My theater blog started because, after 7+ years of covering a LOT of theater both in and out of Richmond, I was having to really scale back the shows I was seeing. Our fourth kid had been born in 2003 and, after ignoring him for 3 years, he was getting to the age that I had to pay attention. Also, blogs were a relatively new thing then so I was on the backend of a hot trend.
I never would have guessed that I’d end up posting to it more than 1,100 times. And, even though most of the time I was writing off the top of my head, I also did some pretty good work. Looking at my metrics now, I was getting upwards of a 1000 hits on some of the posts which still surprises me. Was there just nothing else to read back then?
I’m fairly certain that my writing on this blog was more instrumental than my published criticism in getting me my Annenberg Fellowship at USC, an experience I still consider pivotal in my understanding of criticism and journalism.
It used to be called The Richmond Theater Blog but at some point someone complained because they said I was trying to be “THE” definitive commentary on theater in town. So I changed it to Dave’s Theater Blog to bring it down a peg. I’ve only posted to it 6 times in the last 5 years but I may pick that up a bit as I slide into my golden years.
Some of my favorite posts ever were:
— > The epic “Souvenir” performance, a night of 1,000 mishaps.
–> A dust-up that happened around a production of “Arcadia” that was worked through (relatively civilly) through several different blog conversations.
–> Any post that generated conversation about bigger issues about criticism, what it is and isn’t, and theater in general. Here’s just one example.
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