focus. He doesn't say that Gunderson should've changed the name of her husband's character or not written about him or included other characters or whatever. He does, however, bring up their relationship quite a bit in a way, the Ms. Mag writer seems to say, that he wouldn't have if it were Horton Foote.

I'm not opposed to a rephrasing that is more accurate to the inherent complexity of documenting a 1) critique of a 2) theatre review of a 3) avant-garde play about the playwright's husband.

Your rephrasing, along with the, I feel, unnecessary cleaving of the rest of the article, felt incorrect. It was more direct in saying that the Ms. Mag writer called Green sexist(the writer doesn't call him sexist, though there is a brief disclaimer that refers to people calling him sexist and as the Wiki article said, it notes word choice that has a sexist bent) and that took out the context of the play being about Gunderson's husband. Whether or not you think the review is good or bad, I think that is important context to the criticism either way. Dizzycheekchewer (talk) 04:08, 18 August 2024 (UTC)