Chris Jones Once Again Fails The Theatre Industry

Chris Jones’ opinion column for the Chicago Tribune on April 22, 2021, titled “Broadway’s capitalist model isn’t perfect, but here’s why it works, and what can be fixed” brought strong criticism, critique, and anger from theatre workers both in Chicago, on Broadway, and nationally.

In the column, the lead theatre critic and culture columnist wrote that the people working to make the theatre industry in the USA more equitable and safe are “anti-capitalists gunning for Broadway.” He called the important work artist-activists are doing to build an industry with better labor conditions as “fueled by envy or elitism,” and insinuated that non-profit theatre workers, and theatre artists in general, seek “indulgence or self-involvement.”

In other words, they don’t know how good they have it, or how much worse it could be.

When theatre workers began to respond to Jones’ incorrect and patronizing argument, he posted to an industry Facebook group, where he “marvel[ed] at the sheer cruelty” of the public outcry and felt victim to personal attack for his work and livelihood.

While this public response to the column may have taken Chris Jones himself by surprise, it wasn’t unexpected to anyone following Jones’ work and the labor of those in the theatre community, where he consistently leverages his job as theatre critic to marginalize the voices of those whose work makes theatre happen.

Indeed, a full response to the original opinion column is needed: from a white cis man questioning the “intentions” of Karen Olivo (a non-binary person of color) to his lack of understanding that capitalism uses social movements for its own gain, to noting that the shows he used as examples started in non-profit theatres, to naming the racism and ableism within shows like Aladdin or Dear Evan Hansen, to exploring the paychecks of the many Broadway workers who are not actually able to enjoy a “middle-class life”, to calling out that Broadway ticket prices are not overwhelmingly accessible to “lower-middle-class audiences.”

Although Jones claims that his “column defend[ed] the people who work on Broadway,” it is simply one column of many that illustrate the ways in which arts journalism and criticism has failed those who work in the theatre and those who appreciate theatre. Instead, it has defended and legitimized power structures within the industry to the great detriment of the workers with the least power.

When you recognize the pattern within arts journalism and Jones’ own work, the response to the column is obvious, productive and illuminates the responsibility that arts journalism and criticism have to the field.

In July 2020, in an article titled “Artistic Chicago is hemorrhaging jobs: ‘We are looking at the decimation of an industry.’” Jones wrote: "You don’t work at the ballet for the money, but there now are a lot fewer people getting to pursue their passion and pay their bills."

Not only is Jones’ statement categorically false (I myself have worked at a ballet company for money!), but this sentiment also does real, quantifiable damage to artists and our industry. Why does anyone go to a job, if not to be paid? Art can be both a passion and a job, just as aviation can be.

To borrow an analogy that Jones used in a December 2020 column – likening the rustiness of under-employed airline pilots to the potential rustiness of theatre artists – being a pilot was my grandmother’s passion, and yet unlike the situation in the arts, her joy of flying did not take away from any professional pilot’s entitlement to fair pay.

People in positions of power continue to support artist exploitation by telling the world that art is not a job; it is and can only ever be a passion. In saying this, Jones tells his audience that artists are above money, do not care about equity or exploitation, and do not need to be paid a fair wage. This perpetuates the very exploitation that artists are now fighting so hard against, for the good of their art and their livelihoods.

In that same July article, Jones notes that prior to the pandemic “Since many of those contractors spent much of their working year at [the House Theatre], that meant the theater was responsible for the equivalent of at least 35 or 40 full-time jobs.” The House Theatre’s most recent publicly available budget (2018) was only $1,555,923 in expenses.

A journalist might note that those numbers tell you that 35 or 40 (lower middle class) full-time jobs would mean that the full $1.5M went to worker pay – with no budget funds covering rent, insurance, production materials, or office expenses. A pattern of maintaining power structures and taking the word of those in power without questions or considerations of workers becomes apparent.

Similarly, a breathless February 2020 interview with Mark Michelson described how the Chicagoland Theatre Fund producer was going to “channel capital to the theatre community” and had “a grand plan to invest many millions of dollars in Chicago-area talent and musicals” by producing shows like Children of Eden (“Is ‘Children of Eden’ the first of many musicals at the Arcada in St. Charles? Time will tell.”). 

Jones did not appear to investigate Michelson’s claims, did not talk with workers or ask about the labor, process, or pay for creating the art, and did not follow up on the article. Indeed, he wrote dismayingly in the article “if there is one thing the theater community likes more than trolling on Facebook, it’s meeting people who want to channel them capital.”

As it happened, Michelson simply continued the familiar practice of offering theatre artists inequitable pay rates (some of which would have likely been below minimum wage if translated from artist fees to hourly amounts) and creating a production environment that lacked key production roles like a production manager and crew staff to ensure safe working conditions.

When artists hired for the production joined together this winter to question his methods and require fair working terms, Michelson said he’d consider the requests but has not yet made any public changes. (It’s worth noting that some of that organizing occurred on social media, and could even be called “trolling” by those who dislike workers questioning those in power.)

Chris Jones’ bias towards those with privilege and power is not new, nor is the way he selectively erases art or activism by theatre workers that threaten existing power imbalances within our industry. For instance, in 2018, Chris Jones ignored the long history and important work of Free Street by introducing the University of Chicago’s Green Line Performing Arts Center as the South Side’s first storefront theatre in an article originally titled “Finally, a Chicago-style storefront theatre on the South Side.” 

Likewise, when workers were being laid off at Steppenwolf in 2020, Jones elected to report on the two high profile workers who had lost their jobs in his article “Prominent artistic staffers – including Young Adults director – are part of extensive Steppenwolf layoffs.” With two-thirds of Steppenwolf’s staff furloughed or laid off since the pandemic began, Jones spoke only of the two highest-profile workers without real mention of others who had been working to create Steppenwolf’s art, and who likely weren’t as well-positioned to pivot to new income sources.

In “Broadway’s capitalist model isn’t perfect, but here’s why it works, and what can be fixed,” Jones writes “Workers can find themselves ill-treated, but artistic history teaches us that those who pretend to be more progressive can be worse.” Workers never simply “find themselves ill-treated,” they enter an industry that has been built and maintained for exploitation by the people in power – arts journalists and critics included. People with power and influence who remain silent on ill-treatment no matter how “progressive” the perpetrator may be are complicit in that ill-treatment.

Chris Jones has continuously ignored both the process and labor of creating theatre and passed by the stories of workers organizing for a better, safer, more equitable, and accessible industry. The anger at his latest column is fanned from years of being failed by a journalist and critic who does not consider the workers when he writes.

Like all who make their living from the theatre industry, Jones has a responsibility to the theatre community. The words he writes online have real consequences for individuals and the industry. It is time he took responsibility for supporting the exploitation many of us are working so hard to end.

Today, in his column “‘Intermission is over’: Live theater is about to come roaring back.” (April 28, 2021), Chris Jones dismissed the Chicago theatre community’s productive public discussion of his work and white supremacy and misogyny at majority-white theatre institutions including Steppenwolf Theatre Company and Writers Theatre by saying “Get off social media, suspend any and all infighting and make a plan.”

Theatre workers have been planning. Despite all the power imbalances and the personal risk to a career that is also one’s passion, workers are changing the way we make theatre and the theatre we make. Chris Jones’ position within the theatre community gifts him great power, and with that, he has great responsibility. Through repeated patterns of behavior, he has shown us to be worthy of neither.

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Elsa Hiltner is a costume designer based in Chicago, a writer and organizer on pay and labor equity in theatrical design, and a consultant for theatre companies who are working to establish pay equity. Her essays on labor and pay equity have inspired systemic change in the theatre industry, and the Theatrical Designer Pay Resource that she launched in 2018 has been used nationwide by designers to promote pay transparency. She is a co-founder of On Our Team, which partnered with Costume Professionals for Wage Equity to successfully organize for pay transparency on the job sites of Playbill, BroadwayWorld, and the League of Chicago Theatres. More information on her work is at www.elsahiltner.com.