Broadway Journal

BEHIND THE TIMES: TOP PLAYWRIGHTS URGE PAPER TO REPLACE ISHERWOOD WITH WOMAN OF COLOR

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EXCLUSIVE: With a search underway to fill one of the highest-profile jobs in theater criticism, influential playwrights are pressing for diversity.

Winter Miller is photographed at the Brooklyn Arts Exchange in Brooklyn, New York on October 19, 2016. Photo by Angela Jimenez Photography
Winter Miller
Photo: Angela Jimenez 

They’re among more than 800 in and outside of theater who signed a petition requesting the New York Times hire either a woman of color or a transgender person of color to replace Charles Isherwood, the second-string reviewer who was fired earlier this month. “For as long as I’ve been reading the Times, it’s been white men,” Winter Miller, the playwright who started the petition, said about its full-time theater reviewers. “Trump’s cabinet has more diversity.”

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CRITIC ISHERWOOD EXITS TIMES; PAPER SEEKS REPLACEMENT

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UPDATED THROUGHOUT: The New York Times is seeking a full-time theater critic to replace Charles Isherwood.

Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy confirmed Isherwood’s departure as the No. 2 theater critic, but said the paper doesn’t discuss personnel matters. Isherwood joined the Times from Variety in 2004. He declined to comment.

The position has been one of the most influential in theater journalism. Its current minimum salary is $2,075 a week, said Grant Glickson, the president of the NewsGuild of New York and a staff assistant and head of the bargaining unit at the Times. That’s just above the Broadway performer minimum of $1,974, according to Actors’ Equity.

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