Alex Schwartz: Welcome to Critics at Large, a podcast from the New Yorker. I'm Alex Schwartz. I'm Nomi Fry. 
Vinson Cunningham: And I'm Vincent Cunningham. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and, crucially, how we got here. How are you? 
Alex Schwartz: Doing good. 
Naomi Fry: Doing well. 
Vinson Cunningham: Today is the final installment of our summer interview series.
Just like the summer itself, the fun must end. But before it does, Alex, you're up. 
Alex Schwartz: Yes, I am. Well, in this series, we've been nominating our fellow New Yorker writers to pick their brains on their favorite cult classics, and I am gonna be talking to Emily Nussbaum. Um, Emily Nussbaum is just, like, a brilliant person to talk to in general.
Yep. I think we've all had, had the pleasure of just hearing her describe or discuss something she's been watching or listening to, and being invited into this world that is fascinating and interesting and we knew nothing about. And readers have had the same experience. I mean, people love reading her for, for a reason, right, guys?
Naomi Fry: Yeah. I mean, she is m- one of, if not the most legendary TV critics, I think, uh, of, of all time. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, Emily is a woman of many interests. And Emily is also the author of several books on television, most recently Cue the Sun, which is all about the history of reality TV.
And now she has turned her attention to theater, which is so cool. I used to review theater. She's doing it now. So when I reached out to Emily to see what cult classic she might want to discuss, she immediately responded with Slings & Arrows. Have you guys seen the show? 
Vinson Cunningham: I have not. 
Naomi Fry: I have not either, and I hadn't even heard of it.
Horrors. 
Vinson Cunningham: Great proof of it, the cult-ness- Yes ... the true authentic cult-ness of the text. 
Alex Schwartz: It's culty cult. And somehow I had heard of it, inevitably from some kind of theater-y-ish cohort probably going back to college, but I'd never seen it until now. It is a Canadian series. It takes place at the fictional New Burbage Theater Festival, and really it's a show about putting on a show, which puts it in a long tradition and to me makes it irresistible.
Naomi Fry: We love that sort of thing. 
Alex Schwartz: We love it. So that's today on Critics at Large. Emily Nussbaum on Slings & Arrows.
________________


Emily, hello. Hello. I could not be more delighted that you chose Slings & Arrows for us to talk about, and we'll get to why, but let's just start by saying that Slings & Arrows takes place at a theater festival, and you are right now reporting from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. What's the best thing you've seen so far?
Emily Nussbaum: I'm having such a good time. I've never been to The Fringe before, I would say the best thing I've seen is, uh, there's a show called Dracula Lucy's Dream that's a extremely weird, mystical puppet show with incredible... I, I, it's like a dreamlike presentation that's so beautifully done. And then also there's a show by Gary Starr called Classic Penguins that is hilarious, and it's actually coming to New York this fall, t it's basically, uh, an attempt to cover all of the Penguin Classics.
Um, he's completely naked during the show, and it involves a lot of audience participation. And ho- honestly, I was laughing so hard at it, I was crying, and then there was a period in it where I was also very emotionally moved, so I sobbed through this comedy show. 
Alex Schwartz: That's the best. I will definitely see that. And of course, Slings & Arrows, the show that we're here to discuss, is all about the process of making theater, generally more classic kind of theater because it focuses on Shakespeare, but not exclusively. Um, and I'll just explain to listeners what this amazing jewel of a show is. This is a little-known Canadian series, It was co-created by Susan Coyne, Bob Martin and Mark McKinney, and Susan Coyne and Mark McKinney are in the show as these business managers at the Festival, which is such a funny part of what we see. The kind of stiffs that keep the crazy creatives running. And the show has three seasons, each season is structured around a different Shakespearean tragedy that is being put on at the festival, and the show has three seasons. The first season is Hamlet, the second is Macbeth, and the third is King Lear. And so Emily, I wanted to ask you first, I had heard about this show, but I'm not sure how. I think I might have seen an episode in college, but now that I've seen all of it, it's clear to me I had no idea how great this was, and if I had known, I would have simply run to see it. Do you remember how you first encountered this show and what your experience was of watching it?
Emily Nussbaum: Bizarrely, I do not. I, I genuinely, I mean, I was writing about television at the time, um, and I was a serious TV fan, and it was on the air from 2003 to 2006, so it was sort of high time in the explosion of quality on TV. But, uh, it, you know, it was a Canadian show that was based on the Stratford, Ontario Shakespeare Festival.
I hadn't... I, somehow I heard of it. I watched it. I fell in love with it. It's been my favorite television show. I mean, I have a lot of TV shows that are kinda my guiding stars to what I think the medium can do, but this has stuck with me as my favorite. And actually, um, my husband and I, when we first started dating, one of the things I did was I said, "Do you wanna watch Slings and Arrows?"
And I watched it for the second time. I think I've watched it at least six or seven times, and I still enjoyed it, watching it to prepare for this podcast. 
Alex Schwartz: I just wanna come back briefly to this amazing and bold statement you've made that this is your favorite television show ever, because you have definitely seen pr- probably a thousand more shows than I even know exist.
So you really, I mean, you're Emily Nussbaum. You know the field. What makes this the best for you? 
Emily Nussbaum: I don't know. It, it, it's, it's funny because it's, I, I always have trouble comparing shows to one another. Like, uh, when I was a television critic for The New Yorker, I had to make a top 10 list at the end of the year, and then I would write these grouchy pieces-
about how much I hate top 10 lists 'cause I hate comparing things. But somehow I never did have trouble saying this was my favorite show. I, I, I, and honestly, part of the reason that I say that is, frankly, because so few people have seen it. Mm. I think it's important for people to watch this show. it's currently only available on YouTube.
Yeah. That's the only place I could find it. Luckily, some wonderful person put up every episode of it. So part of the, I don't think it's the reason I say it's my favorite show, but it, it, but it, it, watching it made me kind of an evangelist for the show. It struck me immediately, and part of it was that the subject matter was very powerful to me.
It's about The relationship between a life in the arts and the tensions between the demands of creating original art and trying to sustain it economically. It's about mental instability, but part of what I loved about it was actually as television, because it was this extremely rare and unusual combination of drama and comedy.
There's a ghost in it. Um, it's funny, I was reading the oral history of the show, and I can't remember whether it was Bob Martin or Mark McKinney who said that They were originally planning to make it more of a sitcom, and he had been sent some early screeners of The Sopranos, and it kind of pricked them with a sense of how much more ambitious TV could be.
And out of that, they kind of expanded it to an hour. Um, but I have to say, the other thing about it is it's also very simply structured. As you said, each season is about the production of a different show, and it moves from youth to middle age to old age and death in a way that is, I think, really profound.
Yeah. And that was also, I think, rare for television. 
Alex Schwartz: Let's start talking about it. Let's get into the show itself. So just to set up what is going on when the show begins, we are at the New Burbage Festival, which is a kind of well-established and at this point, complacent theater festival in Canada. One of the first shots we see of the New Burbage Festival is its gift shop, where they're selling a huge blow-up version of Munch's Scream, even though, of course, that has nothing to do with the theater whatsoever, and, like, little Shakespeare bobblehead-type deals.
And the festival is being run by an old hand, Oliver Welles, played by Stephen Ouimette, who's been there for forever, who used to be a creative genius and has really become lazy in his later years. He is trying to help New Burbage make money by making commercial productions that ignore the text. One conflict that happens at the very start of the show, and that gives us a good sense of the characters involved, is Ellen Fanshawe, leading lady who's playing Titania in Oliver's Midsummer Night's Dream, complains that during her prominent speech, the forgeries of jealousy, she cannot be seen or heard by the audience. 
CLIP : Slings and Arrows
And he does not care because he is trying to have his mechanical sheep, who are going to bleat and create a comedic effect for the audience, be the stars. 
        CLIP: Slings and Arrows
By the end of episode one, Oliver Welles is sadly dead, killed by a pig truck as he lies drunkenly in the street, and enter Geoffrey Tennant, the brilliant actor who used to be Welles' protege, who walked offstage seven years before after three performances of Hamlet mid-performance because he was having a breakdown, who has been dragged back into the fray to give this festival artistic life again and to bring Hamlet back.
So the first season is about Hamlet. You were mentioning before that there's a ghost in this show. I will admit that when I first realized a ghost was to be a prominent character, I felt a little turned off. I thought, "Oh, I don't know. It's about this realist world. Is this gonna work?" And then, you know, it takes you two seconds to think, "Oh, right, Hamlet, ghost."
Emily Nussbaum: Uh, well, the ghost is Oliver, who is the, uh, former artistic director, the, the director of Hamlet, who is part of a triad of characters. There's Geoffrey and Ellen, who are a couple, uh, a director and an actor, and then there's Oliver, who was their director.
And so he, as you said, gets hit by a truck, and then he, uh, he comes back, and the thing is I love the ghost aspect of the show. Um, he comes back, and he kind of haunts Geoffrey. 
        CLIP: Slings and Arrows
Emily Nussbaum: It's like how in ER, uh, all the patients, their stories end up reflecting the lives of the doctors. In this one, all of the characters in all of Shakespeare's plays end up interacting with the conflicts and ending up being kind of a, a screen for The explorations that the characters are taking 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, and it's, and it's wonderful. It's, it's wonderful because of course, you know, the plays, Shakespeare's plays, the r- the reason I would say why 400 years later we continue to see them, we go to places like New Burbage or Stratford or Shakespeare in the Park or wherever, is because these plays continue to speak to us and to speak to our lives.  And the series as it goes on deals with loss and death, especially in the Lear season, in a very direct and, um, brutally frank way, in a way I, I don't even know if I've really seen on TV. Maybe I, maybe. But, um, the ghost and the presence of the ghost takes on this deeper meaning about how to- Yeah ... confront loss and- The, the last se- and process it and let it go.
Emily Nussbaum:  Yeah, the last season has a different flavor. Mm. It's harsher, it's more direct. But I, I wanna emphasize, like, th- this show is about Shakespeare plays. It's extremely non-pretentious about Shakespeare. 
Alex Schwartz: Totally. 
Emily Nussbaum: All of the characters are living a life in the theater, and they're ... The, it celebrates the idea of devoting your life to interpreting these texts, but it's also quite dark about the fact that sometimes this job feels ridiculous. Both because it's hard to sustain economically, And also, you're playing make believe. So a lot of times in the show, people are kind of exploring the question of what does it mean to be an actor so dependent on directors? What does it mean to be a director? Is that a creative role? Is it a manipulative puppeteering role? And I really wanna play a scene from season one. This is the season where they're doing Hamlet. And in it, Jeffrey is attempting to get the unfortunately terrible actress who's initially playing Ophelia to understand what insanity is in her mad scene. and it really captures what a director can do.
        CLIP: Slings and Arrows
 It shows Jeffrey being absolutely brilliant, and it also shows the limits of that because this actress is really struggling to hear this. To her, being insane is identical to being stoned, and that's basically how she plays it. And so a lot of the, uh, a, a lot of the best parts of the show are about both the heights and the power of somebody doing something at a, a very extreme and beautiful artistic level in terms of finding the modern humanity in these texts, and also people falling short either out of lack of skill, out of anger, personal conflict, and out of the instability of a creative life.  And as, uh, in the case of Jeffrey, he literally went insane while performing Hamlet. He basically blacked out on stage and walked off. And like a lot of the things in the show, this is based on real experiences that the people making the show have had or that they know about in the theater. There's, I guess, this situation in which Daniel Day-Lewis- Yes ... walked off a stage, 
Alex Schwartz: and just for people who don't know, uh, Daniel Day Lewis, very famously went, uh, had, had a huge episode of stage fright in the middle of performing Hamlet and has never been on stage again.
Emily Nussbaum: it's funny, I once did a conversation, uh, like a Zoom conversation with the people from the show, and I talked to them about this, and they were just talking about the feeling of this moment of transcendence that you can have on stage that kind of slips the bounds of reasonableness, where it is a little bit like going insane. Mm. And I feel like this question of mental instability and the slippage between what's real and what's fake is at the center of the show. For a lot of the characters, it feels as though they need that sense that things are spinning out of control. Uh, you know, Jeffrey says in the first episode something like, "The good stuff happens just before the thread snaps," or something like that. And also the sense that can you create great art without that? Mm. Can you create great art? Is it necessary To feel terror in order to actually make something great.
Alex Schwartz: Slings and Arrows was quietly groundbreaking. In a minute, we'll talk about why. This is Critics at Large from The New Yorker.
::MIDROLL:: 
We've been talking about Slings and Arrows. Let's talk about the show's reception. We're here because we're doing this Cult Classics series, and of course, this would not be a cult classic if it had been a huge smash hit right out of the gate. As I understand it, relatively few people saw the show when it first came out.
Um, TV critics in Canada mostly ignored it. I think it did have good success at the kind of Canadian, uh, Emmys equivalent, but certainly American reviews were positive, but it never became a real hit. Why do you think that is? 
Emily Nussbaum: I mean, you know, it's funny because I always try to answer this question, but there is no answer to a question- Mm-hmm
like that. Like, y- because the nature of like why does something become a, a, a hit? Uh, sometimes it's because it's brilliant, and sometimes it's because it's terrible and appeals to a vast amount of people. And sometimes it's great, but it just slips through the cracks because of how it was distributed. And, you know, the last 20 years have marked this radical ... 20 years, I guess quarter century, this radical change in how TV was distributed, and certainly a small television sh- show from Canada about Shakespeare is probably a hard sell in that way. So maybe that accounts for it being, uh, less of a prominent hit. But, eh, some things are just circumstantial. Like, if a show came out on HBO when HBO was exploding, people watched it, And also a, a s- a- as it happens this year, a small Canadian show about gay hockey players- ... became a massive hit. I don't totally understand why this show, which people who have seen it love so much, has never been accessible to a larger audience. It used to stream on Acorn and Sundance, and now it seems only available on YouTube. So why is it a, a cult hit? It's because it's only on YouTube. That's the answer. I will say when I talk to people, um, in LA and Hollywood who have watched it, it had a big influence on, you know, a lot of showrunners. David Simon had said that this was the one show that ever made him jealous. it has that kind of meaningful element. But with TV, I, I, I mean, this is the one last thing I'll say about it- Mm is that the history of TV is the confusion between whether something's good and whether it's popular and commercial. Obviously, that's true in many art forms, but I think it's particularly true in television. Slings & Arrows is just an example of a show that is the best show regardless of how many people watch it. And so all we can do, we few, we proud- ... uh, fans of Slings & Arrows, is do podcasts to try to bring people into our web of- Deceit 
Alex Schwartz: Our web of deceit. Um Our web of passion. Yeah. We, yeah, we have to get the word out. And I did wanna ask you about what you were saying about showrunners. I mean, I've seen, um, yeah, I've, I've seen a variety of people claim that, that they love Slings & Arrows. I have a little pet theory, which I wonder what you'll think of. When I was thinking about what shows feel like this, um, immediately 30 Rock came to mind, which is also, uh, yeah, you're making a face no, but I'll just say this. 30 Rock, which came out in 2006, which is not about theater, but it's also a front of house, back of house kind of show. And you know that jazzy little riff 
        CLIP: 30 Rock
that 30 Rock is so well known for, and the jazzy little riff on Slings & Arrows 
        CLIP: Slings and Arrows
when they're kind of doing scene setting and going into a comic jag? I was like, "Did Tina Fey watch Slings & Arrows, hear that jazzy little riff, and think, 'That's the perfect tone for my show, too'"?
Emily's like, "Absolutely 
Emily Nussbaum: not." I would h- I hope that Tina Fey was... No, that would be great. I would love if Tina Fey was influenced by it. The reason I sort of made a face was be- first of all, 30 Rock, absolutely one of my favorite shows. Have also seen every episode multiple times. Love 30 Rock. I think the reason I sort of, like, pull back from it is just because 30 Rock is that classic Tina Fey humor where it's just- 
Alex Schwartz: Oh, 
Emily Nussbaum: yeah ... nickels with quills of jokes, and it's a half-hour comedy. One of the, the unique thing to me about Slings & Arrows, especially at the time it came out Was that it uncompromisingly combines comedy and drama, romance, and sort of surrealism fantasy stuff like the ghost in a way that is unusually confident and successful. And so the show that ... Uh, the only show that I could think of that was a comp was actually, uh, Orange Is the New Black. Hmm. Which is a very different kind of show. It's certainly not a backstage kind of show, but, uh, it, it had such a weird mixture of heartbreak and comedy and sexiness and all the stuff that it was the first show that I think the Emmys didn't know whether to put it in the drama or comedy category.
Alex Schwartz: Mm-hmm. 
Emily Nussbaum: Um, so I, I, I see those shows as part of the move on television to no longer having these strict lines between sitcom and drama, uh, and, and being able to mix tones in much more ambitious ways, And I think that Slings & Arrows is actually one of the originating, uh, creations that kind- fearlessly crossed those wires in that way, that's the thing that I think as television that makes it, um, pioneering, But the thing that makes it stand alone is that it's a show about theater. Like, are there other shows that are about theater? I don't think so. I was 
Alex Schwartz: just racking my brains to think if there were, and I'm... I was hoping you could answer that question for me because the shows that are, you know, the shows that are coming to mind for me as things that I love for similar reasons to Slings & Arrows, like, um, Call Your Agent was immediately at the forefront of my mind.
Yes, Call Your Agent. The French show- Call Your Agent ... Call My Agent Brilliant. Which is also about the making, in this case, of movies, It's about a group of French agents who are agents to actors and to directors in the, in the French movie business, who are in it for the love of the game, who have to deal with all the business indignities of trying to keep, uh, money coming in, but also while wanting to make art of the highest quality, and there's lots of...
I, I think what you're saying tonally, Emily, about what works for Slings & Arrows is so true of Call My Agent as well. There's so much that's laugh-out-loud funny in that show, and there's also so much pathos, too, because you're dealing with people who really care. 
Emily Nussbaum: And it's a very adult show. I like that show a lot.
There's The Studio, which has a different tone, which is also about the making of Hollywood shows. I mean, there are different, definitely shows and pr- uh, uh, but, but about, uh, live theater s- uh, you know, 
Naomi Fry: the legit theater. 
Emily Nussbaum: Yeah. Um, I, I do think that Slings & Arrows- Gosh, I'm really thinking about it. Unless I'm, unless I'm mistaken, I don't think there's ever been another show that was about being a stage actor, a stage director. Oone of the wonderful things about this the, the lastingness of a television show in this way is I love theater, and theater is very ephemeral. Um, but this show which- Was not seen, I think, by a huge amount of people when it went on, and they had trouble getting it on the air, has the capacity to have a, a kind of lasting relevance if people rewatch it.   there's this, uh, beautiful contrast between, uh, the permanence, the nature of television in the, uh, modern television in this way, and what it's portraying is people putting on shows that will never be seen again, and where Jeffrey's brilliant performance of Hamlet is something that's experienced only by four night- four audiences and then disappears off the face of the earth. And that's what it means to live a life in the theater.
:: MIDROLL:: 
Alex Schwartz: you were mentioning before the difference between the ephemerality of theater- which just inherently, even if you can go and watch a recording of a performance, it's not the same as being in the audience for it. It's, it's not designed for that kind of thing. And there are some very high-level recordings being made now of theater, um, the National Theatre. Finally, yeah. Yeah, finally.
It's, it's great 
Emily Nussbaum: that we can see that. There's good pro shots of shows, but it is true that it is not, it's, it's not the same. I mean, I think some of them are fantastic. Like, I love the musical Next to Normal. The pro shot of that is incredible. Mm-hmm. But one thing I wanted to mention is it's funny 'cause I, it always seemed to me like there really is a strong relationship between television and theater- Hmm
which people don't usually think of as in the same thing. Interesting, yeah. But, you know, the history of television is television used to be live. Um, and it came largely out of theater and radio. Like, those were the sources of it. Television did not come out of movies and books. It came out of people doing live performances and kinda throwing spaghetti against the wall and figuring out what worked.
And there were a lot of early forms of TV that were basically like live stage plays. Obviously, that's not true anymore, and the whole nature of television has changed. During the time since Slings & Arrows came out, streaming became the dominant thing. And unfortunately, whatever is going on economically has had the worst possible effect, which is somehow making Slings & Arrows inaccessible.
Um, but you know, it used to be that TV was something that was also ephemeral. You'd watch it, it would disappear. Hmm. And now people expect to be able to pull it up anytime they want and rewind it. 
Alex Schwartz: Yes. 
Emily Nussbaum: That's- Um, which has, you know, upsides and downsides, whereas stage theater is what it is. You go there, you sit in the audience, and then you have a communal experience- Mm-hmm
with the people performing it, which is what's so beautiful and so terrifying about it. And that's what this show, by being a TV show about theater, kind of gets at in this Interesting little friction between those two things. TV actually appears on the show, but as this- I was gonna 
Alex Schwartz: say, yes, absolutely.
Emily Nussbaum: Yes. I 
Alex Schwartz: mean, the, the thing that I'm thinking about, um, in addition to the relationship between the seeming permanence of television now and the ephemerality of theater is, of course, theater seeing itself as an underdog, as an economic and artistic underdog, especially at a place like the fictional New Burbage Festival, where they're dealing with these questions of how to make the theater popular while not losing its soul.
And of course, there's a core group of people who believe that they can't compromise on their artistic values at all. They don't want the gift shop. It's all a bunch of nonsense. They just wanna get to the heart of the text. And TV is seen as the populist enemy by that group of people. In the third season, I think this is what you're referring to, Ellen has the opportunity to go on a kind of soulless, meaningless, sci-fi-esque TV show and to finally make some money. She’s at a real turning point in her life, she’s getting older, she’s been at new burbage forever, and she recently has been audited and turns out to owe nearly 30,000 to the canadian government so she needs some cash, and it's seen very much as a, an artistic defeat. And one thing that really struck me about Slings and Arrows is that I think we're always in a bit of a discourse about decline where the theater is concerned, but that discourse is quite old. It's going back beyond the early 2000s. It, it's over and over and over again, and yet theater does survive. It does, but this stress and tension about how it's going to survive is now so much a part of the experience. Um- 
Emily Nussbaum: Yes, and more stre- recently it's been a big part of the discourse 'cause- 
Alex Schwartz: Yes
Emily Nussbaum: I mean Oskar Eustis, who’d been running the Public Theater, this major theater where all of these shows including Hamilton originated, announced that he’ll be stepping down. When he gave interviews about his decision, they’re incredibly depressing. He basically says “this age of theater is over. It’s unsustainable.” And, and yeah, the, the show, the show ends up being, Like, it's a snow globe that when you shake it, like, that's the anxiety that's inside it.
Yeah. Um- 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah ... 
Emily Nussbaum: is it... And, and not only the question of like how do you maintain a theater company, especially a theater company about Shakespeare, but, uh, what does it mean to actually live your life like this? Like, when Ellen goes broke, she's finding herself in middle age, like, massively in debt with seemingly nothing to show for it, and there's a whole conversation in the show that goes like, "What does it serve you to live your life in this art form that very few people see, and kind of end up feeling like it's all dissolved?"
I think that's part of the heartbreaking feeling about the final season, which centers around an elderly actor who everybody acknowledges is a brilliant guy. But old age comes for everyone, and the fragility of him and the fragility of Lear, who he's playing, and the sense of Slippage between feeling like you can sustain some kind of stable sense of self and that falling apart i- is part of that, but it's also about, you know, illness, decay, and old age that part of it is basically like that's the way people feel about theater. Sometimes that's the way that people feel about life in the theater. 
Alex Schwartz: You know, one thing that does occur to me is, as you mentioned, when Slings & Arrows came out, it was the kind of golden, this golden age of TV. The big shows were getting made. There was really a sense that TV was where serious, um, art and, a- and art for entertainment was gravitating, and there's a lot more anxiety these days about making television.
Oh my gosh. I feel like- 
Emily Nussbaum: Things are, things 
Alex Schwartz: are- Yeah ... 
Emily Nussbaum: falling apart. 
Alex Schwartz: I feel like TV has- It's a terrifying period. Yeah. I, I feel like TV has started to more resemble the New Burbage Festival than anything else, where really interesting creative ideas, shows that people love, boop, one season and you're done.
Didn't get renewed. There, there's a lot of that. There's a sense that that system has also really fragmented. Do, do you see that as 
Emily Nussbaum: being the case? Yes, and caution. A- absolutely. I mean, I think it's an enormous problem, and it's very heartbreaking for me because I really do feel like... I'm not saying there's nothing that's good or ambitious on TV.
There are things, but the entire system from all of the m- major companies that run these productions merging together, um, to the shrinking of the economy, to the aftermath of the strike, I mean, all of these things have led to, um, an enormous difficulty taking risks because for a while there was kind of a heavenly situation going on where small cable networks could make a show that very few people saw but was actually very interesting, and it would make the name of the cable network.
Like, that was the system. Streaming, I, I mean, I don't even know how to describe how it's changed things, but the outcome has been, you know- Employment is fragile for people who work on crews as well as for writers. So yes, the fragility that's kind of native to the stage is now infecting TV, a medium that was notoriously and historically treated as the sellout place where you could make money and create garbage, um, and for a while was a place where people were doing really interesting episodic art, uh, that was both populist and in some cases challenging and even, you know, in a few fringe cases, kinda avant-garde.
That doesn't seem possible anymore, even for really brilliant creators. Um, the whole relationship between theater and TV was often about playwrights who wrote brilliant plays and could not make a living on the stage taking jobs writing for TV because you can make a living in TV- Yes ... as a writer, But all of- Yes ... those things have been kind of flipped around, so I don't think the relationship between the two mediums is, is quite as clear. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, that's such an interesting point. I mean, um, Succession, one of the best-written shows in recent memory, had a number of playwrights on, on its writing staff.
I'm thinking of Lucy Prebble and Will Arbery, among others. 
Emily Nussbaum: And it makes sense because playwrights, you know, not universally, but it's a, it's an art that has a lot to do with dialogue. That's true of television in a way that it isn't true of movies, so there's always been that bond.  need to mention one thing. Do. So part of the reason I was so excited to do this podcast is that unfortunately, for scheduling reasons, I was unable to go up to Stratford, Ontario in July, when I had been planning to go up because the writers of Sl- Slings & Arrows, that triad, um, wrote, uh, what a prequel called The Amateurs- Ooh which I have not seen. But it's, it's about the founding of the Stratford, Ontario festival, and I guess two of the episodes were performed live, and I was very sorry to miss this. I mean, I have no idea how it is. I haven't seen it. But, um, there's something also really fascinating to me about the fact that there are two episodes, and they're television episodes, I think, um, that were performed live as a staged reading at Stratford. So to me, I, I hope that that succeeds and that that sort of marks a second life for it.
Alex Schwartz: One last question for you, Emily. I love what you were saying before about having returned to the show numerous times for a rewatch.
I do think it has a great novel-like character in that there are, it, it's, it's the right size for a rewat- rewatch. If you're gonna rewatch The Sopranos or Mad Men, you're in it for a really long haul. This is like picking up a favorite novel every year or every two years and being able to dive back into it.
And since the time you first saw the show, you've become theater critic at The New Yorker. You're seeing a ton of theater. Has that changed at all how you see Slings & Arrows? Has that brought something new to it for you? 
Emily Nussbaum: I mean, I think the main thing is I always felt this incredible tenderness toward the characters because of this, this feeling of greatness slipping away and the desire to create a moment on stage that can't be repeated but will affect everybody who's been there for that.
And the moments that I've seen, even in the short time that I've been writing about theater, I mean, obviously I was seeing a lot of theater before that, but not writing about it. Um, those kinds of indelible moments where you see somebody on stage and it's this thrilling, jaw-dropping, heart-stopping bond between the viewer and the person performing that is the thing that you're looking for. And, you know, I'm at the Fringe right now, and that's the experience that I'm looking for- Mm-hmm ... is that moment when it's just undeniable. And the parts of Slings and Arrows, it's about a lot of different things. It's about art and commerce. It's about mental illness. It's about love. It's about a life in the arts, all of that.
But some of the best parts of the show actually are of moments that you see people performing Shakespeare and knowing that they've nailed it. Yeah. They found an interpretation, and they found a route through, That's just present in the show, and it's this sort of pulsating thing where while you're watching Slings and Arrows, a recorded television show made from 2003 to 2006, you still get that hit of seeing what it means for a live performer for just a moment to nail it. 
Alex Schwartz: Yes, absolutely.
Well, Emily, you've nailed it once again. Thank you so much for coming on Critics at Large. And to everyone else, please join us in the cult of Slings & Arrows. We need our cult to grow. Thank you so much. Thanks for inviting me. Thank you.
This has been Critics at Large. Alex Barasch is our consulting editor, and Rhiannon Corby is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Our show is mixed by Mike Kuchman, and we had engineering help today from Fran Bandy, with music by Alexis Cuadrado. This wraps up our summer interview series.
All three of us will be back in your feeds next week with a brand-new Critics episode. In the meantime, you can listen to all of our episodes anytime, anywhere, at newyorker.com/critics