The crucial service these bloggers offer is watchdog media analysis. The dean of New York bloggers, for example, Garrett Eisler of Playgoer (playgoer.blogspot.com), made his reputation (at least in these parts) in March of 2006 with his unflagging coverage of the suspicious cancellation of a Palestine-sympathetic play, My Name Is Rachel Corrie, by the nonprofit New York Theater Workshop, a company with a notable Jewish presence on its board and among its subscribers. Eisler not only offered dogged counter-perspective, but grilled the New York Times coverage for what he thought was soft reporting.

Insightful freelance journalist Rob Kendt’s thewickedstage.blogspot.com, Time Out New York theater editor David Cote’s histriomastix.typepad.com, and especially Brooklyn lefty Isaac Butler’s parabasis.typepad.com all offer similar “Here’s what they’re not telling you” addendums to New York theater journalism. For Chicagoans who learn about New York theater primarily by reading about it, these honest insider accounts of the scene are crucial.

Chicago theater blogs, which came to serious conversational prominence just last year and are increasingly linked to by New York blogs, don’t just offer their reaction to local theater coverage (although the proprietors of the self-titled donhall.blogspot.com and robkozlowski.blogspot.com will be more than happy to tell you what’s wrong, and occasionally right, with the work of the Sun-Times’ Hedy Weiss, the Chicago Tribune’s Chris Jones, and the theater review staffs of the Chicago Reader and TOC). They also play host to an informal conversation among the artists themselves. (Most blogs run by theater companies only tend to post user comments along the lines of “You-go-girl!” save Steppenwolf, which has the cojones to allow critical posts from its ticket buyers on its site.) As a result, for the first time there’s a cross-country conversation about theater happening outside academic journals and panels at artists’ conferences.

When they’re intelligently arbitrated, these independently-run blogs tend to be a more exciting starting block for public dialogue than those run by publications. Both Kozlowski and Hall, for example, offer far more personal takes on plays and news than most critics—they put their biases right up front—and don’t have access to resources like free media tickets or even press releases (at least for now). But, while they’re clearly operating without editorial constraints to reign them in, they also don’t traffic in the limpid we-don’t-want-to-hurt-anybody’s-feelings silliness that can invade the criticism of flesh-and-blood Chicago theater artists. When they kick an artist or institution in the balls, they usually do so unapologetically; many a professional critic surely wishes he were granted the same opportunity to do so without damaging his rep. The comments that stem from them can be wooly, but they’ve cracked open a dialogue that isn’t hindered by geography, and continues to explode organically in a cross-linking orgy.

As such, the once locally-contained debate within the Chicago and New York theater communities is no longer the sole province of mainstream publications, it’s now spilling into the rest of the country, engaging commenting theater readers from across the nation in a heated—even outraged—debate.