Critical Thinking

The new American Theatre magazine has several articles on theatre critics and criticism. "Should You Take A Critic To Lunch?" interviews critics in several cities that aren't New York (including Robert Hurwitt of the San Francisco Chronicle) and "Notes on Heart and Mind" is an essay on the current state of theatre criticism and critical training. The image that emerges is of a dwindling number of newspapers and magazines with full-time critics or just about any theatre reviewing, resulting in badly paid part-time critics with dubious qualifications and little opportunity for education as critics (there are few academic programs, courses of study or even workshops specifically for critics.)

Badly paid part-time critic sounds familiar--oh yeah, that's me. Another elements of the state of coverage rings a bell, such as the observation that New York newspapers have recently hired younger first-string critics, which "Heart and Mind" author Randy Gener says "presumably, could attract young readers. (A related irony: Nobody ever argued that hiring a female theatre critic could equally attract female theatregoers and readers.)"

Actually, I would broaden or reorient that observation. The problem I see isn't younger critics--it's the bias in coverage towards youth-oriented entertainment. Theatres attract, include and depend on older audience members as part of the mix. While a production of Hamlet could attract an audience varying widely in age more readily than a hip hop concert might, advertisers are more interested in the hip hop concert precisely because it attracts the young demographic they desire. Their theory being that young people are more susceptible to advertising and trend-oriented marketing. So the coverage follows that demographic's interests. This is a trend I see here in North Coast newspapers, even though theatre, dance and classical music are actually amazingly strong for such a small "market." But then, it's an older population. The newspapers are actually orienting themselves to fewer readers in their arts and entertainment coverage.

The magazine also includes an edited version of a symposium with three of the giants in theatre criticism of this era: Eric Bentley, Robert Brustein and Stanley Kaufmann. It's an entertaining if not terribly substantive article, but it does contain Bentley's advice to young people: don't be a critic, be a playwright! There are certainly more academic opportunities for that, although I tend to think that the educational value of very specific "training" in any form of writing (including criticism) is overvalued. None of the above named trinity, for example, got a degree in theatre criticism. The institutes and workshops for critics the magazine lists, however, are probably very useful.

They do discuss some of the perennial issues of theatre criticism and reviewing, such as the conflicts between the "consumer guide" aspect and more integral criticism, and also the effect of criticism on the people putting on the plays, as well as the proper relationship of critics to those who create theatre. (This discussion and the other articles I mention all strongly favor a closer relationship and continuing dialogue, which I also endorse. I also believe that critics should have experience participating at some level in whatever they're critiquing.)

There are the problems of the critic as writer as well as thinker, and other issues that may be of little interest to non-critics. However, Brustein did talk about what kept him from going crazy, writing about show after show:

So the task I set for myself was to put theatre into a context and try to see how this or that play fit into our particular time, our particular society, our particular culture, our particular political life, and how it reflected on that. I don’t think anyone can write a word without somehow creating that kind of reflection. You just have to find it. Then I began to get happier about my criticism.

Oh, to have the paid time and newsprint to do more of that!