Oh, hey. I haven't forgotten you. I'm still here, though I'm definitely more there and there right now.
I actually have a post percolating in my head for here that came to me over the weekend; the only question is when to find time to write it. Guess I just wanted to pop in and say I haven't forgotten this place.
In my other few seconds of spare time this week, I'm trying to decide what to be for Halloween. Any ideas?
Last Wednesday, I got a call from an editor at the Guardian asking if I'd be interested in contributing a post about Chicago theater to their Stage blog. They were looking for a quick turnaround in a week that was already very busy here; factoring in the time difference, I had to dash this thing off over a couple of very late nights.
It did feel a little odd to me that I ended up using our current New York exports as a way in, especially given what I'd just written here. But for an audience at the Guardian that has up to now only been reading about theater in London and New York, it seemed like a convenient introduction to why they need to keep up with Chicago theater as well. I think I made a pretty good case. This may or may not become an ongoing thing; let me know what you think.
I should be writing my Under Milk Wood review right now, but just wanted to quickly acknowledge that the Equity Jeff Award nominations were announced tonight. You can read the full list at the Jeffs' site or at the TOC Blog, where you'll also find the latest helping of They Wuz Robbed. I considered switching up the format of TOC's response, but people seem to enjoy TWR—it's a true fact that at least one person has said they'd prefer a TWR mention to the actual nomination.
I was rushed in putting the post together today, and I'm already thinking of more I could have included: What about James Schuett's Tempest costumes? Hanna Dworkin for Picnic? How does it make sense that Ensemble is the sole nod for Scenes from the Big Picture? And I'll keep coming up with more. But I mean it when I say that the Jeff committee got a lot of things right this time around. I personally missed some of the most-nominated shows (Drury Lane's Miss Saigon, TimeLine's Not Enough Air), but I'm glad to note the committee didn't nominate much from shows that I did see and had lukewarm feelings about.
And more importantly, they made a number of good calls that I might not have expected: A double nomination for Tanya Saracho, Jake Cohen for Steppenwolf's Up, Taylor Mac for solo performance, Levi Kreis for Million Dollar Quartet, Spencer Kayden as the only acting nom for Don't Dress for Dinner. (And I'll just say that it's…interesting, if not perhaps a little cruel, for them to nominate one of the kids who played Noah in Caroline, or Change and not the other. Suddenly the Billy Elliot compromise makes more sense to me.)
Your thoughts are welcome, either here or at TOC (though it might make the most sense to consolidate the discussion over there).
I'm reading with some fascination the comment debate on Chris Jones's review of Route 66's High Fidelity, which opened Monday night. I was there, but I'm not reviewing the show for TOC, so I'll leave my own opinions of the show aside until John Beer's review hits on Monday. But the bedrock of the comment by "allison" that kicked off the conversation, and some of the comments that follow, deal in what I consider to be fallacies about a critic's job description; they also address some of what I talked about in my post here earlier this week. Not that he needs it from me, but I feel compelled to defend Chris a bit.
Allison says:
chris, theatre in this country is suffering right now. you are a chicago theatre critic. by your own words "america's hottest theatre city." you are supposed to support and encourage theatre in this town.
Bullshit.
Part of what a Chicago theater critic is charged to do is to support and encourage good theater in this town. It does no one any good to encourage bad theater. A while back I was cornered at an opening by an administrator of another theater company who berated me about a bad review I'd written; this person used a variation on this trope and a number of its corollaries, some of which Allison also employs: these people worked so hard on this, other people in the audience were clearly enjoying themselves.
The absolute WORST thing we can do as critics is to be soft on a show we didn't enjoy because people worked so hard on it. As other commenters at the Trib have noted, if we put the hard sell on shows about which we have significant reservations, what happens to the audience members who fork over their money based on our review and find themselves with the same reservations? How much harder will it be for us to convince those same readers to take a chance on trusting us again?
Being supportive of and constructive about Chicago theater is something I personally strive for, and I relish having an ongoing dialogue with the theater-makers of Chicago and the larger world (which is, after all, what this blog has largely consisted of). But in my reviews, I'm primarily a servant of the general readership, and I have to give them my honest opinion. (And often my honest opinion can double as the best constructive theater-maker criticism I can impart, even when it's What were you thinking?) As for that fallback about how everyone else was having a good time: Transformers 2 is on track to be one of the biggest box-office hits of the summer. Does that mean Roger Ebert should have gone easier in his review? No. His readers expect his measured, subjective opinion, just as Chris's readers, and mine and every other critic's, expect ours.
To get back to my post from the other day, Allison seems particularly upset about the Trib's star rating (2.5 out of 4! Not actually bad!!!), which is something the paper only recently adopted. To answer Andrew's and Evan's comments, as well as some I received on Twitter, I find the star system reductive whether it's base-four, -five or -six, and I'd rather do without it at all, as TOC did for its first 15 months or so. I'd prefer the content of the review speak for itself, which is why I've lately stopped posting the stars on the web section front, so online readers are at least forced to click through to the words before they can see the snap judgment, which I often spend more time worrying about (and which, as Allison's concern attests, draws too much attention to itself). As long as we're stuck with them, though, I'm happier with the five-star scale than the Spinal Tap six. Your thoughts?
I want to point quickly (and probably futilely, heading into a long holiday weekend) to my latest post at the Time Out blog. Amid the hubbub over Emily Glassberg Sands's report last week on bias against female playwrights, and especially given the sensationalized reporting on her finding that women in power as artistic directors and literary managers were more biased against women playwrights than male leaders were, I wanted some feedback. I asked about a dozen of Chicago's female ADs and LMs (and one key dude) for their reactions to the study. To my delight, nine of them replied.
As for my own opinion, I haven't had time to check out the full 170-page doc yet, but based on the published reporting I think I find some of Sands's methodology suspect—Isaac has noted the discussion raging on one of the theater-related listservs, which I've been following as well. I'd also note that doolee.com, while sometimes useful, is far from what I'd consider a reliable primary source; neither Emily Schwartz nor Tanya Saracho is represented, which strike me as fatal omissions if you're interested in who's getting buzz and commissions and productions in Chicago. But even a potentially flawed study keeps the conversation going; as others have said: This isn't a final judgment, it's a starting point.
Last weekend I attended the Chicago Media Future Conference, or rather what will be the first of many events under that umbrella title. I went in part to support my friend Scott Smith, one of the organizers, but also because I have an interest in this stuff, both vested and non. As one of the (conventional wisdom would have it) few who've made the upstream swim from online to print, I've got a stake in the discussions about how print media will survive and/or (emphasis on the or) evolve.
The two panels last Saturday were, I thought, refreshingly less doom-y and backwards-facing than some other recent assemblies on the topic here in Chicago. But as an arts journalist, I did feel—more in hindsight than in the moment—a bit excluded. My impression is that these conversations as a whole are being dominated by hard-news journos. Investigative and civic-affairs reporting is obviously vital and should be emphasized in any discussions about the future of journalism. But for all the hand-wringing in the arts communities about how to deal with shrinking media coverage—the last time I'd been in the space where the CMFC was held, Columbia College's Film Row Cinema, it was as a panelist for arts orgs on that very topic—I'm starting to wonder how seriously we're being considered in the larger whither journalism discussion.
The observation that's really stuck with me over the last ten days was made after the conference, at the informal afterparty down the street at the Wabash Tap. My friend Andrew Huff, the proprietor of Gapers Block, told me that two or three people had separately suggested to him in recent weeks that the future career model for journalists might be a lot like that of actors. That is to say, only a fraction of a percent of those who go into the profession will get steady jobs (staff positions/TV gigs) or achieve high incomes (columnists/celebrities); the majority will go from gig to gig or project to project, and guaranteed employment for journalists will become the exception, not the norm. Those stumping for full-time staff writers at publications will come to sound like evangelist outliers, much as those who campaign for resident repertory ensembles do now. The majority of people who try to make a go of it as working journalists will do so, like those who go into acting, because they're driven by a passion for the work. Many will likely work for little or no pay in hopes of establishing a career (Non-Equity/bloggers? And if we're talking bloggers, isn't this already the case, cough cough?) [Please note none of this is necessarily my opinion, but me relaying and expanding upon what was laid out by others.]
It's a compelling parallel that, oddly, had never occurred to me before. Your thoughts?
Just finally got around to listening to Anne Nicholson Weber's Talk Theatre in Chicago interview with sound designers Nick Keenan, Ray Nardelli and Joshua Horvath. There's a lot of thought-provoking stuff (especially in the second half of the interview, when they get a little more free-form) about American theatergoers' relationship with sound design; as Anne admits, many regular theatergoers (including critics) don't know a lot about what goes into the sound designer's job. I was particularly compelled by their opinions on body miking, which I often find in the big touring houses (or even in relatively smaller proscenium spaces like the Goodman's Albert theater) makes me feel like there's a sheet of Plexiglass between the audience and the stage. The specific productions they discuss (Goodman's Rock 'N' Roll and Court's The Piano Lesson) have both, unfortunately, already closed, but it's still worth a listen.