theage.com.au: Unlike Sydney or Adelaide, where theatre awards are decided by critics, Green Rooms are peer-based — judged by panels of artists, academics and commentators, with artists predominating. Artists rewarding artists immediately raises questions of conflict of interest, transparency and accountability, and competence to judge on merit. The collaborative nature of most performing arts makes warm fuzziness and mutual backslapping particularly likely.
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Peer review should make way for critics' awards
theage.com.au: Unlike Sydney or Adelaide, where theatre awards are decided by critics, Green Rooms are peer-based — judged by panels of artists, academics and commentators, with artists predominating. Artists rewarding artists immediately raises questions of conflict of interest, transparency and accountability, and competence to judge on merit. The collaborative nature of most performing arts makes warm fuzziness and mutual backslapping particularly likely.
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3 comments:
This was interesting because the Australian and US systems overlap and yet they differ tremendously. We do have the critics choice, granted this is not for theater, but it does exist in our world. I just think that having a peer review is simply better than a critic's view. For a peer review, the audience is more constant, whereas the critique for the critics is that they are not consistently there and they don't appreciate the status they have been given.
These people are essentially determining people's lives and the outcome for a successful show with their critiques. There are shows that have done well without the critiques, I'm sure, but a good review gives that show an extra something. What is nice about the peer review is that they are not tainted with a critic's mind, they are a fresh perspective and opinion.
It is good to have competition in this way but with a fair judge that knows the theater and consistently watches a majority of the shows.
This sounds like a popularity contest amongst theatre people. It's unfortunate that Australia doesn't have another system of judging these art pieces. It's like having the freshmen design and production class duke it out over who's Basic Design project is better based on who everyone hates the least at that moment in time. In order to silence the subjectivity a bit, maybe the awards would benefit from international judges who's job is solely to see these productions that would be up for the awards.
hmmmm smells like critiques.....
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