Julius Novick is recently retired after four decades as a theatre critic, primarily for The Village Voice but also for The New York Times, The Nation, and many other publications. He is the author of two books –  “Beyond Broadway: The Quest for Permanent Theaters” and “Beyond the Golden Door: Jewish American Drama and Jewish American Experience.”  Novick grew up stage-struck in Manhattan and spent much of his teenage years watching plays from the cheapest seats of Broadway and Off-Broadway theaters. At 18, he apprenticed with Joe Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival for the Festival’s first season in Central Park, building scenery by day and acting tiny parts at night. He has never lost his belief in nonprofit theatre whereever it appears: on, Off-, and Off-Off-Broadway, and throughout America. 

Novick began writing for The Village Voice while majoring in English at Harvard University. He earned a doctorate at the Yale School of Drama, which gave him valuable experience of the theatrical process from the inside and enabled him to pursue a double career as a critic and teacher. He won the George Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism in 1983 and was Professor of Drama Studies at SUNY Purchase.