Cynthia Greenwood’s critical appreciation of the performing arts began when she was still a young, earnest piano student, and an avid reader. In college, she absorbed classic plays by Miller, Ibsen, Wilde, O’Neill, and Shakespeare. As a freelance writer and antiquarian, she soon took full advantage of Houston’s theatre, opera, ballet, and fine arts scene, which is renowned worldwide.
Working as the classical arts critic for the Houston Press from 1998 to 2002, Cynthia covered Houston’s opera, symphony, ballet, and musical stage scene. She began filing news reports, features, and occasional investigative reports for large metropolitan daily newspapers. She reviewed productions featuring prominent musicians and conductors, while also covering Houston’s major arts organizations, including the Houston Grand Opera and the Houston Symphony.
Cynthia first became interested in the challenges that William Shakespeare presented to her students when she taught British literature to undergraduates at Wharton County Junior College. While teaching college sophomores and reviewing Shakespeare productions in Houston, Dallas, Kilgore (TX), and New York, she found herself comfortable in a new role — the role of professional interpreter of Shakespeare for intelligent readers who never warmed up to the world’s greatest playwright in the classroom. Today Cynthia enjoys helping readers and audiences translate and decipher the mysteries behind iconic Renaissance texts, especially antiquated works that were meant to be experienced inside the theatre.
Besides her books, Deciphering Shakespeare’s Plays and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Shakespeare’s Plays, Cynthia has published in-depth arts reports, profiles, and reviews in The New York Times, Playbill, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Houston Chronicle, Houston Press, Dallas Morning News, Dallas Observer, Andante, Opera Cues, San Antonio Express-News, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Blogcritics.org, and Cite, a quarterly architecture and design journal, among others.
In addition to her focus on Shakespeare, Cynthia is especially attracted to the lives and struggles of performing and visual artists. In her report Where Angels Fear to Tread (Houston Press), she investigated an East Texas community’s hostile reaction to a staging of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. Raymond Caldwell, the founding artistic director of the renowned Texas Shakespeare Festival, produced this iconic play in spite of threats of violence against the cast and crew. To expand on the Handbook of Texas’s biographical essay of African-American singer Roberta Dodd Crawford, Cynthia traveled to Bonham, TX, Chicago, and Paris to work in the archives. Cynthia has profiled French photographer Robert Doisneau for a forthcoming monograph, the quirky Charles Dellschau, opera star Patricia Racette, cellist Desmond Hoebig, and the Houston Symphony Bad Boys of Cello, among many others.
Professional Affiliations
Find Cynthia Online
Interviews with Cynthia
To Be a Critic and Author of an Idiot’s Guide
Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell interviews Cynthia Greenwood on her Web site “We write for you biz.” As part of a drawing contest among readers who posted questions, one reader won a copy of the book. Read more…
Houston Public Media’s arts and performance program – The Front Row
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Today we speak with Rosemary Poole-Carter and Cynthia Greenwood, two of the Houston-area writers who will be featured at the Brazos Bookstore’s first semi-annual Local Authors Day on Saturday.
Arts journalist, critic and editor Cynthia Greenwood is the author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Shakespeare’s Plays. She speaks with St. John Flynn about her newest addition to the series of books known as The Complete Idiot’s Guides. Read more…