My Turn! My Turn! Part 1

Posted October 22nd, 2009 by Sean Williams

I am really excited about the conversations happening at Parabasis and Jamespeak all about the responsibilities and relationships that a reviewer has to and with a piece of theater. Oh the joy of having my own blog! I don’t even *have* to comment on theirs!

Of course I did. I can’t stop myself.

Okay, first of all, I love reviewers and I love reviews. I love reviews that tear something up, I love reviews that celebrate something. The only reviews I don’t like are badly written reviews of shows I haven’t seen… I really love making fun of stupidly written reviews, even when I agree with them. I like talking shit, and reviews of shows, even mine, give me and my friends a chance to make fun of someone – either the reviewer or the show. I’m perfectly happy mocking anyone, just so long as we get to the mocking.

Ultimately, the reviews aren’t gonna do much for me or my brethren. I didn’t get in to the sold out run of MilkMilkLemonade, but that was as much great word of mouth, great collaborators who got the word out and great reputations associated with the artists involved as it was great reviews. Had the reviews been *terrible*, then it might not have sold out, but it still would have sold just fine if these three things had been in place.

It’s nearly impossible to test that theory, though, because there’s no difference now between “reviews” and “word of mouth”. I hold the opinions of my fellow playwrights, producers and bloggers in higher esteem than I do reviewers. I love reading reviews, but honestly, they don’t mean anything to me at all.

Do you know why I admire Gus Schulenberg so much? Because my friends saw Riding The Bull and wrote me privately to say, “Gus is the real fucking deal, man.” Flux has won some awards and they’ve gotten good reviews, but that’s not why I have tickets to The Lesser Seductions of History. I have them because the rest of our community knows that whatever they’re doing, it’s worth seeing.

In fact, I’m saying they’ve been reviewed, but I don’t think I’ve read a single review of their stuff. I wrote a blog entry on their last play, but I’m just this guy, y’know? It wasn’t a review, it was an exploration.

So, I don’t actually care if a review was written by the brother of the lead actress, the reviews occur in a total vacuum anyway, the prose he’s laying down will either be fun to read or it won’t, but it won’t change my mind about whether or not I go. I mean, I’ve mentioned before in this blog that I’m not a big fan of stage nudity or of stage violence, so when I say I didn’t like something for these reasons, a reader of mine may very well buy a ticket *because* of that.

In the end, we’re starting to lose the need for disinterested reviewers. What we really need is a community of bloggers who are willing to discuss the merits of one another’s work openly and honestly. In my last post, I tried to explain my point of view, and, although my explanation almost guarantees that my posts will be taken with a grain of salt… we should *ALL* be taken with a grain of salt.

We should publish our thought about ALL of the shows we see, and let people figure out if they like it or not. And we gotta get over ourselves. Our show Viral and our show The First Annual St. Ignatius Chanukah Pageant are not gonna appeal to the same people necessarily. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO TELL ME WHICH ONE YOU LIKED AND WHICH ONE YOU HATED. It’s fine, we liked them both.

I’m gonna cut this off while still a “rant” and not a “ramble”. But in the next post, I’m gonna compare/contrast two of our shows, and the effect that reviews had on each.

3 Responses to “My Turn! My Turn! Part 1”

Jamespeak says:

October 22, 2009 at 2:05 pm

"In the end, we're starting to lose the need for disinterested reviewers. What we really need is a community of bloggers who are willing to discuss the merits of one another's work openly and honestly."

I think this is why I absolutely LOVE reading scathing reviews by Ebert. He's not snobbish so much as he writes as if he's personally hurt by the movie. You can practically hear him sighing with dismay and depression or trembling at the keyboard as he writes. Even though he's been doing this for so long, you can tell he LOVES movies, and is very engaged with them, and when they let him down, it's personal.

I also love reading the story about Nathan Rabin from the Onion AV Club hating Ron Howard & Jim Carrey's "Grinch" movie so much he literally had to take a sedative and a hot bath when he got home. This ain't snobbery; this is taking what's been given to him as an affront.

So yeah. I don't think I'm going to just "write more reviews," but try to write about the stuff that I have strong thoughts or feelings about.

Damn, this subject has been rattling around in my brain for a while now.

Sean says:

October 22, 2009 at 2:19 pm

One of the nice things about having ZERO traffic on my blog is that I can admit the following –

I saw a show in the Fringe Festival. It was a 7 PM show, and I was supposed to go to a 9:15 show afterwards. Instead, I bought a twix and got in a cab and called my wife. I hated the show so much, it made me so angry, that I actuall took a cab home (which I can't afford) and ate a candy bar (which my body can't afford) and I called my wife and said, "I can't talk about it… can you just talk to me about your day?"

I should have written a blog about that show, but I didn't dare.

That's the kind of thing that I need to stop doing. When I see that show, I HAVE to write about it.

Prairie Cate says:

October 22, 2009 at 8:33 pm

I happened upon someone's blog who was reading and responding to plays–a lot of plays, covering a variety of genres, styles and periods. Wow, I thought, What a great idea, I'm going to add this blog to my blogroll. Until I realized said blogger was basically summarizing the plays and maybe adding a sentence or two about what interested her/him. A strong writer, writing about interesting plays, but the blog was so uninteresting because no strong opinion was offered. It was fairly arresting.