The site will be edited by Hunter College professor Jonathan Kalb. Kalb was formerly a theatre critic for the Village Voice and, after that, the theatre critic for the New York Press for four years. In 1991, he won the George Jean Nathan Award for excellence in dramatic criticism. He is also the author of books on Samuel Beckett and Heiner Müller. HotReview.org will publish "reviews, essays, articles, interviews, dialogues, and polemics about any aspect of theatre, past or present," according to a press statement. The release went on to say that the site was "conceived as an antidote to apathy and as a response to the scarcity of print forums today for serious theatre criticism that appears while the shows under discussion are still running."

Stanley Kaufmann, who, along with Eric Bentley and Richard Gilman, ranks as one of the greatest American theatre critics of the last century still living, has contributed to the inaugural issue of HotReview.org, as has Kalb and Una Chaudhuri. Future issues will feature the work of Village Voice contributor Alisa Solomon, author and theatre scholar Marc Robinson and Robert Marx. Kalb also accepts submissions for other writers "whose work brings critical intelligence to theatre art."