Oh — and yes, preview reviews are the rage here in NYC; I can’t speak for Chicago. I know (and feel) it really shortchanges and short-circuits the artistic process. And it’s not about criticism or aiding the art form — it’s about marketing. And let’s be clear: marketers don’t give a shit about the art form.

I like the topic, I’m not sure I have a lot to offer. Preview reviews don’t seem to be on offer in my world.

Is this a common activity in Chicago and NYC?

Leonard, you and I seemed to be the only ones in theatrosphere who considered the notion of the preview review an important topic. Too bad we couldn’t have spurred a broader debate that examined the different ways of writing criticism and talking about art. I regret getting polarized on this with you.

1) re: Michael Wheeler: I don’t actually know if they need photo shoots separate from the performance. My guess would be yes, and probably generally, but not always. As always in commercial theatre, it would have been about the $$$.

2) re: silent nic@knight: Well, you’re gonna think I’m a jerk for what I’m about to say, but please, for sake of God, please learn to use some fucking commas. (See, now you can really hate me!)

If it is as Leonard says, “a question of why some of them are engaging in a process that hurts the life and work of people who ought to be considered their fellow artists?” Then artists and/or their representatives (management or marketing at the theatres) should make the decision on whether preview reviews from bloggers is helpful or hurtful.

The theatre review as it has evolved with all its restrictions on content and length has become a most debased model of theatre criticism. The real crime is that the blogger/critic is almost exclusively employing this hackneyed model for their theatre talk. “When” in the artistic process the blogger publicly writes about a production should be part of a contract with the artists, but that contract for writing need not kowtow to the supposed professionalism or ethics of theatre reviewers.

“Badges?… We don’t need no… stinkin’ badges!”

More of this, please!

Can I just quote from some of my favourite parts?

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“America is such a disaster in terms of social and foreign policy and class and income stratification that finally it’s generating enough heat to manifest itself on stage.”

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“I think stage iconography might be tied to geography. If we’re talking about the West, there’s Times Square, say, or maybe the West End. Or maybe that’s just the obnoxious native New Yorker in me doing the nationalistic shimmy.”

–

“The absolute worst thing in the world is a critic who has never once even tried to do the thing he or she is criticizing. That’s lazy and dumb and backward and imbecilic and it’s basically pretentious and hypocritical and it totally undermines their authority, if you want to use that word, although a better word might be credibility.”

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“There are also quite a few images of men and women in staged scenes that play upon, in subtle and unsubtle ways, the battle of the sexes. You look at them and you think, ‘Wow, she couldn’t vote.’”

Thank you!