The curse of the 'promising' playwright by Lyn Gardner

Promising playwright or emerging artist are terms that are regularly flung around by critics, funders and theatres. But are they helpful?"Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising," wrote Cyril Connelly in the autobiographical Enemies of Promise in 1938. It's not just the gods, we theatre critics are always at it too with "promising" operating as short hand that simultaneously succeeds in both lowering…

« Back to BroadwayStars