Why We Still Need Critics

Alec Baldwin is no fan of The New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley, who the actor lambasted in a recent Huffington Post outburst: “No one I know of in the theatre reads Brantley,” Baldwin wrote, “except in the way that a doctor reads an x-ray to determine if you have cancer.”

In the Internet age, in which everyone is a critic, the role of the professional critic is certainly diminished, as Brantley himself acknowledged in an interview with Big Think. “There was a time in which a single review in a single newspaper could change the fortunes of a particular production and even change the direction of theater,” he says in the video below. That’s no longer the case. And yet, while additional chatter “dilutes the impact of the critic,” Brantley says “I don’t think it eliminates the necessity of them.”

Watch the video here:

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