This Essay is not Something Else

Writing about theater has a minimal impact on our work at Target Margin Theater, yet I care quite a bit about it. It seems to me that this apparent paradox epitomizes theater's situation today.

The ephemeral nature of our work has sponsored a perennially neurotic relationship between the theater and a press that is far more durable and easily disseminated than the actual performances. What appears in print about us necessarily means a great deal to the company. Press coverage gilds our image for our audience, funders, and board of directors, all of whom feel a warm thrill of legitimacy when a Target Margin picture runs in the New York Times, and that thrill translates into real numbers at the box office and the bank. Alternative journals and trade papers turn up the buzz too; the short statement you are reading will surely enhance someone's impression that David Herskovits must be a for-real person in the world of theater, which it will be my pleasure to encourage with well-circulated copies. I care about criticism, but I wish I cared differently. The fact is, critical writing has no impact on our actual work. Only rarely does anyone respond in print to the concerns governing our work in a relevant or informed fashion. Press helps us simply because it exists. That picture in the New York Times could be attached to nearly any copy; we'd still bounce.

It may be unrealistic to expect the mainstream press to care about our aesthetic thinking. Publishers want to attract readers, and their approach usually boils down to two methods. In the first place the reviewer's job is to tell us what to go see. I am one lowly viewer, she says (though it's almost always a man), who must trust my gut; I can't be responsible for the effect of my words. This thinking compounds laziness with dishonesty and absolves the critic of any responsibility to extend the range of his response beyond a comfort zone often calcified by years of writing automatic reviews. It is the journalistic equivalent of the bad actor who justifies himself with "I really feel it." The other common approach to critical writing is what passes for wit. To impress and engage the reader (or someone), writers show off: one trots out quasi-scholarship and dusty erudition, another slings metaphoric bullets from the hip, another is just plain mean. And you know what? The stuff is fun to read, but their pyrotechnics do not substitute for sophisticated critical writing.

It's silly to complain about bad reviews. Especially if, as I am, you're engaged in work that tries to be adventurous, you must be prepared for thoughtful people not to like it. But it is reasonable to demand responses as considered as the productions. The general failure of critical writing today has nothing to do with whether critics dislike or like what we do. It is a failure to pose questions relevant to the terms the work itself sets out. First and foremost the critic must ask, What were the creators trying to do? If we agree that no one but Bialystock and Bloom intends to produce something bad, then we must acknowledge that many people have spent many hours making a series of considered choices to arrive at a particular performance. Why? There's not always an easy answer, and plenty of work is ill-considered or thoughtless. But without a serious attempt to understand a production's motives, a critic will never understand what she has experienced. This is the exit from that tired loop of criticizing something because it is not something else--an earlier production or one with a bigger budget or performed in a particular style. Only after dumping this luggage is it possible to ask whether the production succeeds or fails on its own terms. In the case of thoughtful experimental work, the answer will almost...