586 stories by "Howard Sherman"
This is not a cranky older guy post, whining about the way things used to be, but merely an observation about how the digital revolution has affected a behavior that was long taken for grant…
I happen to follow a group of smart, funny and insightful television journalists on Twitter " among them Alyssa Rosenberg, Todd VanDerWerff, Linda Holmes, Alan Sepinwall, Kate Aurthur, Roger…
In one of his best known stories, "Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54' N, Longitude 77° 00' 13" W," the science fiction and fantasy author Harlan Ellison tells o…
What is the purpose of putting on shows in high school? Is it educational? Recreational? Is it community relations? Is it a family activity? I've always thought that high school theatre was …
Follow this with me, will you? "The plays bothered a lot of us," says a school superintendent, referring to works presented by a high school drama group. "The plays had references to sex and…
I'm unable to see a Shakespeare play without thinking of my late mother. "How sweet," you think, "He and his mother must have shared many great evenings together watching Shakespeare. Their …
June 26, 2013 President Barack Obama 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington DC Â 20500 Dear President Obama: I realize it's been a busy week, what with the overturning of the Defense of Marri…
I don't mean to make anyone paranoid, but if your organization has unpaid interns, you need to start thinking about whether they may start legal proceedings against you for back pay. In the …
For those complacent about the ongoing reduction and elimination of professional arts journalism, I would like to offer a small but concrete example of where this decline is leading us. On M…
Yes, I'm serious about the headline. I feel your scorn, but before your jerking knee sends you to the orthopedist, let me get right to the point. There are any number of things one can objec…
Is there no one in town aware of social injustice? Part of the compact we make when we go to the theatre is to shut out the outside world and completely immerse ourselves in the world displa…
My parents were not theatergoers and my youthful memories are not filled with reveries of family trips to New York to see shows. I can remember being taken to the theatre only twice as a you…
As a teen in the 1970s, I kept testing a small sociological phenomenon. When visiting a Jewish home, I would peek at the record collection of the adults in residence to see if they had the a…
NEW YORK -- "What is the best that Broadway can be?” was the central question of the second TEDx Broadway conference, which continued to explore the query that fueled last year’s…
When TheaterMania launched its Bros on Broadway series in October 2012, theatre pundit and arts administrator Howard Sherman reached out to Creative Director Kimberly Kaye via Twitter to say…
At the beginning of December, I breached countless confidences, both personal and professional, in order to bring you "Decoder,” a post which revealed the true meaning of timeworn word…
The murmuring from Canada was startling, and grew louder. First Toronto Globe and Mail theatre critic J. Kelly Nestruck tweeted about the cognitive dissonance of the Canadian national …
I saw a comment on Twitter this morning which reminded me that Alec Baldwin will be delivering the annual Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy at the Kennedy Center in April. This i…
I have opined in the past about the dark arts of theatrical billing, marketing and publicity in such posts as This Blog is Prior to Broadway and Blurb. Now, as the holidays approach…
Once upon a time, perhaps 15 or 20 years ago, I read a really fascinating article which posited that the arts would get more coverage in the media if they opened themselves up and provided g…
Marketing. Advertising. Community Outreach. Audience engagement. Audience Development. Social Networking. Targeted Pitches. And so on. This litany of phrases are among the buzzwords common t…
And such a wall, as I would have you think, That had in it a crannied hole or chink… – A Midsummer Night's Dream  I would like to state unequivocally that I believe in a well-fund…
Over the past 48 hours, the culture pages in England have been filled with reports which are all variants of the same story: "Walkouts abound at The Royal Shakespeare Company's Marat/Sade." …
I suspect that, for many working in the arts, the weekday matinee is no man's land. I'm not suggesting that we don't operate them, or deal with them, but I do wonder the last time any of you…
They come, with startling regularity, on Monday and Tuesday each week. "The Grosses." The Broadway League aggregates and releases the gross sales and attendance for every Broadway show on Mo…
