Thumbs up to the Star Tribune for featuring the kind of coverage I like to see for community theaters in the Twin Cities. Thumbs way down for its continued favoritism.

For decades, the two major metro newspapers maintained a "policy" whereby no community theater productions were reviewed....... except for Theatre in the Round. Despite the fact that other groups were producing some very fine shows, only the hallowed TRP got the valuable publicity that comes from reviews

Then some new newspaper sheriffs came to town and decided to actually abide by their own policy---NO community theaters would be reviewed, including TRP. You should have heard the grousing from a friend of mine who has been cast there a few times! You'd think that someone had taken out full-page ads, telling people to stop coming to the theater altogether.

I told him I had to sympathy for the theater, that they had been the recipient of unfair favoritism for years and although I really like attending their stuff, there are plenty of other groups that are equally deserving of media attention.

So now I've noticed that the Star Tribune has found a way to continue its unfair support of ONE community theater: its started to "feature" TRP's plays. They don't go so far as to actually review them but they are careful to have a photo and a story about each production TRP does.

This really burns me because this is the exact kind of coverage I think ALL community theaters deserve. Let the professionals have the reviews. They are trained and should have the thick skins needed for the pans. Let the community theater coverage be about the ideas and the themes and the content of the plays

And let is embrace ALL community theaters... not just the editor's pet.

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