 Oh, back into one of those. Yeah, well, I love you. Jane Allen-Malabi, who's loved to sign you up for a subscription, and she'll be so tired. And one of our founders of Sweet Girls Theatre, and one of our... This is a very unique experience. There are a lot of history under these stage lights. I'm just sitting here, and you are screaming, and you're howling. I don't know if I even have to introduce our very distinguished panel here, but anyway, I'm to my right, Rob Herbert, who is the critic of San Francisco Chronicle. And also, we're critic of some playwrights getting together, and we're going to talk a little bit about whether or not we're actually getting together. But before we get started, I just wanted to ask you, why are each of you a theatre critic? Or in the case of such a property, why are you still a theatre critic? You can start with Rob. The short answer is, why don't you go to the theatre and see things a little more... Of course, the opera, a little more, and then you can see three kind of opera. I was working as a... Why am I still into it? Because every night we go to the theatre, it's a whole different experience. There are a couple of things I've read that have helped me understand why I would do this crazy thing. One is a phrase, Shah used. He talked about this urge, this compulsion called the critical instinct, which I think of as this unstoppable force to reckon with and articulate your honest opinion. Another thing that's been helpful to me after I've done Margolyn, who was my advisor in college, rubbed this clay called critical mass in which she talked about critics having the urge to touch a flame. And for me, that kind of means you are so moved, you are so profoundly affected by an experience of theatre that simply watching it, simply talking about it even is not enough. You have to do something more. I guess for me, also, I feel very lucky to have kind of found separate from all the other disciplines in theatre what I think of as my art. Playwriting is the medium of some, acting is the medium of others, but criticism is the place where my love of language just, I feel that what I get out of it is very similar to what an artist gets from acting in a play or writing in a writer. I've always been a writer. It was my first love, and then I got involved in theatre and then he tried to take that and leave your part because it seems like that's a good point to have. And by the way, I'm trying to trigger the conversation here, but if people have comments or questions like like to address or they like to raise, as far as we know it's going to have a light and just raise your hand and she'll come and bring you the light. The purpose is to criticism. One is to champion this art form that we are all in together, to advocate for it and to get other people really excited about it. But that's not the only purpose and in fact, some of the other purposes of criticism I think are contradictory to that game. We also have the job to be the one or three people in the audience who don't have a special vested interest in the success or failure of a production and who can be relied upon to speak that objectively is such a I think misunderstood term but it means precisely that. It is our job to not be afraid. It is our job to be courageous and really say what we think. Nobody else has to do that. It's also our job to be entertaining and to write an article that people want to read I think for its own sake even if they have no intention of seeing a show and entertaining can be funny it can be probing it can be informative and educational so a good critic we have one foot I think but we cannot be totally in it together with the playwrights. We must be able to step back and look and observe how critical that is. I agree this isn't very small some of us can be difficult to accuse myself of revealing the play rather than good friends I don't say what I think but I really know exactly that. I think on one level criticism is part of the conversation about what part the idea that I sharpened their own perceptions I hear from a lot of people but way back when I first started having come out of hearing things like okay how did you know it's almost like you were a fly on the wall for rehearsals. To me that's why I know that years of watching development senses because of course I am just one person bringing my own subjective experience to this show and I can only write about it from my perspective so how is that different from bias? Let me talk a little bit about your work I wrote a review for Hellround last year which is this website that has all kinds of art and essays about theater and this was a show at Cal Shakespeare and it was as best as I can remember an immigrant from I think from Mexico he was about to take his test to become a citizen it was the night before he was cramming and he felt and he had all of these dreams that were kind of a reverse funny surreal version of American history. American Night American Night yes so I wrote a review that both that perhaps tried to do too many things in a single article that is one of the many criticisms leveled against my criticism to serve many more but I criticized both some aspects of the production standard fare for a review as well as the way that the theater I felt that its efforts to give it how extremely old and white and affluent its audience is I felt that some of its efforts to market this play to make this play have broader appeal might be inauthentic and short lived. I also criticized some physical aspects of the layout of the theater itself it was a fun piece to write because I was trying to do something different with criticism that's why I really liked writing for this website because they let me do all kinds of strange things that wouldn't normally fit into very short word counts of a regular theater review but I got attacked for all different kinds of things people rightly perhaps calling out my various privileges and being a white person and being a well educated person and Cal Shakespeare's audience in a particular way the list goes on so that's the background you said that its telomuthal on the stairway for an audience on the news office that long long ways it should make a difference to us that you're a white person I would say is that I've been interrogating myself a lot more in the process of writing each and every article but I don't think there's room at the beginning of every single review I write for me to write a sentence of paragraph pages it could be of all my various biases that would make the review about me sometimes it is appropriate in a review to refer to myself I can make it more of a personalistic that's something that Cal Route lets me do sometimes and I really value that about writing there because it can be a more rewarding kind of writing but it's just not the right thing to do in every single article you're writing a review of a show you're not writing about yourself and if you can't be honest with yourself about what your biases are and you're never going to be able to see yourself as clearly as other people see you or in the way that other people see you of course but if you don't try to interrogate yourself I don't think you're going to last I don't think you're going to be a very good person if you feel that urge to disclose I mean in our search place any good same thing as for your major temptation to start a review this is a concept you have to say that any time you could just waste the word to wasting space and I would say you're not just wasting space you're also weakening your argument for no good reason what is more the larger the paper you write for the more of a factor this is the consumer guy and you're also you're also trying to you want to be independent of each play that you respond to it's a new case the same thing for that you could have criticism class what's your temple the first thing you would have to know no temple, that's the concept history of the little man a few years ago the little man in his early sketches I can't remember how old the little man is at this point whether he started before World War II he was after World War 7 so far I don't think there's been a pretty, since we're here the little man who has a lot of space because he was charismatic the first thing as I said I love to get responses from readers but I don't particularly like the responses who are responding to the little man it's true I choose the little man for each review that I write if they want to disagree with the rating, that's one thing but if he was simply writing the letters, I have two really faithful regular correspondence I send few letters for all of you these are letters, this is smellman they cut out the little man capsule from the pink section and they write a screen by ten times as long as that little man telling me how little I know about the other and how can I possibly make these comments without supporting them and you know, the little capsule there is just a pressies it's just a few one sentence that tries to express the meaning for the wide play got the rating that it did and it's for these people, that's the review that's all they're going to read and I should be grateful that I didn't read that much instead of just looking at the little man one is, it's not a great play particularly, the little man number three though the little man sitting in the chair he is leaning forward expecting to only be sleeping I can't do this because this is why you should never say the name of the Scottish play this is what happens when you review the new play you're going to focus on the script, on the writing in that review because it is very true of the world from here it's also a few days of our rare 16th or 15th century play that's just getting it being produced here for the very first time you're fascinated by it so yeah, you may engage more with the writing there but you're still always dealing with this as an experience for people who are reading the question of the color it's harder to do now that reviews are shorter for the examiner had her very clear likes and dislikes and she was very clear that she did not care for experimental here and there was has been an explosion of wonderful or awful but the past in the 80s you know so free and night fire night leather coats and antenna all these different groups and taking over the reviews and she was right in a way that was quite clear that she didn't care for this kind of thing but she would describe that you could read that as something I might really include or you know that sounds like something I've seen too often or you knew exactly what she was talking about unfortunately as we get smaller it's that freedom to write descriptive talking about it's just a solid education in arts and literature so that people know I think it's also something we as writers have to do that we have to be able to figure out how to carbon for some of the religious authors I have this amount of space a nice space that you're coming into that that's the challenge and you know that that's the challenge and your job is how to get as much information or focus on say what you want to say make it an argument though and engage readers to the extent that we are advocates for the theater you know get those readers wanting to go to something that you just can give them some reason why I like what you say about planning because I think you as a critic can write a plan an encounter in firing with all the very tools in your arsenal and make people really want to see the show I've had friends read my stuff and that is very critical and say now I really want to see this to see why you've got that and it's not because I think they're gluttonous procurement I think it's because if you convey that theater matters that much having that experience that I might have had in a particular show matters so much and describing it well that can make somebody want to go or be curious or want to read more I remember writing a negative review of the show in the north side of Berkeley and seeing my reviews read about the fire with the master or sighting theater you make a thing of your own such a way of being watched you've got that personal bias she's shifted and hated that play I'm gonna love it which is part of that idea the best thing is we're followed pretty much to know how my opinions differed or jied that we were sick I didn't use the word we were first showing until 10am we were down there by 9.30 the line was already around which showed you that this critic had a follow we have been following was it that I heard and it was so it was such a sensation that he wrote two follow-up he was justified I'll never forget this his first piece I'm gonna follow it someday what started off with I understand sick I've seen you know Port Saul in the garden and of course we all went that's his idea of sick you know you know what I thought he was sick I always had these things what it is but I was also thinking I went to the theater I remember it turned in with views and the shows that we were seeing at the O'Neill which was very interesting the whole way I remember one of our teachers was the theater writer and she said I have written something in the review the audience she said she can't write the audience you didn't pull you don't have to just talk about how we felt real specifically I think that's what I said I suppose bias is though I mean I personally think that we go in with no bias I'm going to see a play by a play by playwright before I did so much but I hope no biases are about what I've seen if you go with bias expectations you're doing that better if you go with really low expectations it's much more like any time I'm thinking poor Tony poor Tony every time he's written he's set the bar for that who could ever read that I actually think we experience the same thing that people come to their subsequent plays with this memory and I confess which time I go to see a play I go to my files to see what I've written about this person in the past so that I will have some be more certain of what my sense of the history of this person is if that's going to be true but there are times when that is kind of like oh my god I have to solve this potential your schedules are such that you know for the you know medium no okay so you know trying to get to the question of since you have a limited schedule in terms of how many plays you can see and that you know we have some big houses in this community inside the houses some well established companies companies that are fairly new whatever when it comes to new work and you know given whatever that those slides you have do you have any particular criteria that you use to make a decision about what work you're going to go see in what work it's such a great question and just to give you an idea of how like what the ginks are it might be the wrong word but I guess what the odds are I've been doing this for five years now definitely not the best known critic of the bunch and for every month at the SF Weekly which is the only place where I'm reviewing shows right now I write two reviews a month just two that's all they can let me do in because articles I can cover two shows so that's a total of four I've got 40 to 60 productions asking me to come see their work each month how I whittle it down from there is first is the schedule of the paper but from there I would certainly not say there is any particular criteria what Rob said about each review being a new a whole new project very much resonated with me because each time I want to see a show it's just making that choice is a whole new set of criteria sometimes it can be oh gosh I admire the work of this former stone launcher whichever artist or this team being together other times it can be seems like such a radical departure for this company wow they're doing something new and newsworthy sometimes it's that sometimes the description of the show itself something I've never seen before or that it won't be tried I can just tell from the description sometimes it's just what mood am I in what kind of show do I want to see all different kinds of actors yeah that is the same with me particularly if I know or I just know the company and I know that they have a certain standard that they always stick to and I will say that I see way more shows than I have so when I make those choices I've seen a lot of theaters and a lot of shows a lot of directors so I try to pretty much write about anything any show I want to write about if my editor wants me to but she doesn't force me to do anything that I don't like so I will be sort of what we need with the most positive optimistic outlook one other thing I pay attention to that I forgot to mention is that I also have a great deal of freedom I don't have to see any particular show it's I know that for smaller companies they're not going to get as many critics to come and that having a critic come is a much bigger deal for them. ACT and Berkeley rough it will not make any difference to them whatsoever whether icon or not and review or not that's not true for Rob perhaps but it is true for me but a show at the Phoenix theater downtown or in any of the small black boxes if they get a piece in the weekly that can actually change people's careers and I am conscious of that and so often if it's down to the wire not that it's ever a perfect comparison between this show or that show what I'm choosing to see or anything like that but I really do take that into consideration because one of the greatest rewards of being a critic is to bring attention to human worthy artists people don't know about that is such an exciting thing and it's so great when that happens and that you're a part of that absolutely I absolutely agree with that but really just so there is a big size a place to play house there are times when you're given a lot I may have one of these days I've got to get these days I've got to check out this kind of thing because I pay attention times I get up to schedule out any shows that have been been around I don't care that you're doing a failed career next to normal I know it's important I'm sorry well that is going to be toward a bias in favor of your work and that was the fact I do want to get out and see so in that sense yes there is a kind of bias it may also be that I remember driving out to Walnut Creek because it was the first opportunity I've ever had to see play by Afro Bay not alone but she's gone dead but she was the first woman to make a living as a professional writer in the theater and besides having a spy or a beautiful crowd and I've read some african I've never had it until of course but it was also filling in some history I don't know how many of you are familiar with the Black Graphic Drawing Group in Berkeley that was she was very, she was adamant that she was not running a professional theater company that there was she was not she was very, very interested in the coverage but she was not interested in the group what she was running was community service there was a way of getting to South Berkeley to something to do and to give them some of their culture and she was the only one staging the and fifties because the african theater were obviously during the reasons were trying to develop new talent and develop new work she was the only one doing that history and that was pretty high we go to every one of her shows they were not well, they were not professional standards they were the best course you could take in this whole this whole aspect of American theater that for the most part was completely neglected but they played a huge role in developing the philosophy what you're hearing some of it is totally unsolicited some of it is what people write to and you have to read some of it and some of it is from people that you know because all of it you can go out here from out here from just read the press releases really and look basically what it is about and that is actually another point from the commercial the pictures that you sent out you know there are a lot of times where most would play with the size of the pool you know that I'm going to be a bad show but you can tell if you as critics notice a decrease in productions in San Francisco itself versus an increase elsewhere like as more and more artists are getting priced out moving elsewhere do you find yourself sending more shows outside of San Francisco? what I would say is that the shows that are really underground that are really shoestring and that I think might have a lot of the artists who are going to be the future of theater whatever that means a lot of them are in the East Bay and these groups these troops of people they're so shoestring that they would never even think to let press know about their shows and so I find out about them through very circuitous needs a lot of the time so I'm really excited to delve into that more but I don't think I see any less theater in San Francisco every week it feels like I find out about a new group even a new venue and I've been doing this for five years these guys have been doing it for a lot longer and it's so it really testifies to the richness of finding out you can be constantly finding out about new things even within this very very geographically small city and it's also true that there's always been in our time frame in the East Bay because when I started I was the critic for the East Bay Express my job was not to look at theater but to realize that Berkeley had more theaters than San Diego in the stage company but regardless it gets hard to spare the market theater the market theater which was the first space the first place that was out of the garden theater tried to shut it down Barty was able to say theater had made a market he was able to hold up it's the only thing that said this space was okay for the river to swim but one of the things because I asked him about how obviously it operated the government was continually trying to do the same because theater artists are like cockroaches when they turn the lights on we scatter them but as soon as the lights go Barty Walker was a professional talent here and was close enough to Los Angeles to draw people but were never under the glaring spotlight and I've never been totally convinced of that but I think when you read the history of early San Francisco theater and you realize how much romantic the girl from the long west was always good the very first show I ever saw was Peter Star and Mary Barton that production started here had it by the old San Francisco Civic Light Opera which was also a lawsuit to the Civic Light Opera and he was constantly trying to come up with shows and everyone's a lot on the score and it started and it started with Mary Barton and so on you know but I'm sure it's in the air who else? I wanted to just ask about sort of the definition of the new work you know there's the sort of premiere items which you know a lot of people want to, I mean theater companies in any way want to have that world in the air I understand to some degree it's sort of driven by what their boards feel about it I understand what you're saying about what Chris felt about it I mean if some show has had you know a world premiere and some storefront theater and I don't know where is that do you guys see the show? it does for me in terms of the audience but it does need to be so much in terms of the product that we review if that production works well here you had this hardly I'm sorry doesn't make a difference whether plays be world premiere often I just tend to be more interested in shows that have been written in the past few years because I like to know what playwrights have to say about our products today I actually got in trouble recently for you what was it this time? I got in trouble recently for saying the distinction between American premiere and like premiere in America I forget what it was it was something like that but it was a testament to just how much we suffer from premiereitis that there are all these different degrees and steps for how much premiere something is I guess that just goes to show how little I was paying attention to it that I conflated these two purely very different things it's also true that sometimes we'll see any time we see that we'll see we'll see how we each die except that it's it may be of less interest to the readers unless there's something that you absolutely believe in but the other part of it is when you're engaging when you as a writer are trying to so we obviously have we obviously have a bias toward and are thinking that maybe they would like to be starting out you know given that some frustrated playwrights you have some experience acting and you've seen so many plays when you're watching a show that doesn't work that well for you what do you do with that feeling of wanting to say well the director should have done this or what the hell is that that actor thinking or the script should have done this I didn't go right criticism without saying do you ever struggle with that I think frustration I think none of us are drawn towards lovely critics I think we're all aware from people in the field who advise us you have to lose the grip that's how my business I'm not qualified I don't feel qualified from the experience of having gone to a production employee that I had reviewed three years earlier read up and sitting there thinking oh no you did exactly what I suggested I don't when I first started I did have to repress in myself that that urge let me show you how to do that that's not what you know but you gradually think along this line I got a good friend who was a director I thought he was a terrific director who attempted to figure with me a few times and stopped because he actually literally started to see the front because of what he was seeing on the stage you have to suppress the sense of Bernie Weiner to find advice to the directors was challenged and he did and he went out it's terrible I see all the time it's too much what's your credibility if you would damage your relationships you enter that territory you go into this weird place and it's like there's no going back except very slowly painfully so for me not really having as much of a background as an artist I don't have that urge that much because I know how hard it is if I were to get up there and try to do something myself and I know how bad it would be but you can't write about the technical issues you can only write about what you see on stage that night that is your view that's your terrain and I think what we're getting at tonight is how do you do that as a critic how do you make sure that you are approaching that that one single performance purely with the possibility of doing that and trying to find a way we have to guard against reviewing so you can point out a failure or something that's not working but I can suggest not really sometimes it's just going to be there and I think any of us who have had that humbling experience of seeing somebody you've seen people perform roles and just sat there and shook their head but then you see somebody perform that role you don't know I totally missed it oh Alex Alex said that every time he was in a show if it was a movie as soon as they had filmed maybe three or four years a third or a half of the film or if he was going to play because he would be on a bus in London and he would be sitting in the back of the bus and looking out and he'd see somebody on the street and go oh that's what I should have done that's the key to this care this conversation is so great you have any other people you want to tell now they're going to come out I'm almost going off that's sort of what you just said the only review of the play that's on stage in front of you and also notwithstanding what you said about every review being different every play needs a different kind of review I notice that some reviews tend to be narrow in their scope like this is the play this is what I thought these actors others try to be a lot more broad maybe drawing connections between the play a larger thing in society other plays that are treated the same issue how do you decide whether you play just in that isolation this is the production I saw and when you try to make it into a larger draw out larger connections because it's it's going to be big but it goes back to something Rob said earlier which is you write about what you take away with you and that is going to be different each night sometimes you don't take away a whole lot and then you might write a more drier a less ambitious piece not every piece of criticism you write is going to be this glorious work of art but it has to vary as the process of decision making is so for each show for me when I'm writing my reviews at SF Weekly often they don't even let me write about just one show in my 800 words they usually want me to write about too and I see the logic behind that because they cover more shows and I want to read 400 words if I get a plot summary one descriptive detail and an argument in there I'm the champion that's really all I can do and those are pretty much the only pieces I'm writing now all that all those whole round reviews I was talking about before I I'm very sad that I'm not writing them anymore but I decided that they were way too slow and not worth my time so whatever so I work for a small theater company and we do all the plays we're always trying to get reviews so I just want to thank you for talking about what you do and hearing about it and I'm curious with so few reviewers and so many plays how do you feel about a lot of blogs and sort of the local individuals and folks who started reviewing how that adds or tracks from the group more voices more it's always I like having more voices out there I learned so much from the bloggers they give me so many things to think about so many perspectives and they often cover things that I wouldn't cover or don't get to cover I just wish we could have both I wish we could have professional salary who've got enough space and who have the time to do the research to write the kind of articles theaters want to have written about them but that takes somebody's time and money I wish we could have that and this wonderful blogging sphere that we have it does pay I guess this is a little harmful and selfish of me but it does make me a little sad when I see theaters taking quotes from a really really badly written blog that kind of that hurts me a little bit I wish it could be better I wish that were the only thing out there sometimes that's the only thing we have but I agree with you if it's not a serious conversation I don't think it's very helpful to point that piece I actually don't understand I've probably found that this is starting with arts related people buying theater paper or if you got to buy an ad they were filming a niche to the idea that theaters get several different totally exact I think that's happened to be a musical theater pub which is this company in Ohio but they staged theater in a bar and I did an interview with the founders of the company about their big annual event which was called pint sized plates and I heard that audience members were showing up hours early waving my article in her face trying to get a seat at the bar and that for me was one of those moments where I'm bringing attention to new artists who the city at large doesn't know about yet and they should and it's my article that's at least helping make that happen that was so cool and rough and that's the fun thing for me is doing theater and you'll play right now and then I went the second day as you go through that next to the issue