According to the Herald, Dolen died at the age of 74 of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Her husband wrote she'd been in home hospice care for most of the last year. The announcement garnered an outpouring of tributes from friends, family, and many of the playwrights and performers whose projects Dolen boosted and critiqued throughout her nearly five-decade career.
One of the more moving tributes came from Theodore "Teddy" Harrell, Jr., assistant center director at the Marshall L. Davis Sr. African Heritage Cultural Arts Center.
"Christine was of the first theater reviewers of notoriety to take an interest in my theater company, African American Performing Arts Community Theatre," he wrote. "Christine came to Miami-Dade County's Liberty City during [the] mid-1990s to review our productions when other reviewers had hesitated." He added Dolen gave the theater's inaugural production, Athol Fugard's The Island, a glowing review.
The Broward Center for the Performing Arts also paid homage to the longtime critic. In an Instagram post this morning, the venue remembered Dolen as a critic whose "unique ability to capture the heart of a performance was like none other, shining a light on the talent and creativity that thrive in our local scene."
Dolen retired from the Herald in 2015 after nearly four decades at the paper, but she continued to cover and advocate for South Florida's theater scene through her work with Artburst Miami. Incredibly, her final two reviews for the site were published just a year ago this month.
Artburst editor Michelle F. Solomon wrote a heartfelt remembrance for the site, highlighting just how seriously the late Dolen took her role as a critic: "Christine and I shared another bond we often discussed: how important arts and theater criticism was to a community and how every day we felt blessed that we held an important place in the arts ecosystem to make sure that criticism and support for South Florida theaters continued to flourish."
