Announcement from Executive Features Editor Ben Williams, Deputy Features Editor Hank Stuever, Arts and Entertainment Editor Jonathan Fischer, and Features Editor Zachary Pincus-Roth:
We are thrilled to announce that The Washington Post has hired its next theater critic: Naveen Kumar.
Naveen is a journalist and culture critic who has contributed a series of sharp pieces for The Post this year. He has also reviewed theater for the New York Times and Variety, and his reporting has appeared in Town & Country, Vox, Broadway News and the Daily Beast. He has been a contributing editor since 2017 at Them, where he has written features and essays on film, TV and issues pertaining to LGBTQ+ culture, including nightlife and mental health. He has twice served on the jury for the Pulitzer Prize in drama. Naveen will continue his position as associate director of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Critics Institute, the leading arts-writing workshop for professional journalists.
Before becoming a journalist, Naveen worked on the agency side of the entertainment business, including in the theater department at CAA. He has a bachelor’s degree in English from Vassar College and a master’s degree in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University.
Naveen will be based in New York but will be a frequent visitor to D.C. He’ll tackle productions in Washington, on and off Broadway and across the country, writing reviews, essays, commentaries, features and whatever else he cooks up. We are excited to have him work alongside his editors and our cadre of talented theater contributors as The Post redefines its theater coverage. He starts August 19.
