FAQ & Rebuttals
We attempt to respond to questions and rebuttals we assume the arguments in this document will elicit.
- How will audiences know what shows to see without bad reviews?
- Previews, interviews, word of mouth, venue’s relationship with artists and audience, social media
- The presumption that audiences’ only avenue for finding theatre is a review is false, certainly in this moment in history
- Theaters should offer much more on their websites about the plays to help potential audiences decide for themselves if they want to patronize the production.
- You can’t like the good reviews and reject the bad.
Good reviews are helpful in the exact proportion that bad reviews are damaging. We want to limit damage, especially because it comes from subjective sources. Again: no one opinion should have that much destructive power. - If you want better reviews you should direct, perform, produce better plays.
Better is subjective. Better is relative. Better according to whom? Who decides what better, beautiful, meaningful, important is? Every audience member should decide on their own, not be told by one singular human. - People come to know particular critics and read them because of their personal perspective. They don’t assume that the critic speaks for everyone.
Our quarrel is not with anyone expressing their perspective, our quarrel is with anyone’s perspective having the power to make or break a piece of theatrical storytelling on their own. Our quarrel is with anyone being the default gatekeeper to success. Our quarrel is with a system that lifts and prioritizes and empowers one voice to define worthiness. No one speaks for everyone, but currently one critic can destroy the life of a play. No one should have that power. No one. - What about productions that are actually poorly done?! There is bad theatre sometimes!
Don’t review it. Let the audiences decide. Audiences will or won’t tell their friends. You don’t need to hate it for us. - Reviewers are a check on the system.
Critics are not a check on the system, they are the system. They are the final gatekeepers to perceived worthiness and success (not to mention awards, future jobs and relationships with artists) and they wield undue and undeserved power over the lives and fates of artists. Audiences should decide what they like based on their own interests and taste. Audiences and artists don’t need a check, and they don’t need this current system. - Reviewers are independent of and not a part of the theatre community and thus have no responsibility to “ help it”. Our job is to report, not to support.
False. Critics at major regional newspapers have a large impact on theatre and thus, of course they are part of the community. They are the weather system that affects the entire landscape of a region. They are part of the ecosystem (cultural, financial, philosophical), and cannot deny that their published opinion has a major impact on theatre and theatre artists. Anyone who says otherwise is willfully ignorant to the lived experience of theatre artists. Any critic who denies affecting theatre should not be given the power over theatre. If you don’t understand and acknowledge your power, you don’t deserve it. - Reviewers save audiences from wasting money.
This presumes that you know what audiences deem worthy of their money. And frankly, many of us have lost more money on rave reviews that encouraged us to patronize productions we regretted. This argument once again does not acknowledge the tangible impact of bad reviews on artists and institutions. - Reviewers write for audiences not artists.
Everyone is an audience member and everyone has an opinion. Reviewers are one person; they write for an audience of one. That’s the only one anyone can accurately articulate. - If I only write positive reviews I may not have enough to write about every week.
You don’t have to write only reviews. See our section called THE FUTURE for other ways to engage with the art of criticism and arts journalism. - You are lowering the standard in a region by putting guardrails on a reviewer’s reviews.
Again, whose standard? Who decides? Why is their judgement superior to anyone else’s? How/why/when did they get this position of power? Who checks their power? We are not lowering a standard by insisting that one judgment is insufficient to speak for a diverse and varied community It is also not lowering a standard by having an honest discussion of the consequence of critic’s reviews. - Everyone is a critic and deserves an opinion.
Correct. But some people’s opinions can close a Broadway show, or cancel a regional production’s extension costing artists wages and futures. Everyone deserves an opinion, but no one opinion should be able to ruin productions, careers or futures. - First Amendment. Don’t tell reviewers what to write.
- We’re not telling critics what to write, we’re asking them to take responsibility for what they write and its impact on working artists.
- We’re hopeful to nudge the profession to acknowledge their impact, own their part in the theatre ecosystem, and examine the structural patterns at play that limit full and diverse representation and cut off conversation in favor judgement.
- But if you’ve ever been on the end of a bad review that can close a play and dissuade audiences from attending, it sure does feel like the reviewers are telling playwrights what to write and telling theaters what to produce.
- What about calling out / calling in toxic or dangerous productions or people? That could cancel a show too. Should critics “not review” shows that traffic in racist, homophobic, sexist tropes; or theatre makers that create unsafe working environments?
Of course, there is a difference between takedown culture and toxic and damaging rhetoric versus calling out racist, homophobic, transphobic, and sexist tropes that create an unsafe working and theatre-going environment. Frankly, all the more reason to have as diverse a body of critics as possible. We want to differentiate between aesthetic-based criticism, which are rooted in subjective, arbitrary predilections and the social responsibility of calling out unsafe producing and excessive stereotyping. - Newspapers are already under pressure and underfunded, we don’t have money to reform criticism.
We refuse to believe that “no” or “not yet” is a good enough answer. We refuse to support a system that won’t examine itself and fix what is broken and harming the art form it reviews. Change is possible. - What happened to agree to disagree?
Hard to do when one person has the power to ruin a production that hundreds of people worked on by their disagreement and everyone else is forces to accept that with no recourse or justification or conversation. - But this is part of the game, this is what to expect when you work in theatre
Why? This game does not serve theatre nor represent the diversity of audiences. It only serves critics and papers. This is their game and we are done playing it. - What about all the good that reviewers can do for productions? It’s not all slams. You can’t have the good without the bad.
Again we are interrogating who decides what’s good and bad, why they have that singular authority, and why it’s so damaging and unrepresentative when that power is hoarded. Good reviews are great. We’d like to see more of them. You can have suggestions without rejections, you can lift up without tearing down, you can be honest without being cruel. - Who are you people?!
Working artists and theatre makers who realized we don’t all have to make theatre this way, fearing for our work and our livelihoods with every review from a major paper. - Why are you doing this now?
Like many artists we reevaluated everything during the pandemic. Like so many of her colleagues unpack and examine every feature of making theater commercially and regionally in America… except criticism. We decided now is the time to have a long overdue conversation (and to lift up those people who have been sounding this alarm for decades before), and demand a better way. - You just hate criticism.
Nope. We hate power hoarding, gate keeping, and lack of accountability. - You just hate critics.
Nope. We want more critics, not less. The reason things are so imbalanced is because of a shortage of voices (cause by terrible loss of newspapers and outlets), which concentrates power in an unrepresentative few. - Other artforms get reviewed. What makes theatre so special and in need of reform?
Other artforms last longer. Music, film, novels can be experienced in perpetuity. Their viewership or readership can find those art pieces long after the premiere allowing audiences to find them long into the future. Theatre is temporary. If a bad review dissuades audiences they never get to find that production again. The damage is final. The review cuts off an audience from ever experiencing that production. - It sounds like you don’t want any reviews at all. What about the long history of literary criticism?
We value literary criticism and want it, and all art journalism to thrive and expand. But we also want a safe community that may not always agree with us, but that consists of power players (major critics being in the category) who recognize their power. Mostly we want the audience to decide for themselves what is valuable to them.
We certainly think journalists should call out / call in productions that traffic is racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, colonial, ablesit, fatphoic narratives and characterizarions. The work needs to be done. - You’re just trying to make theatre easy.
We are trying to make theatre democratic, accessible, representative, resilient, and a viable career for more than a select few.
Until you have spent the same years of your life creating new work, investing in artists, developing, designing, rewriting, rehearsing, fundraising, producing on the long road to any single new play’s premiere production… then tell us how easy theatre is. - Everyone gets criticized. Toughen up.
Then critics can surely handle being criticized as well.