The theater’s rich intellectual inheritance serves as a buffer to society’s recrudescent stupidity. Upholding this legacy seems a more vital role for a critic than operating as a tour guide of commercial entertainments. The survival of our democracy depends on the recovery of our critical thinking skills.

In the past, when I’ve made the case for cri... See more

The dream of a Liberal (arts) education—which is the scaled, democratic form of the Keatsian ideal of negative capability—cannot hold up when liberalism itself is held to be suspect.