Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: "How much a critic should know, and when she should know it have always been hot topics.
Some like to keep themselves -- or like to claim they keep themselves -- distant from pre-performance chatter, gossip, background research and the reviews of fellow critics.
The reasoning is sound enough.
They prefer to judge the show they see on its merits alone."
8 comments:
I can see both sides of the argument. While it is important for a critic to be able to understand the work and its process, it is also important for him to experience it as the audience would in order to give, not only an intellectual analysis, but also an analysis based on this emotional and performance-based art form. There is also a fine line between reviewing the play and the production. If one is reviewing a play, then yes, of course read up on the background and the script. However, if reviewing a production, it may be useful to see how much of this background knowledge you get from watching the play. Isn't that the mark of a good production. They are able to accurately and precisely communicate their world to the audience. Of course, after you see the production, go and do all the research you want to determine how accurate and successful they were in terms of history, not storytelling.
I think that doing some background homework on the script or learning about the world of the play is fine. In any given audience you'll have some people that are more informed that others so you can't just assume that all audience members know nothing about the show. However, I think that reading up on twitter and asking other people's opinions is inappropriate for a critic to do before they have seen the show. At that point, there is no way that a critic can claim that their review was completely theirs. Inevitably, someone's opinion is going to sneak its way into that critic's head and bias them one way or the other, slanting their review. So, while I know its impossible to be a blank slate, I also don't think critics should seek out opinion from the twitter-masses.
This is a very interesting cunundrum. Because how does a critic properly gauge what they see in a performance, if they dont have the proper background information? But on the same hand sometimes to get a perfectly honest response to what is on the satge in front of them. In my opinion I dont think that a critic can go and see a show without having a little bit of information about the show. Like reading Crime and Punishment before seeing it. I guess in the end it is up to the individual critic themselves and them knowing how reliably objective they can be
I thought that a theater critic was the person who knows or at least research very carefully the background of the play, writer, any previous production and also the opinions from other people.
It would be disappointment for me if critics really comment on the production just from their reaction to the play.
Actually, "the opinions from other people" works fairly only if the critic had a through knowledge and had the basis of judging in his term, to just correct his biased view if any. In my opinion, that should be required for a critic. Of course, the critics from newspapers are accumulating their experience of seeing lots of shows as a profession, so their credibility is getting increased. As long as productions count on their review after every opening night and use the review as a sales pitch, I hope the words from critics are supported by their solid study of the theare, based on which the audience can judge in their own term and
appreciate deeply the production.
I'm not sure that even if it were possible it would be ideal for a critic to be a "blank slate" before seeing a show. Chris Rawson spoke to our Foundations class last semester, and he pointed out that it's not just the theater critics job to advise people whether or not to see a show; critics are also supposed to explain what's going on in the world of culture and make their reviews useful even for people who would not see a show either way. By remaining aware of the public opinion and buzz surrounding a show, a theater critic can better reach those who read reviews simply to learn about what's happening in current theater.
Quite a problem for the critics it seems. This is a very hard question to answer, whether a critic should or shouldn't have knowledge of the play and production ahead of time. While it can provide a more thorough knowledge of the production, the critic is supposedly reviewing what is put onto the stage, and might be biased in the respect if checking out some background info. On the other hand, if the critic doesn't know some background info, they might miss some part of the play that they would have recognized and would've been able to convey to their readers. It's hard to say which way to go, but with most things, I think this requires some degree of moderation into how much you look into a play as a critic before actually seeing it.
I don't think that it will ever be possible for a critic to remain completely oblivious to gossip and opinions of a show before attending a performance to review it. But I think that a critic should enter the theater with as little knowledge about the specific production that they are seeing as possible. Personally, I wouldn't want to know much about the production before seeing because I think it would affect how I experience the production for the first time as an audience member.
THis comes back to a similar discussion about how to interpret what a critic writes. If you know that a critic walks in to a show knowing nothing about it then you can read the review with that in mind, likewise if you know that you're reading a review by a critic who researches everything in advance then you can interpret their review in that way. No source of information is perfect and unbiased, the best you can hope for is to know the biases and adapt for them when you read what that reviewer writes.
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