Chris Jones

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT CHRIS JONES

Chris Jones is an editor, an author and a professor with 35 years of teaching experience and a former dean. He is best known, though, as a theater critic who has published thousands of reviews of Chicago and Broadway shows and other articles about American theatre in the Chicago Tribune and New York Daily News over the past 20 years. He appeared on air on CBS-2 Chicago for many years and also has served as a guest host for WGN Radio. Since 2015, he has been the director of the National Critics Institute at the Eugene O\'Neill Center in Waterford, Connecticut, the nation\'s leading summer intensive for mid-career arts journalists. Jones is also the Tribune’s editorial page editor, overseeing the editorial page and opinions sections and writing editorials on local, national and international issues. Prior to starting work at the Tribune, Jones served as a critic for Variety, and his work has appeared in prestigious publications across the country. He is the author of two books: Bigger, Brighter, Louder, a history of Chicago theater criticism, and Rise Up: Broadway and American Society from \'Angels in America\' to ‘Hamilton’, a well-reviewed exploration of how theater reflects the world at large. Jones has twice served on the drama committee of the Pulitzer Prize and for 25 years has chaired the committee that annually recommends a theater to receive the Tony Award for outstanding regional theatre. Jones served for a decade as director of Undergraduate Studies at Northern Illinois University\'s Dept. of Theatre and Dance and as associate dean at DePaul University\'s Theatre School. In 2021, he became a Fellow of the American Theatre and in 2023 he was awarded an honorary Ph.D. from Columbia College Chicago.