Harvey Fierstein writes on his blog, which is featured at the top of BroadwayWorld: "A Catered Affair continues to do terrific business and garner standing ovations night after night. And our matinee audiences are actually my faves. There there so many tears... It's most rewarding. Wish we could add another matinee, but I don't know how."
I have very mixed feelings on allowing writings that come directly from performers and creative team members to be featured on our sites. On the good side, they give us direct feedback from great personalities like Harvey. Who doesn't like his writing?
But the problem lies in the fact that Harvey, like anyone else would, has an agenda - to promote his show as much as possible. Therefore, I see his blog as less of a source for personalized writing and more as an extended press release-cum-propaganda. Broadway.com does the same kind of thing, and those pieces read in the same super sanitized way, as if every piece has been edited and pre-approved by press agents.
That is why the proper place for this kind of writing is in the midst of a feature article or interview. The fact that Harvey keeps a blog is fine, and he can say whatever he wants. But when theater news sites start promoting the blogs along with their original news and reviews, we have a problem.
Comments (1)
I've been reading Harvey's blog through MySpace (the same blog, apparently). I think his is actually pretty candid.
In particular his comments in that last entry about their not winning ANY awards at the Drama Desks -- despite 12 nods -- was not overly sanitized. If he was just doing a puff piece, he would never have mentioned their losses on Sunday.