Archives for September 28, 2010

I’ve had some sharp things to say in the past about the MacArthur Foundation’s “genius grants,” so I am entirely delighted to report that David Cromer, the greatest American stage director of his generation, and David Simon, the creator of Homicide, The Wire, and Treme, have both received MacArthur fellowships.
I’m especially pleased about Cromer because of the role that my Wall Street Journal drama columns, in particular this 2008 piece, have played in bringing his work to the attention of a national audience. So far as I know, I’m the first person ever to have described him as a “genius” in print, in my review of his extraordinary production of Our Town. Of all the useful things that a critic can hope to do in the course of his career, few are more gratifying than ringing the bell of acclaim for an artist deserving of much wider recognition, then looking on from the sidelines as he receives it.
I am enormously proud of having written with enthusiasm in The Wall Street Journal about Diana Krall and Maria Schneider long before they became widely known. Now it is my privilege to add David Cromer to that list. I hope his name won’t be the last one on it.

“News reports stand up as people, and people wither into editorials. Clichés walk around on two legs while men are having theirs shot off.”
Karl Kraus, The Last Days of Mankind