Bill Marx

Keep an Eye on Spaulding and Company

August 27, 2007
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Bloggers predicted that CEO/President Josiah Spaulding Jr.’s over-the-top 1.265 million dollar retention bonus would spark inquiries into how much money goes where at the Citi Performing Arts Center (CPAC). It does not seem too much to ask, given that the state and other funders are throwing much moolah at a troubled nonprofit arts institution whose…

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Arts Commentary: When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Marketing

August 24, 2007
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Revving up marketing machinery raises some uncomfortable questions: Why should donors give funds to a theater if their money is going to pay for focus groups and demographic studies rather than to support the work of artists?

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Got Spaulding?

August 22, 2007
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The same publicity firm, Weber Shandwick, that launched the “got milk?” campaign is doing damage control for Citi Performing Arts Center and its beleaguered Chairman and CEO Josiah Spaulding, Jr. Perhaps a recent Boston Globe editorial calling for Spaulding to be replaced was the last straw. WS has sent out an image-repair “open letter” to…

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Theater Commentary: Dating Dürrenmatt

August 21, 2007
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When should a play be labeled dated and consigned to the junk heap of time? No playwright is safe from the charge of being called passé: one reviewer’s breath of fresh air from the past is another’s antiquated wheeze.

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Response: Critical Justification

August 18, 2007
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A certain number of people (not huge) want to read critics who take the arts seriously, who do more than tell readers what is worth spending their money on.

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Arts Commentary: Pauline Kael’s Critical Influence — Revisited

August 15, 2007
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The Hub Review features a perceptively waspish consideration of Pauline Kael’s unhealthy influence on film reviewers, taking scathing aim at a couple of her jittery heirs, A.O. Scott of the NYTimes and  Ty Burr of the Boston Globe. I particularly like Tom Garvey’s concluding paragraph: But if the Paulettes have all repudiated their maker, where’s her baleful…

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Arts Criticism Commentary: In Defense of Negative Book Reviews

August 14, 2007
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“Criticism will always have the force of the child in the story about the emperor’s new clothes, because there will always be naked emperors who everybody says are wearing today’s Crown Jewels.” — Eric Bentley

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Theater Commentary: Yeasayers Beware

August 13, 2007
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The caricature of the theater critic as spoilsport still pops up, pushed by rescuers of the “injured” who enjoy delivering self-congratulatory whippings. No naysayers are allowed –- it hurts business. For once, how about looking at the ways that yeasayers do a disservice to theater and the craft of criticism? By Bill Marx Are theater…

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Arts Commentary: The Virtual Arts Center

August 10, 2007
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By Bill Marx On June 21, the Boston Foundation announced that the Citi Performing Arts Center (CPAC, formerly the Wang Center for the Performing Arts) would be receiving $225,000. This is not only the largest single grant given to any institution for the quarter; it is the most money (by a long shot) the Wang/CPAC…

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The Old One-Two

August 7, 2007
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Hot on the heels of critic Sven Birkerts’s lament last week in the Boston Globe’s Ideas section that the blogosphere threatens shared literary culture comes Globe book critic Gail Caldwell’s moan that “the scribes and priests no longer hold the keys to the holy word; the word itself has splintered into an infinite series of…

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