cultural_philistine
HAL_9000Confessions of a community theater critic
September 20th 2007 02:09
Had to link to this article by John Barry, who writes for the Baltimore City Paper. Some extracts from it below.
"I got free tickets, they gave me press packets and, on opening night, they gave me cheap champagne. I came home, dissected the play, summed it up, listed three good things about the production and one bad thing, and ragged on one actor."
"I was no longer writing for potential theatergoers, people looking for my advice on whether to shell out for tickets. I wasn't even being read by the actors in the plays. I was being read by their best friends and close relatives."
"The world doesn't care what I write or how I write it; the actors just want the thumbs up."
"But just as I decide to let the world know that this particular production is a disaster, I remember a 20-year-old college kid who got panned in his college newspaper for his leading role in a Sam Shepherd one-act. John Barry was shameless in his overacting. It's precisely these people who give contemporary theater a bad name. Two decades later I still remember the name of the guy who wrote that. Alex Lee. I don't know where he lives, but if he had a less generic name, I'd probably have found his address by now. I remember what he looked like that night, squinting superciliously through his glasses in the front row, passing judgment on me, when all I wanted to do was act. And to be honest, I wasn't that bad in the play. He just caught me on a bad night."
"It happens every time. I can't slam bad community theatre. I want to. I want to be contrarian. I want people to hang on my next word. The dream will never die: getting drunk on martinis at Sardi's after closing down a Disney-sponsored Broadway production, and possibly, later in life, getting a chance to rant on a weekly basis in the opinion pages of the New York Times."
"Then there are the shoebox theatres trying to squeeze out a little applause from people willing to watch. That population -- people who like to watch plays just for the hell of it -- is admittedly getting older and smaller."
"Does the world need one more unread reviewer telling unseen actors to stick to their day jobs?"
~~~
"I got free tickets, they gave me press packets and, on opening night, they gave me cheap champagne. I came home, dissected the play, summed it up, listed three good things about the production and one bad thing, and ragged on one actor."
"I was no longer writing for potential theatergoers, people looking for my advice on whether to shell out for tickets. I wasn't even being read by the actors in the plays. I was being read by their best friends and close relatives."
"The world doesn't care what I write or how I write it; the actors just want the thumbs up."
"But just as I decide to let the world know that this particular production is a disaster, I remember a 20-year-old college kid who got panned in his college newspaper for his leading role in a Sam Shepherd one-act. John Barry was shameless in his overacting. It's precisely these people who give contemporary theater a bad name. Two decades later I still remember the name of the guy who wrote that. Alex Lee. I don't know where he lives, but if he had a less generic name, I'd probably have found his address by now. I remember what he looked like that night, squinting superciliously through his glasses in the front row, passing judgment on me, when all I wanted to do was act. And to be honest, I wasn't that bad in the play. He just caught me on a bad night."
"It happens every time. I can't slam bad community theatre. I want to. I want to be contrarian. I want people to hang on my next word. The dream will never die: getting drunk on martinis at Sardi's after closing down a Disney-sponsored Broadway production, and possibly, later in life, getting a chance to rant on a weekly basis in the opinion pages of the New York Times."
"Then there are the shoebox theatres trying to squeeze out a little applause from people willing to watch. That population -- people who like to watch plays just for the hell of it -- is admittedly getting older and smaller."
"Does the world need one more unread reviewer telling unseen actors to stick to their day jobs?"
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