Arena Stage played host Saturday evening to some super-wonky yakking that started out with 140-character thoughts on theater but quickly expanded to cover all aspects of theater journalism. Peter Marks, The Washington Post's sometimes curmudgeonly lead critic, and Howard Sherman, a former executive director of the American Theatre Wing and prolific blogger and tweeter, took their long-running dialogue off Twitter and into a live setting in Arena's Kogod Cradle. It was verbose, gregarious, dare we say even a bit weird.

The whole thing started over the course of several months, as Marks and Sherman repeatedly got into it in 140-character bursts about the theater industry, the role of social media, and the nature of criticism. On his personal website, Sherman posted the transcripts of two arguments previewing the in-person showdown. Marks and Sherman had never meet before last Friday, but first engaged each other on Twitter when Sherman saw Marks "say something on Twitter I thought was preposterous," though neither could recall Marks' offending statement.

But once the conversation got beyond Twitter's universal accessibility, Marks and Sherman, moderated by American Theatre magazine editor Jim O'Quinn, went deeper, and it was clear we were seeing a match of wits between a sometimes prickly newspaper-of-record critic and a sometimes unctuous "theater evangelist."

Well, maybe it wasn't that epic, but Marks and Sherman each won a few rounds for themselves:

On the Role of Critics: Forgive us if it seems like cheering for the home team, but Marks won this one by default after Sherman accused critics of "writing for themselves." Not true if one considers arts criticism a form of service journalism, which it totally is. Just as writers and actors do their things for their audiences, critics review with their readers in mind. But only a default win for the WaPo critic? Marks declined to challenge Sherman on this argument, passing up a key opportunity for a knockout blow.

On Mission Statements: It's close, but we'll have to give a slight edge to Sherman. Though Marks was right to defend Shakespeare Theatre Company for presenting something as decidedly non-Bard as Fela!, he dismissed the notion that DMV theatergoers value area companies' specialties, such as Roundhouse Theatre Company's knack for literary adaptations, Solas Nua's Celtic habits, or the late Cherry Red Productions' many depravities.

On Awards: Here, Sherman raced to the defense of his former employer, the American Theatre Wing, which is probably best known outside of Midtown Manhattan as the organization that puts on the Tony Awards. Except the Tonys are a strictly Broadway affair, heavy on jukebox musicals and celebrity casting—Marks couldn't remember which Jonas Brother will soon replace Daniel Radcliffe in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and does that even matter?—whereas nine of the past 10 Pulitzer-winning plays originated in regional theaters. And Sherman was also wrong in saying that the Tonys are the only nationally televised event devoted to theater. In fact, this week, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade will, as ever, kick off with an hour-long revue of Broadway numbers. Yes, the Macy's parade is usually more Jersey Boys than Sweeney Todd, but it's something besides the Tonys.

On Michael Kaiser: The loser? Michael Kaiser, who last week posted a now-infamous column for The Huffington Post in which he tried to defend "legitimate" criticism from the entirety of the Internet and proceeded to get his ass kicked all over the Internet. "I would love to sit him down and show him how to use Twitter," Sherman said.

On Leg Patting: Sherman. In making a few of his arguments, Marks tapped Sherman on the knee and arm as if to say, "No, dear Howard, here's why you're wrong." Sherman called Marks out on it, jokingly, to a chorus of awkward laughter. Not that some people in the audience didn't try to make it more awkward.

The Real Loser: The D.C. theater community. For all the praise heaped on Washington-area companies, directors, and writers, "Theater Beyond Twitter" involved three guys who live in New York.

Do My Ears Not Bleed? Speaking of theater behavior, this story is about the other kind. An iPod started playing music at Thursday night's performance of The Merchant of Venice at Shakespeare Theatre Company, and it kept going until actor Drew Cortese broke character and said, "Would someone turn that off, please?" Reliable Source has more, but I'm just wondering what the woman responsible—who ended up leaving the theater—was playing. Somehow, I don't think it was Volcanic Rock, the Merchant of Venice-themed album by '70s Australian metal dudes Buffalo, which includes such cuts as "Shylock" and "Pound of Flesh."

Crisis in Infinite Earths: By now, you may have heard that Another Earth—the sci-fi-ish drama opening this Friday at E Street—was directed by a Georgetown graduate and stars another. No? Ann Hornaday's got you covered, with this profile of actress Brit Marling, who was this year's breakout leading lady at Sundance. Marling co-wrote and co-produced and starred in two films that were acquired at this year's Sundance: Another Earth, plus "Sound of My Voice."

Today on Arts Desk: Beauty Pill, Screen on the Green pro-tips, and more.

Panic Mode: If you're a follower of #Ifgovtshutsdown, you may already be wallowing in the fear setting in across our region. But some tweeters are seeing a silver lining of opportunity. One tweeter is organizing a furlough cookout in Anacostia Park; another plans to loot a medical marijuana facility.

OMFG: Yesterday, Fox News announced that it will cancel Glenn Beck's daily TV show later this year. The conservative talk show host commented on his Wednesday show, comparing himself to American hero Paul Revere, who “got off the horse point at some point and fought in the revolution and then he went back to silversmithing.” (Video.) Fox released a statement saying that the network plans to pursue new projects with Beck and his production company, Mercury Radio Arts.

Yesterday on Arts Desk: Grammys slough off 30 categories, making life harder for local artists; Artisphere hosts a David Lynch retrospective; Ben Freed takes a closer look at MC Big Wax's song—and now music video—that criticizes the Vince Gray administration.

This was the impetus: One of Washington City Paper's critics saw a play there, reacted strongly during the first act, tweeted about it during intermission, and then sat down for the rest of the performance. Later, several actors from the show who like to avoid reading reviews came across the social-media-delivered theater criticism, and registered complaints with the theater's top brass. The theater wasn't furious: It just hoped to hear what, exactly, was my tweeting policy. After all, it had credentialed the critic to review the play in City Paper's pages, not on social media.

So I leveled with the theater: I don't have a policy on Twitter.

In this case, I told the theater in a second conversation, my critic was in the clear: The show had already opened, other publications' reviews had run, and he was voicing an unusually visceral reaction to a button-pushing play. (By the way: I realize how annoyingly vague this all is, but I have three capital-C theater critics, two of them use Twitter, and if you want, you can probably figure it out.)

But criticism, like every form of written journalism, is no longer delivered solely via articles. Twitter is a huge boon to rock critics, who live-tweet shows. Movie critics are in a trickier position, since their reviews are explicitly embargoed. (Not that this stops them from tweeting snappy one-liners after a screening.)

It's less clear-cut, I think, with theater. In Washington, critics are generally invited to a press performance over the weekend; the play will have already been in previews for a few days, and will "open" sometime early in the following week. Generally, there are no performances between the press showing and opening night, after which the reviews start appearing.

After the opening—that's a tradition that's held since the days when critics weren't let in to see a performance until opening night, Washington Post theater critic Peter Marks reminded me last week. "I grew up in an environment where there are embargoes until opening night, and those seem to have developed as a way of putting everyone on a level playing field," he said. "Those have changed for everyone except for official critics."

Marks gave an example: He recently attended a press performance of The Pitmen Painters in New York, and found himself sitting behind Andy Cohen, who hosts the interview show "Watch What Happens Live" on Bravo. "He tweeted right afterward," Marks said. "I was not allowed to do that by the rules [critics] follow."

Does the Post have rules for Twitter? "I don’t know a specific policy," Marks said. "My standard, and I assume the paper’s standard, is I don’t tweet reviews." Once the review runs, he'll sometimes use his Twitter account to direct followers to the Post's website.

Marks isn't a prolific tweeter. Two of Washington City Paper's critics are, though you generally won't read their opinions until their reviews run. There are exceptions, like when they attended Shakespeare Theatre Company's all-day press performance of the three-part The Great Game: Afghanistan at Harmon Hall recently. For the most part, their tweets had to do with the oddities and discomforts of being in the same room all day.

Maura Judkis, TBD's theater reporter (and a former WCP contributor) was tweeting from the Harmon that day, too. Like me, her editor Andrew Beaujon (also formerly of WCP) doesn't have a policy on tweeting from press performances. He said tweeting critical reactions could be problematic but said some kinds of tweets can be valuable. TBD's theater tweets, he said, generally take a more experiential than critical approach. "[Judkis] doesn’t tweet reviews because she doesn’t do reviews, but she does tweet theater news," Beaujon said, adding that she still brings a strong perspective: "She has a good critical voice."

Beaujon said that for D.C. theaters, the issue is mostly an abstract one. "You don’t see that many people tweeting about theater anyway—it’s not really an audience that’s engaged in social media," he said. "Theater has never had to think about Twitter. It's hard for theaters or critics to think outside the 1,000-word review."

He's probably right. I contacted two theaters in town, and neither had a policy on Twitter. Here's what Studio Theatre's director for communications, Liane Jacobs, wrote:

We don’t currently have an official policy about tweeting except of course that The Studio Theatre does not allow the use of cell phones during performances out of respect for the actors and the audience.

That said, we aren’t fans of critics’ tweeting. We sincerely appreciate the well-considered reactions and opinions that a full review provides. Short, quick tweets, unlike full reviews, don’t allow the reviewer to put his or her response in a larger context.

At the beginning of our conversation, Alli Houseworth, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company's communications and new media manager, said she and the theater weren't completely comfortable with criticism in tweet form but that neither had come down definitively. "One can ask, What is the difference between a critic and Joe Schmoe tweeting? That’s sort of the world that we live in now and I don’t know the answer," she said.

Then she stopped speaking for Woolly. "The radical part of my brain is like: Why don’t we encourage it?" she said. "I feel like—and I would have to ask permission before doing this—but I do sort of like that idea."

That's where I think I come down, too. By the time critics attend a press performance, a play is finished (insofar as it's ever finished), and waiting until opening night to hit "publish" is a formality. Besides: I trust City Paper's critics to be as intelligent on Twitter as they are in a review. (And the latter medium reaches many more eyeballs than the former. If you follow theater critics on Twitter, you're probably a pretty engaged consumer of theater. You'll read the review anyway.)

And there's something special, particularly in the case of a challenging work, about working out a critical opinion in real time.

The theater that originally called me agreed, at least partially. Its representative told me: "In this case it only generated more conversation, which is a good thing."

Tonight and at tomorrow's open house, we'll be tweeting whatever madness we encounter, though Kriston Capps, Erin Petty, and I have different reasons (read: in-progress stories) for attending. My reason involves beer.

Follow our collective thoughtstream after the jump:

What the world needs now is more batshit-crazy, uncompromising auteurs. David O. Russel has the diva-esque ‘tude and David Lynch the vision, but neither comes close to Matthew Barney for sheer pomposity. His five-part magnum opus, The Cremaster Cycle, is an elusive cinematic treat and for one week only, E Street Cinema will be screening it in three (relatively) bite-size segments. Although the National Weather Service is calling for a beautiful holiday weekend filled with sunshine and temperatures in the mid-70s, those interested in watching an experimental film where Norman Mailer plays Harry Houdini are unlikely to spend much time outdoors, anyway.

Here at Arts Desk, we wanted to celebrate Mr. Barney’s restless independence by interpreting The Cremaster Cycle in the most experimental of mediums: twitter. Just because Barney refuses to release his work on DVD doesn’t mean we can’t dumb it down to spite him! Starting this Friday, I will be live-tweeting my impressions with all the pointed insight 140 characters have to offer. (Live from my living room, that is; I got hooked up with screeners.)  Finally, audiences will receive coverage that does this complex work justice. Follow us @cremdelacremWCP, or watch the madness happen after the jump:

Outfits like these may be hitting an H&M near you come November.

Morning, all. Even though the weather's not obeying (seriously, what's with all these days in the mid-90s after last week's glorious temps?), fall is in the air–I can feel it. The city's arts scene is waking up again after a sleepy August. There are some great talks next week at Busboys & Poets and the Smithsonian, the Page to Stage Festival at the Kennedy Center this weekend... it's about time!

It's hard to discuss anything today without first addressing yesterday's hostage standoff at the Discovery Channel. Twitter was definitely the place to be for all the latest breaking news. I know it's not something to joke about, but @logankyoung had one of the funniest tweets of the day: "Someone was REALLY upset about Shark Week ending!" Thank goodness all three hostages are safe now.

Speaking of politically uncorrect tweets, in response to a question about the Ground Zero mosque controversy, John Cusack tweeted on Sunday, “I AM FOR A SATANIC DEATH CULT CENTER AT FOX NEWS HQ AND OUTSIDE THE OFFICES [OF DICK] ARMEY AND NEWT GINGRICH-and all the GOP WELFARE FREAKS.” Needless to say, Fox is not amused. Oh, John, you're just reaffirming my teenage belief that you are the thinking woman's sex symbol.

Heinz Fricke, music director of the Washington National Opera, is retiring down after 18 years. The news comes as little surprise: because of his health problems, the WNO has been searching for his replacement since 2008. I'll admit it: I'm completely ignorant about opera. But I'm definitely looking forward to checking free annual event, Opera in the Outfield. This year's production is Verdi's A Masked Ball.

H&M's collaborated with the likes of Sonia Rykiel and Stella McCartney; their next design-house partnership is with Lanvin. Creative director Alber Elbaz, known for clothes that understatedly–and sometimes quirkily–luxurious, is changing his tune after previously saying he'd never design a mass market collection. Look for the line to hit select stores worldwide on Nov. 23–and the word "select" is no joke. Out of the chain's 2,000 or so outlets, the collection will only arrive at 200.

Image: http://creativeimpulsesandoverblownoratory.blogspot.com/