Raising the Bar: Toward a New Criticism

Photo by Omar Willey

ERNEST. But is such work as you have talked about really criticism?

GILBERT. It is the highest Criticism, for it criticises not merely the individual work of art, but Beauty itself, and fills with wonder a form which the artist may have left void, or not understood, or understood incompletely. - Oscar Wilde

Art thrives only when criticism thrives. When criticism is poor or is non-existent, artists suffer far more than they know. An honest estimate of theatrical criticism as currently practiced in the Seattle community shows that it is generally irrelevant at best, unhelpful in the main and downright toxic at its worst.

What most people accept as the role of a critic is simply to record of one's subjective impressions of a show. Thumbs up, thumbs down. Loved him, hated her. Had a smoking hot date but sat in uncomfortable seats. Couldn't concentrate on the play because the lead actor was bulging and the actress used a brand of makeup that is so out of fashion. Liked the ingenue's legs. This play is worth 10 dollars but not 15. Virtually all reviews of plays in Seattle boil down to this level of triteness. Such reviews exists solely to provide a consumer guide on how to waste some time on a weekend.

Because this sort of criticism has proven useless to them, artists have maintained that all criticism is useless. I have seen very recently more than one call to stop inviting critics to shows. The idea is that the theater would do just fine without critical opinions. This is extremely naive. As Shaw wrote, "If a critic is an honest critic, he will write the same notice from a purchased seat as from a presented one. He is not free to stay away if he is not invited: a newspaper must notice a new play, just as much as it must notice an election." Some might retort that a performance can defend itself if it is good, but how often does this really happen? So the artists are stuck with yet another reviewer who is stuck in the thumbs up/down twilight zone. They continue to tolerate this sort of bogus criticism because they have long since forgotten what real criticism is - or, more importantly, what it could be.

"The vital critic," wrote Peter Brook, "is the critic who has clearly formulated for himself what the theater could be - and who is bold enough to throw this formula into jeopardy each time he participates in a theatrical event." How many critics have the foggiest idea what the theater could be? How many have even asked themselves the question? It is even more important for them to ask this question when artists and audiences have failed to ask it themselves.

I make the assumption of an intelligent public. This might seem a heresy. Based on the writing in most Seattle reviews, the general view is that the public is filled with semi-literate morons who cannot read more than two sentences without taking a coffee break and can only be reached through their groins. Contrary to popular wisdom, however, audiences are created not found. Give the public intelligent writing and once they are done complaining about their lack of familiarity with it, they will accept it and even come to expect it. Intelligent audiences desire intelligent criticism, even if they rarely see it, and such criticism will take a different form from what is fashionable.

The type of criticism Seattle artists desperately need establishes the need not only for art but also for discussion about art. It takes artists seriously who wish to and deserve to be taken seriously. It preserves their beautiful, ephemeral work for posterity and prevents it being buried in the glut of "entertainment options." It continues the dialogue initiated by their art, long after a single performance has vanished. It continues the hunger for the powerful experiences that art evokes and keeps the art alive and healthy. The critic must engage the art humbly and fairly on as many levels as possible and create a public dialogue that reveals the importance of theater itself to the intellectual and emotional, spiritual life of our civilization. Anything less is a waste.

If you doubt this, reconsider. Most artists would not even be artists if not for critics. What would anyone know of Homer, if not for critics like Aristarchus, the Librarian of Alexandria? The little Greek drama that remains was preserved by Byzantine critics. The reason no one remembers a King Lear as a play wherein Lear lives to see Edgar and Cordelia marry and live happily ever after is because Coleridge, Carlyle and Hazlitt loved Shakespeare enough to restore his texts to their original state. The first steps toward a respectable American drama in the 20th Century relied upon the writings of Stark Young, George Jean Nathan, Edith Isaacs and St. John Ervine to nurture them when the public was hostile and confused. The revitalization of off-Broadway in the 1960s and 1970s was due in no small part to the influence of Brecht and other European dramatists, which had been brought to America, translated and anthologized by Eric Bentley.

These critics did not simply provide a Zagat guide to the audiences of their day. They viewed their critical activity as part of a larger goal. This goal is the same for artists and critics: to move away from a deadly, vapid, irrelevant theater toward a greater yet largely undefined theater.

To accomplish this goal, critical writing must become deeper. As space shrinks in the daily and weekly papers, this is difficult. But on the Web where space is a non-issue, there is no excuse for a lack of probity. An audience that cares only about what is hip to see or is looking for a transitory thrill can readily find a newspaper to fill their void - papers are largely mired in that Zagat mentality - but an audience genuinely interested in ideas in art needs something else to read. Critics on the Web should respect this.

Critical activity must also become broader. It must encourage the dramatic art outside of the playhouse. Critics have to look at new plays with an openness and a forgiveness - especially when they do not truly understand its relation to the world around it - and work much harder to establish context. Seattle theater critics needs to be aware of not only what happens in American drama at large, but also the rest of the world, and not just the English-speaking world. Similarly, accessible anthologies of world drama, American drama and Seattle drama could only benefit everyone.

Audiences, too, need to become interested in more than simply passing three hours of their night. They need to help preserve the value of theater by taking risks and talking about it outside of theater buildings. When was the last time you were at a party and heard two people who were not theater insiders discussing a play? If the theater is to thrive (it will always survive) it must arise from the ashes of intellectual irrelevance and become something people think about and talk about, beyond mere "reviews."

To turn away from mere reviews of the object itself but toward discussions of "Beauty itself," the job falls, as always, to critics. Artists are too busy creating work to be full-time critics - as they should be. Audiences provide very fine press and publicity - nothing is as powerful as word of mouth advertising - but they are lousy preservationists. If all of this is left in their hands, none of this will happen. The critic, in all his devotion, needs to do his utmost to ensure that it does.