No Comment

by Jamie Dunsdon

Has anybody been following the whole Jeff Haslam thing up in Edmonton?  Normally I'm not very interested throwing kerosene on the gossip that plagues our business, but this conflict is interesting for a lot of non-Jeff-Haslam-related reasons.

If you haven't been watching, here's the scoop: Only Here for the Food is a food blog in Edmonton written by Sharon Yeo, and though the site seems primarily devoted reviewing Edmonton restaurants, Yeo shakes it up every now and then with a theatre review.  Yeo's blog recently became the object of national media attention when she reviewed the Teatro la Quindincia production of Stewart Lemoine's The Abassador's Wives, staring, among others, Quindincia's Artistic Director, Jeff Haslam.  This review was all kinds of positive, and though she's been a little more critical of past productions, she seems to be a devoted fan of Jeff Haslam.  Or was.  Haslam responded to the review in the comment section:

You come across as snotty and arrogant. I absolutely despise your pretension that you are “a reviewer” in any professional way. In fact every time I read one of your posts I think “I am not smitten with this weird women like her icky friends seem to be. I wish she’d stop subscribing to my theatre company, because she seems like such a pretentious doof. I wonder if she knows that her endlessly stuck-up self-important little reviews are deeply offensive to those of us who bust our buts for next to nothing to bring a little entertainment to this distant northern city? I wonder if she knows that her crappy 19 bucks goes to less than 40% of what it costs to pay all the artists she isn’t always smitten by? Do us all a favour lady. Write about food and take your entertainment dollar elsewhere.
Sincerely
Jeff Haslam

From here, the whole thing exploded.  If your favourite soap opera is dull this week, I recommend checking this saga out.  Many responded to Haslam's comment in shock or disgust, even going so far as to boycott all of Haslam's future shows and recommending that the Quindincia Board consider firing Haslam for alienating the community. Others responded in support of Haslam, expressing outrage that Yeo has no right to review, that a "blog" review is inherently amateur.   These were usually anonymous.  We can assume this means they were written by artists.

What's more interesting to me than any of the specific details about this particular battle is the controversy surrounding the theatre critic and the blogosphere.  I hadn't heard of this until a colleague mentioned it to me over lunch last week.  She pointed out that bloggers such as J. Kelly Nestruck (Globe and Mail) have written in support of Yeo, and that this shouldn't surprise anyone: bloggers support bloggers.  Some have suggested this is because bloggers are the only ones who READ blogs.

This is a blog.

Are you a blogger?

The cool thing about the theatrical blogosphere or theatrosphere is that it has one thing many other blogs don't: readers.   Verb's own blog, though only eight months old, receives hundreds of hits a day.  Some blogs read  like teenage diaries, but Canadian theatre blogs are often insightful, informative, and exciting forums for discussing the issues of our industry.   I was introduced to the theatrosphere by way of Praxis Theatre's outstanding Toronto-based blog, which is really more of an online culture magazine, with regular contributors and editorials.  After Praxis, I became familiar with a number of other Canadian theatre blogs, several of which are listed in our Blogroll to the right.  A couple of years ago, I had no idea these sites exist, and now I check them almost daily.  If you are theatre professional in Canada, you should too.

The thing that interests me about the Jeff Haslam thing is that it demonstrates that we don't just secretly enjoy reading theatre blogs, we need them.  It reveals that online theatre reviews have a future that print media does not share.  People want an online forum for discussion.  People want to be able to comment.

In a world of Wikipedia, in a world where we expect not just to have access to information, but also to contribute to it, to express our voices, I can't help but wonder if theatre criticism is in for a paradigm shift.  Before the wikirevolution, we relied on experts for our information.   Want to know something about zebras?  Ask a zoologist who studies zebras.  Want to know which play to see?  Read a theatre review in your paper.  Since the information revolution, we've stopped asking only experts and started combing our collective knowledge together to form a databases of information that anyone can access.

What's more, we - you and I - know how to navigate this information.  You understand that Wikipedia isn't 100% reliable. You get that you should never quote Wikipedia if you want to be respected.  But it's still the first place you look if you want some basic information about zebras.  Fun fact: studies show that Wikipedia is more reliable than the Encyclopedia Britannica.

In a post-modern world in which all opinions are valid, in which news organizations have stopped reporting facts and started reporting opinions, it should not shock us then that we're moving away from experts (theatre critics) and moving toward wikis (theatre blogs and the comments posted below them).  We've become the borg.

Think that sounds ridiculous?  I'm not sure if ATP is still doing this, but they used to invite their audience members to write their opinions of the productions on pieces of paper and tack them up in the lobby.  How is that any different?  The only thing I can think of is that we're now making it electronic.  FFWD magazine has a listing of all the shows going up in Calgary in 2010/11.  They could allow online readers to post comments below each show and I'd probably read that.  I remember a couple of years ago at the Edmonton fringe, you could visit their wireless cafe and post your personal reviews of each show you'd seen on their site.  I definitely read those.

Ironically for Sharon Yeo, perhaps the theatre reviewer will go the way of the published food critic.  Try this.  One of my new favourite restaurants in Calgary is La Viena in Kensington, and if you Google this restaurant, you'll not only find its location, but also a list of reviews written by anonymous users.  What's to stop the same kind of Google search from being used to rate theatre?  If that happens, the role of the theatre reviewer will have to change dramatically if it doesn't disappear entirely (or should I say, if we don't assimilate the reviewer into our hive).  Perhaps the blog format is the only way to keep an expert involved at all, even if the quality of said expertise is questionable.

Is this revolution a bad thing?  I guess that depends on what you value.  Is it better to have small numbers of people with a lot of knowledge, or a lot of people with a medium amount of knowledge?  Either way, the theatre industry is looking for ways to re-engage its audience base, and what better way than by allowing its audience to share their expertise?  Everyone's opinion is as valid as the next.  "It's all subjective, right?"   Resistance is futile.

...Did you know zebras are actually BLACK with WHITE stripes?

Seriously, watch CNN one day.  Rick Sanchez has an entire show devoted to checking his Twitter account.

Comments

[Mark Twain]

I agree that the theatre industry needs to prepare itself, or rather, ACCEPT that theatrical criticism is not what it used to be. As theatre becomes a more collaborative experience for artists and audience, as more and different kinds of folks begin attending the theatre, a new kind of dialogue is necessary. The internet provides a unique and frightening opportunity for everyone and anyone to have a voice, and with that comes a certain responsibility. We have to honour everyone's right to be a 'critic', but we also have to be discerning. Everybody with a computer doesn't know what constitutes great art. Or do they? It's up to the informed theatre artists and audience members to know their stuff, and spot the difference between a blogger with a bone-to-pick, and someone who is really teaching us something more with their criticism.

I agree heartily with Dusdon's post, the revolution is here and there is certainly a 'new' way of looking at theatre, thanks to the blogosphere. Where I disagree, is the question of whether or not we had any adequate reviewers in the first place? Are we moving away from "the professionals?" That would imply we had some to begin with. Maybe I read too much Peter Brook, and I believe the critic has an essential role in raising the bar, and offering an objective outside eye- but in Calgary there is a notable absence of legitimate critics, and worthy criticism. If I need to seek out a blog to find a review that isn't simply an overly-biased, glorified plot synopsis: THEN TO THE INTERWEBZ I GO.

One last thing. I think artists have a responsibility to be honest about, and critical of, the work they see. But it is a slippery slope when we become the enemies of our own kind. We owe it to each other to be critical, and push each other to make better work, but we need to watch that our judgments don't become crippling. We need to bolster one another, and approach the theatre we see with the knowledge that those who created it, worked just as hard as we do on the projects that we love. It doesn't mean accept mediocrity, it doesn't mean be complacent. It just means be gentle. Be gentle to each other, and to the bloggers who are taking the time to experience our work.

Keep up the good work Verb.

[DvB]

I'm in favour of blogger reviews and the democratization of critical response, particularly in smaller artistic communities (I include Calgary in this category) where there isn't a multiplicity of strong, informed critical voices.

I don't think that blogging is a -replacement- for strong art critics, however. Professional critics, ideally, are well-versed in aesthetic discussions on the international, national, and local levels. They understand where the artists are coming from--their past work, their aesthetic parents, the overall pattern of development of work within the artist's genre, and provide important context within which they evaluate a work. I don't want to see that go by the wayside in favour of the all-too-common 'it just didn't do much for me' kind of criticism.

I miss Martin Morrow.

[Jamie]

I don't want to see educated critics go anywhere either. If the blog format becomes the popular forum for discussing a particular show, my hope is that the critic is the one leading that discussion. That is, the reviewer writes the review, and others are welcome to comment, agree, or disagree.

The tricky thing in many cities is that there aren't enough reviewers LEFT to do the work. Ideally, every show should get three or four different reviews to give the audience (and the artists, I suppose) a fair sampling. It seems that the only time this happens anymore is at the Fringe. In fact, I just read a review of the production of I, Claudia that was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe. It was performed by Kristen Thomson, and if the success in Canada says anything, this was going to be a hit in Scotland. Well, this particular reviewer gave it a 2/5. If that was the only review Jane Audience Member read, she may not have attended...unless she read the comments below the review. I guess my point is, I don't mind seeing a shift, as long as we don't lose expertise in the moving truck. http://www.list.co.uk/article/28770-i-claudia/

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