What’s the difference between a reviewer and a critic?

By Cynthia Citron

Cynthia Citron

LOS ANGELES — “A review is something I read before I see a play. A critique is something I read after,” actress Deidrie Henry said.

She was responding to a question about the distinction between reviews and criticism posed by LA Stage Alliance CEO Terence McFarland, who was serving as moderator of a panel convened to discuss “Arts Criticism: How Does It Serve Los Angeles?”

It was the second forum (of five) of the series LA STAGE Talks, initiated by the Alliance to engage the performing arts community in issues of importance to the future of theater in Los Angeles.

The meeting on May 30th, co-hosted by Southern California Public Radio, was held at KPCC’s Crawford Family Forum in Pasadena. The panelists included, in addition to McFarland and Henry, LA Weekly Critic-at Large Steven Leigh Morris, LA STAGE Watch columnist Don Shirley of LA STAGE Times, Alice Tuan — head of Writing for Performance at CalArts,  and educator, poet, and critic Frances Baum Nicholson.

“I think of reviews as individual reports on a particular show,” Shirley said, “and criticism as a broader view of the entire theatrical ecology in our community.”

“I think of criticism as more likely to focus on tearing down or building up. Reviews are analytical. They explain [a play] to the audience so they can decide for themselves whether they want to see it,” Nicholson added. “It’s a combination of educating and providing a framework and vocabulary with the local audience in mind.”

“A theater event is like being invited to someone’s house,” Morris offered. “The reviewer takes a look at the wallpaper and says ‘I like the pattern’ or ‘I don’t like the pattern.’ The critic puts ‘the house’ in context, explaining how it was built and why it was built the way it was.”

“So, to quote New Yorker theater critic John Lahr,  ‘a critic provides meaning and a reviewer provides judgment’,” McFarland summed up. “Criticism is its own literary form,” he added. “What makes it successful?”

“If it’s provocative it can change your world view,” Morris said.

Critics “give people an entrance or a connection to something,” Henry said. As an actress, she added, “I like being able to see that they ‘got’ it or didn’t get it.”

“I learn so much about the critic from the review,” Tuan said. “After having written plays for some 20 years now, you get a little philosophical. In the beginning it’s more about feeding your ego; you want to see yourself exist in public. But they always say if you want to believe the good reviews, you have to believe the bad ones, too. But it’s kind of amazing—people show up and they actually write about it!”

As an Angeleno, Tuan said she writes about “the concept of Los Angeles as far as its being a naturally post-modern city where there’s no center. Except for suburbs with a mall that’s kind of the organizing principle with disparate elements juxtaposing up against each other.

“I think the cue for our moment in time is context and framing. If you can’t answer a question, then at least frame the question so you can start approaching the answer.”

“Should reviewers be part of the theater-making process?” McFarland asked.

“No,” Shirley responded. “It helps to have had theater experience, but it’s not essential.”

[If you have had that experience] “You get a visceral sense of who is driving…what is attracting your attention,” Nicholson said.

“We know the work it takes to get into a character,” Henry said. “If the actor’s work doesn’t honor the course of the story, if the critics don’t believe in it, they have to comment on that.”

“How does criticism inform your process?” McFarland asked.

Henry replied, “The amount of time I’ve taken to study the character and to get into the shoes of the character, I know that when an audience comes in it’s my responsibility to put them into my hands to take them from point A to point B and have them believe the entire thing. So I generally don’t care what the reviewer has to say until after.

‘I can’t, because it’s my job to invest in what I’ve invested in—the research and the study and to do what the director has asked, and to guide the story. And so if I start taking in people’s opinions, then I think that starts to bite into the integrity of what I’ve created.”

Morris, who is a playwright himself, said he “gets accused of having too much compassion for playwrights because I know what they go through.

“But I hate playwrights,” he joked. “And I don’t want to hear about backstage gossip. People can be so gratuitously mean and picky. And actors can be so vicious toward other actors.  There’s so much free-floating anger around these days. And people can express it anonymously on the Internet. It’s ugly and tawdry,” he concluded.

“Blog readers are different,” Nicholson agreed. She acknowledged that as a critic she used to get some hate mail, “but now it’s far more immediate and far more nasty.”

“Everybody comes to a play with their own concept of what they want or expect to see,” Henry said. “But in the end, it’s an opinion.”

“You have to take into consideration that people are sometimes paying $100 a ticket,” Morris said. “You just have to be honest, whether you’re reviewing a high-end ticket or an experimental show.”

“We’re not there to analyze the audience,” Shirley said. “Or to survey them. That’s what surveys are for.”

“Opening night audiences can be a big pain,” Nicholson offered. “They are usually packed with friends and family of the performers, and they usually give everyone a standing ovation. They are more to be ignored.”

“It’s interesting to watch the evolution of theater companies,” Morris said. “When you’ve been around and writing for a long time, you can tell when they’re slipping from their mission.”

“There are so many online reviewers now,” Shirley said, “so I like to get into a dialogue with the community. I’d rather write about broader issues, to make connections between shows and in the context of what’s happening.”

“There are so many things you can do in the theater that we can’t do in any other genre. Hopefully, we can intrigue people into leaving their TV sets,” Nicholson said. “And if you can get kids into the theater, they discover the things that the iPhone can’t do.”

“Our job is to give a sense of LA as a community,” Morris said, to which Tuan added, “and to help define what LA is becoming.”

Morris contributed a lighter note to the evening’s discussion by telling the story of an older couple he met on a New York subway. He could tell by the playbills they were holding that they had just come from seeing an Off-Broadway show that he had written, and he could hear that they were discussing it enthusiastically.

He was emboldened enough to approach them and ask what they had thought of it, and then basked in their praise as they raved about how wonderful it was—the acting and the directing and the story, etc.

Then they wanted to know why he had asked.

“I wrote it,” he said modestly.

“Oh,” they said. “Well, we have a couple of notes…”

As they say, everyone’s a critic.

The next LA STAGE Talk, “Why Are Theater-Makers the Masters of Collaboration?” will focus on directors and designers. It’s scheduled for Monday, May 14, at 7 pm at the [Inside] the Ford, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East. It will be co-hosted by the LA County Arts Commission.

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Citron is Los Angeles bureau chief for San Diego Jewish World.  She may be contacted at cynthia.citron@sdjewishworld.com