I've just started to teach arts journalism to a wonderful class -- sure, give me a few weeks, but I go in optimistic. But then a colleague asked me the question anyone in this business would, should, ask: Why teach a skill for jobs that are drying up?
Tuesday night (March 25), I was handed a solid answer, one that I must admit I already knew. I went with my very dear friend, a Tony-voting theater critic for a major metropolitan newspaper, to the St. James Theater for a critic's-night preview of Gypsy, with Patti LuPone as you-know-who. Opening night is Thursday, so even though I am straining to tell you what I thought of it, I can't.
Yet I bet you want to know, may even be dying to know, which is why, as long as curtains go up, critics will always have work.
My friend, let's call him Brooks, because of a series of editorial circumstances was under absolutely no obligation to review. So the evening was a streetcar-man's holiday, which seemed to make him happy; he even had a glass of wine with his pretheater burger, something I'd never seen him do.
We remained sitting, silent, as lights came up after the first act. Then Brooks hit his fist on the arm of the infant-size seat: "I don't care, I'm going to write about this, whether or not they print it." I could see on his face that he was thinking of scribbling some retroactive notes and already rehearsing his lede.
What would induce a member of any audience to swap an evening of guaranteed leisure and potential enjoyment for a stretch of strenuous observation and then hours of immersion into the sweat-making cauldron of writing? Marx -- remember him, Karl with a K? -- ages ago provided the cliché: unalienated labor, work that's not work but irresistible love. Brooks had no choice. The words (and music!) on stage demanded company, and continuation, for themselves, and he was there.
As you can see, the same thing happened to me.
In New York the “preview review” is changing the landscape of writing about performance. Productions are now routinely offering certain bloggers preview tickets with the tacit agreement that they will “talk about” their experience in a blog post. I was until recently a member of the NYC Theatre Bloggers listserv Yahoo group, where the concept and practice of “Bloggers Night” originated. This group consists of bloggers, but also a few freelance journalists who occasionally write print reviews of productions. When I attempted to explore this issue of “Bloggers Night,” both publicly in my blog posts and privately within the group, the blogger who had begun the Yahoo listserv (Isaac Butler) unsubscribed me (without informing me or the other members of the listserv) for writing this blog post.
Of course this phenomenon of bloggers reviewing previews of productions opens up a sundry array of issues for theatre reviewers, producers, and the audience as the national editor of Back Stage Leonard Jacobs has been attempting to present. However, what Jacobs was blindsided by was how this bloggers’ pool of preview talk can also contaminate and prejudice the print reviewers’ objectivity, as he appeared to do in his review. of the same production I had highlighted.
Your Marxist term “unalienated labor” is probably a more apt descriptor for blogging than the journalistic writing necessary for a review. For instance, students are not taught the craft or ethics involved in writing a blog post. But perhaps they should be.
I heard Gustavo Dudamel play the violin tonight. Mozart Clarinet in A major, K581. (Even doing it that way, I can hear my music critic friend, with whom I attended, say that's not the way you include the title in the review, which pretty much keeps me from weighing in.) But I ache to talk about what I heard and saw. It is the critic in me. Isn't blogging perfect for this? Then I realize there are critical rules. Not just theater rules like the ones you talk about in your entry. ... Critical rule #1: If I were to blog right now on ARTicles about the LA Phil's concert tonight, I would be out of my depths and stepping on toes. Critical rule #2: If I were to blog right now, I would supercede your brilliant blog which I want everone to read on top. (I said that, not Rami.) So are comments the way to go?? For the critic in you?