28 April 2008
Us vs. Them
Posted by Submission under: ponderings .
Declaring the US VERSUS THEM war is as futile as Bush’s. If some feel that there should be a pre-emptive strike, lets attack the newspapers, all handful of them, who consistently cut down the space allotted to live theatre, meaning less and less assignments for critics, who can do nothing for the productions if they have nowhere to publish their reviews. And it’s getting tighter and tighter out there.
Attacking ‘The Critics’ is futile. There’s only one legitimate ‘body’ of critics in L.A. - L.A.Drama Critics Circle - and although these are all accomplished theatre people, with long experience and writing credits of their own, they can only write reviews if someone publishes them. Ay, there’s the rub.
In 22 years of writing reviews, most of that time for ‘bupkes’ (nada, zilch, nothing), I have seen maybe a dozen papers, magazines, weeklies, even publications specializing in legit theatre news and reviews, go out of business.
If you’re charging people for seats, you are a professional company and I can verify that the size of the theatre or your lack of ’star’ names mean nothing to a legit critic if you are putting out a good product. (An example is probably the smallest theatre in L.A. - 35 seats, I think - The Black Dahlia, which consistently takes all the awards. We all know the economics of the theatre (most of us have been in it in one capacity or another,) but when you get a review you don’t like, don’t blame the messenger.
With seven critics reporting in, you’re going to get seven different opinions. Like the Motion Picture Academy, which people tend to blame for not giving them the Oscar they feel they deserve, ‘The Critics’ don’t sit down at a big table and come to a consensus. What each critic, or even each person, friend or relative (if they’re telling the truth) who sees your play gets from it is what frames their opinion - what happened to them while they were watching it. Don’t tar every critic with the same brush. Believe me, none of us enjoy writing unfavorable reviews.
Apart from it being much harder to write a negative review, we’re really all in the same business.
Submitted by Madeleine Shaner
Critic for BackStage, Beverly Press, Parklabrea News, and the Hollywood Reporter (Opera only).
One Comment so far...
Bitter Lemons » Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Jerk Says:
7 May 2008 at 3:53 pm.
[…] Shaner mentioned in an earlier post that the only real or legitimate theatre critic organization was LADCC. So how then am I supposed […]