Stage | theguardian.com: Critics – so Kenneth Tynan once quipped – know the way, they just can’t drive the car. Is that the case? History’s littered with critic-playwrights. Plato was one: he burned his early plays upon turning philosopher. There are several still working today: the Telegraph’s Dominic Cavendish, the Daily Mail’s Patrick Marmion and Time Out’s Stewart Pringle have all played the roles of critic and playwright.
6 comments:
I always thought that this would be an interesting thing to do. I didn't know that it has already been done! And even successfully! I believe that to be a great playwright, you need to be a good critic. That is why we do so much play analysis, right? If you know all the techniques on what works and what doesn't, then you could be very successful at writing your own show. I don't see a problem with it. Some will be good and some will be bad, just like normal plays.
This reminds me of politicians writing curriculum for schools when none of them have ever been teachers before, but the critics would be more successful.
It's true that we view critics rather negatively, in the sense that they're arrogant and believe that they know what makes up good theatre. This view is only perpetuated by the idea that, when critics write plays, they do so under the pretext that they can make better theatre than anyone else. It is good for critics to challenge this notion, but I think that just by studying how plays work doesn't mean that you can write a successful one yourself. Critics tend to be great observers, but I'm not sure about how original their skill set allows them to be.
Playwrights and critics, they usually tend to not like each other. I’ve tried to not read what critics have posted, mainly because it’s about a show that I particularly don’t have any interest in. So when a critic turns playwright, I would almost assume that they would be biased towards their show. Of course, in that circumstance I’m sure they are excluded from the critiquing. What struck me as odd, were some critics turned playwrights whose name I had recognized such as Tom Stoppard. It makes me wonder how many other playwrights were once critics that weren’t on the list, that have had success. They make a valid point in the article, that they have changed the language in their plays that have had annoyance with the audience, simple words or phrases that just didn’t seem to fit the picture that other playwright had put into their plays. So they avoided those type of things in their own, and made it better.
There's a lot of interesting stuff in here about the relationship between critics and playwrights. Obviously playwrights would have a tendency to dislike those critics who gave bad reviews, and maybe because of that have a overall bad attitude towards critics in general, but I think it should be kept in mind that for one, a critic is just doing their job, and for another, their job is really just their opinion. Granted, there are situations where a bad review from the right person can make or break a show, but (and this is easy for me to say because I'm not a playwright) I don't think bad reviews aren't something that should be take so personally. Critics shouldn't be automatically dismissed as bad playwrights; it depends on the sensibilities of the particular person and judgments like that shouldn't be blanketed over entire groups. Also, I do think that watching theatre does help to make a better playwright, much in the way that reading a lot makes a better writer. It's not the final determinant, of course, but it probably helps more than it hurts.
Although I have never been a theater critic myself (aside from amongst friends) I do imagine that critiquing such a massive volume of work could make playwriting a nearly impossible art. By analyzing and picking apart so many plays to their bare bones, I feel that a person couldn't help but see a play as a series of events and emotions, strategically configured to most effectively tug on the right heartstrings. When something like playwriting becomes such a science, the playwright becomes detached and we lose what should lie at the heart of every piece. In fact, I would argue that technically flawed plays could be even stronger because they have not been over analyzed or sanded down to something easy to digest; they are honest to the story and representative of the playwright.
Criticism is something that as of late I hadn't been focused on to much. I had a conversation with my friend who was a stage manager at some off broadway show in NY, and he was telling me about how the Times had come to see his show, and how his producers were really afraid that they weren't going to get a good review, which would tank their ticket sales and ultimately ruin the rest of their run. I was shocked. Being in educational theatre for so long, I often find myself forgetting how critical the publics opinion can be, and how it literally holds the fate of an entire theatre company at times. I'm glad there could be this opportunity for a role reversal to allow insight in just how criticism really has an impact, not just on art, but it's means to survive.
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