Critical Minded’s Topdogs and Underdogs: Critics of Color and the Theatrical Landscape, the first report of its kind. Authored by critics Sharon Mizota and Oliver Wang, this is an incisive evaluation of the structural challenges critics of color face and a clarion call for change, providing a bird’s-eye view and an intimate understanding of the essential relationship between criticism and cultural production while also making the urgent case for why critics’ voices matter so much today.

Today, there is growing backlash to the institutional commitments and cultural gains made in response to the demands of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. Suddenly, corporate diversity initiatives are disappearing, book bans are rising, and demands to exclude topics like slavery from school curricula throughout the country keep gaining traction. All are signs of a potential cultural backslide—one that we need critics, especially critics of color, to anticipate, call attention to, and grapple with for us…

It is within this challenging context that Critical Minded’s Topdogs and Underdogs: Critics of Color and the Theatrical Landscape, the first report of its kind, emerges.