Heavy-Handed in Putnam County

This is a silly story. The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is coming to Chicago, and the producers had a big kick-off news conference to announce it on Monday. Most everybody you'd expect to attend such an event was there--reporters, critics, etc. Most everybody, but not everybody. Hedy Weiss is theater critic for the Sun-Times, and she's got a reasonably high profile. According to a report in the Sun-Times, Hedy was told that she would not be welcome at the event. When she showed up anyway, she was prevented from entering. Producer David Stone later issued a statement claiming that several months ago at a similar announcement for the Chicago production of Wicked, "Ms. Weiss behaved erratically and unprofessionally." (Hedy responded that she'd been unhappy producers had leaked Wicked info to the Trib and, in a thoroughly professional manner, told them so.)

Other media people--including others from the Sun-Times--were at the Spelling Bee news conference with no problem. The show features audience participation as viewers are called onstage and given words to spell, and this aspect was a highlight of the news conference, as well. Trib critic Chris Jones, former Trib critic Richard Christiansen, and Sun-Times marketing columnist Lewis Lazare were all brought onstage, and even Hedy's name was called (Stone said she couldn't participate because she was in detention). The newspeople didn't realize they'd be called upon to participate, and the Trib even lodged a complaint after the fact. Given Hedy's outspokenness at the Wicked event, Lynn Becker at ArchitectureChicago PLUS suggests that she was excluded from this news conference because she would've quickly pointed out the inappropriateness of drawing the journalists into a publicity stunt, and in the process reminded the journalists that they didn't need to mindlessly go along with the show. That makes sense to me.