Class Notes - 2012.11.27 (Derek)

2012.11.27  Class Notes

(As taken by Derek DiMatteo)

Ellen – today, discuss best practices, best methods of reviews.

Amy – we’ll break into two groups by way of breaking up the hegemony at this one table. Make small groups to engage with the review and the methodological “don’ts”.

Ellen – here are both Jones reviews.

[Class broke into two groups, one at each end of the table]

Group 2

[Talking about Black Watch review by Jones]

Jones thinks it is a culinary play and fails to address its politics. He codes his opinions in the language of the theater. Jones is operating under pressure from the newspaper, the theater community/culture/economics, and his own feelings about both the play and Scotland.

[came together]

Jennifer – reviewers seem confused about their audience and purpose (arbiter of taste, archivist). The reviewer might need to state who the audience is. These reviews tend to be full of nearly incomprehensible, elitist allusions.

Amy – when is it an ad-hominum attack benefitting only the reviewer?

Sara – this is a commercial product being done many years after its initial production. It has some problems, but it’s super cool and super fun. And it’s very coded. Shephard’s Pie is a wink and nod at Brecht—it’s made to be consumed, and is not close to Mother Courage. These things are past, though—should have been talked about in 2004. Should give it a little license now.

Andrea – hesitancy to ciritcize the play directly because it is about the military—so there is some cultural pressure.

Amy – Justin’s comment about the marketing. Related to the point of the reviews. There is a really horrible dysfunctional relationship btw NYTimes and the Theater District, considering the number of shows that paper has made or broken.

Justin – who your institution is makes the review differently important (e.g. grant writing).

Sara – anti-intellectual?

Dorothy – not anti-intellectual, but more Jones posturing above that kind of humor.

Ellen – it’s a totally inane understanding of what academic knowledge of this field amounts to.

Whitney – exclusive snarkiness. It’s isolating.

Dorothy – this is a good play for people who like bad things.

Amy – right—you have really poor taste…

Dorothy -- …I wonder what the Times thinks about Applebees.

Amy – it’s one thing to provide a vicious takedown of Spiderman on Broadway—saving people some cash. Same as with the restaurant review. The review gave me a really excellent sense of what eating in that restaurant would be like. Unlike the Jones review of Equivocation, which was just him being an asshole.

Ellen – The Weiss review had a lot in common with the Jones review in that both trying to be overly witty, just like the show. What they did/didn’t like about the show comes out stylistically. Genuine information is being conveyed in the level of style—can see better by reading several reviews by the same critic.

Dorothy – very zingy… snarky things can be made well if they have different layers of why you’re being snarky.

Ellen – the quality of that restaurant is the quality of hyperbole—that’s what he sells on TV and in his restaurants. And that comes through in the review by skewering that very hyperbole.

Sara – the reviewer takes offense that Guy is disrespecting his customers by serving them Applebees and calling it genuine. I had high expectations of you, and you gave us crap.

Ellen – the review is all about the cruel bait and switch.

Dorothy – it’s for customers that don’t want to go to Silvia’s.

Amy – [refs Whitney’s post] part of the role of the reviewer is the establishment of what gets your social standing. They see themselves as gatekeepers of high cuisine or high art.

Jennifer – Grand Forks Herald, woman reviews Olive Garden.

Amy – important distinction between derivative theatrical schlock and what is theatre. Role of reviewer is as reporter to acknowledge something happened and this is the quality and caliber of the experience I had.

Ellen – reviewers rehashed the story. What happens when the reviewer assigns praise? We are all in the business of assigning praise. Must learn to do it subtly. It is an art. The review is setting up a false paradigm for what is praise. It needs to be descriptive, mention what happened. Despite Conquergood’s first article (textocentrism) 40 years ago, still a problem. The notes they can rehash that are most stable is about the script. Demand for contextualization mentioned in Cody’s post. I’m interested to hear from those who witnessed the misogyny, etc. of that play.

Amy – how do we review without being in an ideological camp? Conservative in a certain way, but most plays are not. Where’s the line between articulating an ideological positioning of the play and making an ideological argument?

Dorothy – impossible for intelligent reviewers to avoid their ideological position in the reviews.

Ellen – his comparison to the mining business, not defending freedom. Not entirely in accordance with what BW was trying to engage in its initial performance; if that’s what it has been filtered down to, that’s alarming. Speaks to what happens when a play is several production-generations old. Jones is trying to not say something that is ideologically dangerous.