Some Self Imposed Rules For Reviewing

I know quite a few people who are professional stand ups, actors, writers and directors. Occasionally, they are all of those, and more. What unites a great many of them is their shared hatred of reviewers. If it’s not hatred, then it’s a sense of bored dismissal, an agreement that reviewers generally don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. Their dislike includes the reviewers who actually like them, and give them positive write-ups, which seems at least fair. Another thing that all these performers share is the knowledge that I myself am an occasional reviewer, which as you might imagine, comes up reasonably rarely in conversation, presumably in a failed attempt to avoid any awkwardness.

What then, is the point of a reviewer? Or perhaps more crucially, what is the point of being a reviewer? Is it just to see shows for free? Absolutely not (Obviously it is that a little bit). Is it a misplaced confidence in the importance of your own opinion and voice? Ditto, and (ditto). For me, it’s increasingly about my own learning. I myself am an actor, director, writer (at least that’s what I tell myself), and it’s fascinating to see what other people are doing with the same ideas that I’m working on in any given year. Plus, it’s just interesting to have a conversation about whatever it is you’ve just seen. It doesn’t even matter that, in the whirlwind of the internet, not many people are going to listen. Let’s be honest: that’s how usual conversations work, too.

There are certainly different types of reviewers, ones that are funny, ones that are incoherent, ones that simply retell the plot of what they see, and ones that are desperate to show off how much they know. I’m still trying to work out what kind of reviewer I want to be, and I suspect that up until now I’ve been all of those things. Well, perhaps not the first one. What I think a reviewer has no choice about is that they have to be interesting to read. That’s all a review is, after all: a collection of words in the same space. And as such, the only purpose – the only point – is to have those words read. So they may as well be at least not boring.

To that end, I try to impose upon myself certain rules when writing a review. These rules do not (and should not) apply to every single reviewer, and indeed I’m pretty sure I’ve failed at a couple of these rules in more than a few reviews, particularly when it’s the middle of the fringe festival and I’m trying to write six reviews in half as many hours and my thesaurus has given up trying to give me alternatives for ‘compelling’. But as self-imposed rules go, I think they’re pretty sound, and I share them with you now in the interests of making myself a better writer, and possibly filling up another blog entry.

·         Say Something Nice. I think it’s extraordinarily rare that you’ll sit through something that doesn’t have something to recommend it. It may be a production that has somehow missed the central message of its own script, but there may be a supporting actress that is always magnetic to watch. I’m not saying that you have to lie – after all, there are potentially audience members who are reading your review in order to sway their decision as to where to go tonight, and it won’t do anyone any favours if you say only good things when it’s actually a pretty shoddy production – but if you can’t find something positive to say (even if it’s a piece of backhanded hackery like ‘I liked what they were trying to achieve’), then you’re probably in the wrong job. Your parents managed the old ‘well, the set was impressive’ lie at your first production of Jocasta Baby Killer, so you can find something nice to say about the LX design. Oh, and by the way: when I say that you might be sitting through a bad production – do sit through it. Until the end. Yes, I know audiences say that life is too short for bad theatre, and if you leave early you might get hold of the good bratwursts before the stall sells out, but they have the excuse of being the public, and the public are expected to be rude. If you’re reviewing – for a newspaper, or for an online blog read only by you – you stay until the bows. It’s the only way to write an accurate review.

·         Say Something Quotable.  This gets at the heart of what the point of a reviewer is, I think. Your words are your stock in trade, even if you’re an unpaid freelance. I have read plenty of beautifully written reviews, full of fulsome praise, excitedly claiming the show as the best thing the reviewer has seen … but the review itself is useless. Because of the way that the sentences are structured, there’s nothing that the media team can cut and paste to use on posters. And, despite what you may think, most groups are wary of editing quotes from reviews to make more sense in shorter form. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen, however. It still has to be true, however. You need to tread a very fine line between being nice and quotable, and just hacking out a line that’s so relentlessly positive that you know it’s going to be used on the poster. Just remember, if it’s on the poster, your name is attached to it.

·         Say Something Funny (Or Interesting). I have problems with this, I admit. Despite that, I think it’s the most important of my own self-imposed rules. Local press are notoriously bad at filling up most of their word count with a bland synopsis of the plot. That’s not a review: that’s a bland synopsis of the plot. What I try to do in my reviews (and probably increasingly fail at, the deeper into a month long fringe I get) is to have a discussion. There are plenty of reviewers who are excellent at reporting what happened on stage, or how successful the costume choices were, and on occasion, I will be one of those reviewers. But I also like to be a bit chatty in my reviews, veer off subject slightly (as much as my editor will allow me), and discuss my own, personal reaction to what I’ve seen. I don’t mean that I’ll use the word ‘I’ in my reviews (the reviewer is the least interesting aspect of their own review), but I like to treat the reviews as an extension of the types of conversations I imagine audience members to be having on the way out of a show. At the most extreme end of this rule is benign arrogance: I would like to think that one day, some readers are reading my reviews for my voice, regardless of what show I’m reviewing.

·         Say Something Helpful. This is probably the most contentious of my self-imposed rules and certainly the one that I do the least. It again hits back at the heart of what the point of being a reviewer is. Is it liking the sound of your own voice? Or is it being some sort of half-assed dramaturg? Those two possibilities, I admit, are not exactly alien to one another. There is certainly some kind of arrogance in anybody – a reviewer, an audience member, an uninvited harasser on twitter – telling you that you ‘should have done it like this’ Presumably the stand up, the writer, the actors company, whatever – has spent several months making their show the best it can be. The last thing they need is some hack (who hasn’t spent several months making their show the best it can be) coming in and giving their unwarranted opinion. And yet. If there is an aspect of the show that frustrates you – pace, a sexist script, or a confusing ending, for instance, then I think it’s appropriate to discuss that in your review. After all, it is entirely possible that you are absolutely correct in your judgement, and if that’s the case, it’s only fair on both the audiences, and more importantly, the performers, that you bring it to light. If you’re wrong, then fair enough, all the other reviews will highlight that, and you will be ostracised as you deserve. But if you are correct, it may well be that your review is the first time they’ve had a problem that has been nagging them all through production defined, and your critique may be the thing that jumpstarts them from a mediocre show to a great one. And you will have helped, perhaps. Just remember point one. Say something nice.

·         Don’t Say What It’s About. I hate spoilers. I have a whole essay to bore you with another time about spoilers. It’s cheap, nasty and lazy. Essentially, by giving away parts of the plot – particularly the surprising and exciting bits – you are highlighting that you don’t actually know what to write about, that you don’t have an opinion. When you give away plot points in your review, you are filling up your word count by basically cutting and pasting the good work that someone else has done, and passing it off as your own. This is very cheap writing. I understand that some reviewers want to show off that they’ve ‘got it’, or that they have understood the more obscure references (I myself have sailed perilously close to this more than once), or indeed to communicate to the performer that they laughed (or cried) in all the right places. I understand also that it’s challenging to talk about a show that you’ve really loved (or hated) without discussing what’s happened onstage. But, not to labour the point too much, if you are telling me what the story is, then you are not discussing the production. If you are telling me the plot (Prince’s dad gets killed, he fails to do anything about it for three hours), then you are not telling me anything that I couldn’t read in a script, or probably in the company’s own flyer. I recognise that you don’t want your review to be too opaque or obscure, but if you can’t write five hundred words without giving away the ending or blowing all the best jokes, then perhaps reviewing isn’t for you.

So. Those are the rules that I attempt to impose upon myself in each review. As I’ve indicated, I more than occasionally fail. But I do try. It’s important to remember that reviews are not disposable and throwaway, despite what my performer friends might say and hope. It’s important to remember that the reviews one writes will actually be read by at least one person. And as such, there’s a certain responsibility. Now, that’s a rather portentous and pretentious line on which to end, but it has the ring of truth to it. Reviewing isn’t just about the sound of your own voice and seeing lots of shows for free. (I’ve already told you it is, a bit.)

The Finishing Line. Or Paragraph. Or Even The Finishing Eight Chapters.

Right, here goes nothing. About 125 pages of nothing, to be exact. The actual finishing date for nanowrimo is tomorrow,at midnight in your local time zone. But because tomorrow night,I'll be doing my first bit of stand up in about a year for a charity gig,I'm going to have a damn good go at trying to finish the nano book tonight. This, however, might be a bit of a push,since there's still about 15,000 words left to make the word count.

You can tell that it's not a prospect I'm looking forward to, because I'm procrastinating by doing this blog. Writers are an idiotic lot sometimes. Very few other groups of people consider that the best way to avoid writing is to do some completely different writing.

What's odd is that it still feels like a short story, despite the fact that its currently running at 35,000 words. I mean, let's not kid ourselves here: it's very much a hack job, a situation that ain't gonna change when I cough out the last 15 thousand words in - I hope - less than seven hours. Nobody's going to produce anything of real quality in that night, not even if their name is Hemingway. But, frankly, that's not important - getting down the main body is, and I can come back in January to the carcass and pick over the bones. As terrible as this draft is - and it is terrible at the moment, it hasn't even got up to the level of first draft yet - I (even I, normally hyper self critical ) find bits of it readable. And here's the ... Encouraging/Depressing bit (delete as appropriate) ... This terrible, badly written, incomplete book, at least six drafts away from anything I wish to show to anyone. much less consider publication, is already better than some stuff I've seen uploaded to the kindle. This is something I very much need to keep in mind in the wee small hours of tonight.

Another Short Note About Acting Class

Had another Acting Class at the NVT tonight, which went well, and got a lot of good responses. However, all I could focus on was the faces of those that appeared not to be getting a kick out of it.

It's the same as when I'm doing stand up, or the GhostWalk. It doesn't matter if everyone's having a good time, my attention is drawn, briar patch like, to the individual who seems not to be having quite as good a time as everyone else. It's a stupid logic, of course: it's not possible for everyone to be enjoying it all at the same level as everyone else. But the perfectionist performer (or tutor) in me refuses to accept this logic. From conversations with other performers, and reading memoirs and the like, I know it's an universal problem: that one person who has cracked less smiles than everyone else becomes both your target and your albatross.

In a way, what made it complicated tonight was a lack of complication: in tonight's workshop we were looking at moments of 'nothing's'. It's all too easy for many actors to fill up their time on stage with lots of 'business', for instance huffing and puffing and constantly looking at their watch to signal to the audience that they're waiting for someone or something that's late, in a way that they simply wouldn't do in real life. Of course, we feel the need to communicate something to a watching audience, but we don't often have the courage to do 'nothing': but the problem challenges those who aren't even on stage - even as audience members, it seems we need instant gratification, to have our stories told to us, almost spoonfed, without making too much effort ourselves. This shouldn't be the case: audiences are not passive, they become part of the piece. They themselves have to engage, whatever is on stage, we bring our own experience and baggage to it, and write our own stories on the scene, until dialogue and action tells us otherwise.

Of course, I'm talking about all of this reacting to just a couple of members of the class who seemed not to be having as good a time as I thought they should have had. It's the same sort of pep talk any performer has to give themselves when a gig hasn't gone as perfectly as s/he feels that it should've.

But here's something that I honestly think is worth considering: the possibly that those couple of people might be entirely correct. You're an extraordinarily complacent performer or workshop leader if you think that your way is the best way. If someone disagrees, their opinion is worthy of merit, even if they are indeed only one.

Of course, you can tie yourself up on knots trying to please all of the people all of the time: it's a fools errand. Ignoring the fact that I've just managed to crowbar three cliches into two sentences, it's my job to do the best again, while always acknowledging that the job could be done even better.

At the end of my workshops, I end with a line which I picked up when I first starred learning improv, at drop-in classes with The Maydays. The idea is that if, during the class, you witnessed something that you liked or enjoyed, then you go up to the person involved, and you tell them so. That's not the important bit, though. The important bit is for whoever you're delivering your compliment to. It's vitally important that when someone takes the time to tell you how much they liked what you did, that you accept what they're saying at face value: you don't attempt to qualify or quantify what you did, or refer to the twenty other things you did tht weren't quite as good, or admit that the great thing your flatterer is referring to was actually a mistake ... You simply breath in, accept the compliment, and say nothing other than, 'thank you'.

Well, you'd be proud. As the class ended, and I fretted about those people I hadn't really been able to communicate my ideas to, as I morosely wondered if this weeks workshop had worked as well as last weeks, I had a few of the people come up to me, thanking me for the workshop, saying that they'd enjoyed it, and that they'd be back next week. It wasn't easy, but I did it: I breathed in. I accepted the compliment, and I said thank you.

Thank you.