Monday, April 06, 2009
Waiting in the wings: when will young theatre critics get their big break?
guardian.co.uk: "To take a geographical metaphor, theatre criticism is a bit like tectonic plates: though gaps only rarely appear on its upper surface, they cause radical transformations to the landscape. Nicholas de Jongh's departure from the Evening Standard will likely reshuffle the critical cabinet. However, in raising the question of its immediate effects, Mark Brown this week unearthed a deeper concern: where are all the young critics?"
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4 comments:
i think a lot of tomorrow's critics will come from theatre professionals of today. I'm not sure if it will be in the form of ex-directors, actors, production people, designers or elsewhere, but they will come. There seems to be a trend to educate yourself in the specific fields and its hard to learn to become a critic. Like the article noted, it comes from experience. So perhaps it is a good thing that the theatre people will become the theatre critics and not just some journalism majors?
I wish there were more younger theatre critics. I think that the youth generation is fairly unexpressed in comparision to the older generation. There should be a louder voice from our generation when it comes to voicing opinions about theatre
One of the big problems theaters across the country is the increasing age of their audiences. Theater needs to attract younger audiences to the table. Maybe one way of doing this is to get younger critics to talk about shows and issues and how they matter to a younger generation. One of the biggest catch phrases of our generations (I think) is "Why do I care". God forbid someone put effort into caring about something that might just be good for them if only they would give it a chance.
What I found a little odd is that the article failed to mention the blog community at all. It seems like everyone with a blog out there is reviewing something, so this idea that there are no critics out there is what confuses. I think that people are moving away from the career of critique since the internet has made it possible for anyone to do the job, regardless of training. Chris brings up the point that there needs to be younger audience members, and honestly, that's got more to do with what's being performed then what's said about it. For some reason, my generation of people don't see plays all that often, even in situations like high school when they're free.
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