To be clear, we respect Mr. Green's right to be critical of the show. What we are asking you to address is the cultural insensitivity, underlying ignorance of and distaste for K-pop as a genre, and what comes across as casual racism in his review. That this would be the case in The New York Times is, frankly, astonishing.

Starting with the headline, "(too) cute," Mr. Green‘s choice of words to critique a work created primarily by API artists plays to harmful stereotypes and the historic infantilization of Asian people in media, immediately devaluing and diminishing them. Using "squint-inducing" to describe the work of a Korean lighting designer, whatever the author's intent, is a particularly egregious example.

Beyond specific words, Mr. Green's view that if "you don't understand Korean... (you) will have a harder time enjoying this show" is simply not borne out by the audience reaction he himself witnessed and as demonstrated in several of the comments now appended to the review. In fact, only a small fraction of the dialogue is in Korean, and the meaning is generally comprehensible in the specific context, which surely he knows. The comment smacks of a dog whistle. Is a Broadway show valid only if it is centered on and catering exclusively to a white, English-speaking audience?

Mr. Green's ignorance of and distaste for K-pop as a genre leads to the odd and, again, dismissive and diminishing comment that there are "only three instrumentalists." K-pop music is an overwhelmingly electronic music that takes effort and talent to produce. The score is at one with the genre and brings a new sonic vocabulary to Broadway. Not to mention, the person who produced it is the first ever Asian woman composer on Broadway, and yet Mr. Green offers no acknowledgement of that. Nor, by the way, does he acknowledge that there are 18 API artists making their Broadway debuts.

In fact, Mr. Green does not comment on any of the individual performances at all, almost as if the performers are nameless and faceless. What does that imply? Instead, he characterizes the performance style collectively as "aggressive mimicry"—another ill-chosen, racially insensitive, and ultimately ignorant phrase. Four of the cast members are actual K-pop idols in Korea. They are "mimicking" nothing. To suggest as much denies their lived experience, their professional expertise, and their very individuality.

Mr. Green criticizes the "mostly electronic arrangements" when that is the K-pop genre; he criticizes the "minutely detailed choreography" when that is a hallmark of K-pop; he implicitly criticizes the costume design that embodies the K-pop style. That he doesn't like these elements or this genre is his prerogative as a critic, but he appears to deny their very legitimacy as part of a Broadway musical, an implicit assertion of traditional white cultural supremacy.

The job of theatre critics is to dissect, analyze, and ultimately judge a work. We also contend that they have a responsibility to meet a show on its own terms and to be informed enough to know what that even means. Above all, in these troubled times, they have an obligation to do so with cultural sensitivity and absolutely without the casual racist tropes Mr. Green, wittingly or not, perpetuates.

On behalf of our talented and dedicated cast, crew, and creative team we urge you to acknowledge and apologize for the offensive language and racist implications in Mr. Green's review.

By calling this out, we hope to challenge the Times, your writers and readers, and ourselves as well, to think critically about the language we use and to be ever mindful of bias, unconscious and otherwise.