What Am I Doing?

I'm not a critic. I'm an actor.

I keep telling myself this.

Critics, especially critics in Chicago, while not useless, certainly do not criticise to many good uses, at least for me. They see a great deal of theater, true (although with over one hundred shows up at any time, it is hard to not be drowning in performances to see in this town). And then they "taste" it and tell us what it "tastes" like. Critics in the Reader, especially, and some other weeklies and bi-monthlies, tend to render this judgement in fewer than 200 words. Some critics, like Nina Metz, Hedy Weiss, and Chris Jones, devote a reasonable amount of print space to airing their tastes, describing the material that they have seen, and issuing recommendations.

I don't want to sound like a bitter old sow of the theater, but this is all perfectly useless to me as an artist. Not that I don't read these reviews. I've been reading them almost everyday for three years! Almost all of us in the theater community do. Why? Why, when they almost never provide a critical context for what they criticise, when they almost never give us an impartial description of what the director, designers, and actors were trying to accomplish, do we, as artists care so deeply about what these people say?

Because these critics are, at most times, the gatekeepers. A good or bad review doesn't make or break a show. But for theater practitioners at the smallest level, as most of us are, without a Steppenwolf-solid subscriber and audience base, we simply have to rely on the quality of reviews and word of mouth to get people to turn off the television or the hot-tub or whatever they're doing, and come and fork over $15 for entertainment. And because of this, we read the reviews, and, if they are universally good or bad, we forecast doom or success for a production. We're insecure artists. We want to know where we stand (and where others stand). And the public seems to need to know whether what they'll be sacrificing four taco dinners for will be a better use of their time than just one taco dinner.

Look, I fully recognize that this is the function of most reviewers. And honestly, I don't hold anything against them (although I could). Whether or not they are truly, vainly in love with the sound of their own fingers' typing, and their attendant subjective sense of taste, is a lovely subject for actors to discuss at the Four Moon after a savaging. The simple fact is, as Robert Brustein writes:

"...it is...demanded by the reader. Of immediate interest in a theatrical notice is not the critic's sense of life, ideas, or vision, but whether or not we like the damned thing--ironically, since our opinion is the most perishable thing we produce...Positive and negative judgements are rarely of practical use to theatre people; their only value is to the audience. Once responsible primarily to the theatregoer, for whom he prepares a form of consumer's report, a guide to comparative shopping...the least valuable criticism is that composed of naked assertions of taste (the kind Danny Kaye parodied when, being asked how he liked the Himalayas, replied,'Loved him, hated her!')"

It is in the nature of strictly commercial criticism to render starkly subjective positive/negative evaluations to audiences based on the critics' reputation for good taste. Unfortunately, we have all seen the discrepancy in the enjoyment promised by a review and the feeling actually experienced by us as spectators (a recent production by Steep Theater of The Night Heron was a shocking example of this, in the category of Panned By Critics But Life-Altering-ly Good). Brustein is urging critics, instead of being, in the worst case, obsessed only with their own impressions, to marry their subjective impulse with a sense of passionate conviction about where theater is and where it needs to go. And a sense of responsibility to that conviction.

I'm not there, yet. Why? As artists in this city, we are constantly touching our own little sliver of the elephant. But we don't have a clear picture of the elephant. And make no mistake, the world of Chicago theater is, without question, a teeming organism. My own convictions are still TBD (my biases are not). What I'm looking for, and what I think this city needs, is a picture, as provided by fanatically open-minded practitioners, of what is happening in the city at any given moment.

I mean: What are the stories being told right now, and how are they being told?

The type of critical survey work I propose with this project will make itself clear as reviews emerge. But it will be mostly descriptive and not evaluative I'm not going to tell you who was "good" or "bad", who can't act, can't direct, whose designs are clumsy, and what shows to see and avoid. The theater scene in this town is not a footrace for artists trying to "make it" for which critics are the judges. This theater organism is a collection of artists who need to say something. It is time for the organism to become more aware of itself.

If you want critics' picks, you probably know where to start looking for them. The freedom of the press of the Internet is such that this useful project, that is useless in the commercial papers, can fly on the Internet. No one else in this town is doing this kind of work, and this scene is as vibrant as ever. And that is why now is the right time for the project.

Hopefully, you'll agree.

And now for my biases, or as my friend Dennis says: "the post-modern convention where you describe your biases." I am biased toward narrative theater, but theater with less narration and more action. I prefer less plays in which the audience is recognized and clued into the details (Zimmerman's The Secret In the Wings), and more plays in which the audience is responsible for telling themselves the story and discovering the operant tensions without being told (Graney's Porno). I love subtext, but I also love Shakespeare. I tend to believe that theater helps us make sense of our experiences by helping us use catharsis to apply narratives to the events of our lives. I need to see more dance. I love music, but I think that atmosphere is useful only insofar as it helps actors create truthful performances steeped in the given circumstances. I tend to believe that theater is an actors art, and that no production can be successful without the audience believing, on some level, in the actors on stage. I don't feel like defining this any further right now, but I recognize that it stands in opposition to the ideas of expressionist theater, and to that extent, I will valiantly fight to remain open to the expressionist work being done here.

I can't think of any more biases now.

But what I am not is a philistine. I am not married to these ideas. I'm here, in this city, at this time so I can learn, grow, and become a greater artist. That's what we are all doing, to my mind. And to succeed, and become artists that change the world, we need to work, to stay fanatically open-minded, and we need to pay attention to each other. That is just what this project proposes to do.

In the course of the next year, I'll be seeing work by theaters and artists that in my experience as an artist and theatergoer are influential. I'll stay open to suggestions and word of mouth. And comps.

(The quote from Brustein is from an essay entitled "Convictions and Opinions" published as part of his collection "Who Needs Theatre".)