HowlRound: “Are you going to let somebody else grade your work?” Victory Gardens Theater Artistic Director Chay Yew responded to my latest snarky comment about the number of stars my most recent show had received in the Chicago Tribune.
I paused. “No, of course not!” Until that moment, I hadn’t ever thought of it as a “grade.”
1 comment:
Rating theatre, in my opinion, simplifies and homogenizes a piece of theatre. Theatre is by it's nature intensely subjective; what makes theatre and art worthwhile is the plethora of interpretations and conflicting opinions. One facet of the distillation that rating systems impose is the gutting of differing perspectives. A simple rating system puts the critics word on a pedestal, ignoring their personal opinions, experience, and bias, thus implying the critic's OPINION is FACT. A piece of theatre one critic may find inspiring, well crafted, and "truthful" I may find offensive and false. We interpret theatre FROM our experiences, our life and beliefs act as a lens and to ignore this lens is to imply the critic's experience and lens is superior and "right." This is, in my opinion, dangerous and disrespectful of the variety of life experience and perspective.
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