Hot conversations
Update: Lyn Gardner at the Guardian weighs in on the critic/blogger question with a typically thoughtful post which claims that blogs have given criticism a new lease of life. Notably, both she and Billington are running these debate on blogs...
THE blogosphere is humming like a bottle full of bees, so a quick whip-around of various buzzes seems in order. Our favourite topic - the whys and wherefores of theatre criticism - has been given a twirl by the Guardian's Michael Billington, who briskly draws the line between blogging and professional theatre criticism. (Me, I am that line...) It's prompted a fair bit of chat from both bloggers and print critics and Andrew Haydon, another line-dancer, has his own thoughts on the question. Closer to home, over at Minktails, Ming-Zhu Hii asks what keeps critics inspired, prompting some self-reflection from tyro-critic Avi Lipski over at The Rest Is Just Commentary.
Meanwhile, the Sydney/Melbourne convo is in full cry in the comments after my sermon (I've now taken off my clerical collar), and Nicholas Pickard at Arts Journalist suggests that we should have the Actors Company down here. I'm not sure that I follow the logic (and there may be one or two logistical problems) but yes please...
5 comments:
"I'm not sure that I follow the logic..."
Maybe all that fresh air and sea got to my head!
:-)
I'd prefer it Melbourne made one of our own ... and the one that's up there could stay where it is.
You are quite right Geoffrey- get your own in Melbourne. Find an artistic director with the drive and passion to lobby the state government for five years and persuade them to fund it, travel all over the country and the world to cajole and inspire the best actors, directors and designers to come to work with you, and you'll have one too! Although you will have to suffer the slings and arrows of minnows who could never dream of achieving what you have. But that's life, so you hold your head high, walk tall and f*** em all.
I guess I find it a little depressing that criticism moves so quickly to asking, why bother? As I keep saying, there are criticisms to be made and questions to be asked; I don't understand why they then seem inevitably to mean that it's not worth doing, or that it's a total failure. I can't see that at all, and I don't understand why Sydney isn't proud of it. (Hovering behind this is George Devine's passionate defence of "the right to fail", which isn't of course the right to make shonky work, but the right to experiment and risk. That's how he did all those amazing things at the Royal Court, after all).
Our own ensemble would certainly be a brilliant way to mark the MTC's move into its brightly coloured new home. It's probably more likely at the Malthouse, which has already said it wants one of its own. Well, we'll dream on...
Would it be fair if Pamela Rabe was in both?
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