Opinion: Drama Critics Are Your Friends

Thoughts from Simon Ogden in Vancouver, B.C., on the role of those of us who write about your productions, published at his blog The Next Stage at Wordpress:


I know, I know, we’ve still got a real love/hate thing going on with the critics, don’t we? it’s terrifying having them somewhere out there in the house (Is that him? The one in the back row? How does he look, happy? Pissy? Bored? I think he looks bored, I’m going to kill myself now), lurking in the dark hunkered over their little pads, judging us, probably hating us…god, why do we even need them at all? Seriously, why do we even invite them? This piece is about the art. The art, dammit!

It is so past due for us to get over this. It’s time to get real perspective on these people and what they are doing. It’s time to talk about them, and to them – to engage with them. Professional criticism is not a one way street, it’s one half of a conversation that you start with your play. We need them. We really do, if we want to ever make money through theatre work, anyway.

The critics don’t work for us. Sure, it’s nice for our progressive marketing if they say some nice things in print about the show, but this can’t be the only reason we care about them, can it? Is their worth to us measured merely as a potential sound bite? Seems a bit mercenary, doesn’t it?

The critics don’t work for our audience either (we do), they are the audience, and what’s more, they know a lot about theatre, and they love it. And they can write, and they like to talk, so people listen. Everybody else at the show is talking to people about you too, but you don’t get to hear what they’re really saying. Now, I know that this is just fine for some of us. There are a lot of theatre artists out there right now who are delicate and sensitive and quite happy making their art for themselves and don’t want to hear what people thought about the work, because they think that it will have an effect on future work. And they’re right, it will. Is that such a bad thing? I guess it depends on what part you want to play in the bigger picture.

Remember, critics don’t make culture, artists do. Critics report on it. Let’s just be clear on our respective jobs. The critics, simply put, work for the theatre. They exist to maintain a conversation about something bigger than all of us individually, something that we all want: a popular, sustainable, trendy theatre. They keep the ball of public awareness in the air, and so we could use more of them, many more, getting the idea of theatre into the heads of more people.

Click to read more at The Next Stage on WordPress. . . .