Chapter 15

1
Chapter 15 Viewpoints

• VLADIMIR Moron!
• ESTRAGON Vermin!
• VLADIMIR Abortion!
• ESTRAGON Morpion!
• VLADIMIR Sewer-rat!
• ESTRAGON Curate!
• VLADIMIR Cretin!
• ESTRAGON (with finality)
• Crritic!
• Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

2
Chapter Summary

• Critics often add fresh dimensions to our
  awareness and appreciation of theatre.
• They acquaint readers and audiences with both
  good and bad productions.
• At best, they hope to connect the truly good work
  with audiences and to preserve it for future
  generations.

3
Criticism

• Two kinds of criticism
• Drama criticism
• Comments on written text from literary and
  cultural-historical-theoretical perspective
• Theatre criticism (theatre reviewing)
• Deals with plays-in-performance
• Critics are real force
• Critic from New York Times has power to close a
  show with a bad review.

4
Audience as Critic

• Watching a play raises questions
• Is the world a stage?
• Were the actors convincing?
• Were costumes appropriate?
• Were sound effects too loud?
• Audiences are critics (they express opinions).
• Audiences bring at least four viewpoints to
  theatre
• Human significance
• Social significance
• Artistic qualities
• Entertainment value

5
Audience Viewpoints

• Human significance
• Theatre connects audiences with common humanity.
• Explores what it means to be human beings.
• Social significance
• Theatre has inherent relationship to society
• Audience community.
• Theatre serves as an arena for discussing social
  and political issues.

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Audience Viewpoints

• Entertainment
• Great theatre is always entertaining in some way.
• Even tragedy delights
• Catharsis
• Thrills (ghosts, witches, murders, etc.)
• Theatre is a source of pleasure.
• Aesthetic significance
• We know what we like and what we dont like.
• As we see more theatre, we develop a deeper
  awareness of sights, words, characters, actions,
  actors, sounds, and colors.

7
The Professional CriticThe Critics Job

• Reviews published in morning newspaper following
  official opening-night performance.
• Stanley Kauffmann critic is a kind of
  para-reality to the theatres reality
• Criticism should be good, whether its about good
  or bad theatre.
• Power and, often, hostility of critics creates
  backlash
• Checkhov critics are horse flies . . . buzzing
  about anything.

8
The Professional Critic Services Performed by
Critics

• Recognize and preserve works of good artists for
  future generations
• Publicists of the good and the bad
• Separate wheat from chaff
• Help public decide which productions to see
• Serve as mediators between artists and audiences
• Serve as historians
• Criticism as record of theatrical times

9
The Professional Critic The Critics Creativity

• Are critics more than failed artists?
• Good criticism sometimes written by second-rate
  artists
• George Bernard Shaw expert critic, expert
  playwright
• Criticism a talent
• Combines artistic sensibility, writing skill,
  insight, knowledge of theatre
• Stanley Kauffmann critics creativity is the
  imaginative rendering of experience in such a way
  that it can be essentially experienced by others.

10
The Professional CriticThe Critics Questions

• What is the playwright trying to do?
• How well has he or she done it?
• Was it worth doing?

(c) Patrick Bennett / Courtesy Seattle Repertory
Theatre
A Scene from Seven Guitars by August Wilson
11
The Professional CriticPerformance Notes

• Several journals publish critical descriptions of
  distinguished productions.
• Provide records of productions.
• Offer impressions of trends in avant-garde
  theatre.

12
The Professional CriticTheatre Scholarship

• Majority of critics are university teachers
  and/or professional dramaturgs.
• They analyze plays and productions within
  rigorously researched critical contexts.
• Scholarly critics ordinarily write with a
  comprehensive knowledge of a specific subject
• Playwright
• Performance theories and practice
• Historical period
• Intercultural and/or gender studies

13
The Professional CriticTheatre Scholarship

• Works of great writers of dramatic criticism can
  be of lasting literary value
• Aristotles Poetics
• Harold Blooms Shakespeare The Invention of the
  Human
• New critical methodologies draw from variety of
  disciplines
• Linguistics
• Semiotics
• Structuralism
• Deconstructionism

14
The Professional CriticCritical Standards

• Developed after years of viewing theatre.
• Best critics remain open and flexible.
• Critic and director Harold Clurman
• Whether the critic is good or bad doesnt depend
  on his opinions but on the reasons he can offer
  for those opinions.

15
Working Critics

• Brooks Atkinson on Tennessee Williams A
  Streetcar Named Desire
• Wrote two reviews
• After opening night
• Ten days later
• Both reviews
• Streetcar didnt address social issues.
• Solved no problems.
• Arrived at no moral conclusions.
• It was a work of artaudience sat in presence of
  truth.

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Working Critics

• Brooks Atkinson on Tennessee Williams A
  Streetcar Named Desire
• Organization of second review
• Deals first with plays truthfulness
• Williams poetic language
• Kazans directing and Mielziners scenic details
• Performances of the actors
• Williams career

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Core Concepts

• For the professional critic, the play in
  performance is the end product of the theatres
  creative process.
• At best, the critic enhances our understanding of
  the production or theatre event by enabling us to
  read about the theatrical experience from a
  perspective other than our own or that of our
  friends.
• Theatre criticismcarefully weighed by the
  readeradds a new dimension to the discovery and
  understanding of theatre.