Criticism

So I arrive at our last preview last night to discover Madi rummaging through a plastic bag full of cards and gifts. "Hey", I say, "you're a day early for opening night gifts!". Chris, the sound designer, standing next to me on stage says, "Oh, didn't you hear? They moved opening up a day."

They moved opening up a day?

Sure enough, sitting in the front row last night were three - count 'em - three critics, note pads and pens at the ready. Two things struck me as strange about this. Firstly - the front row? In a house that only seats eighty? When you are basically on stage with the actors because of lighting spill? In my experience, critics have tended to want to blend in and not draw attention to themselves (whether it's because of modesty or fear of stoning I will leave to others to guess). So it seemed weird to me that they essentially announced themselves that way.

Secondly, since when do critics sit together? From what I've seen, there's usually a stiff, professional distance between critics. I've never noticed herd mentality at work amongst them. But there they were last night, elbow to elbow in the front row. It was almost comical. It was if they were saying "We're here. We're weird. Get used to us."

Part of me - the grandiose part - thinks they were forming a united front in the face of my critical antagonism, in these virtual pages and elsewhere. The other part of me - the rational part - thinks they arrived late and sat in the only seats that remained. In any case, of course we had the lamest house so far, though they warmed up as we went. And we and a couple of costume and scenic malfunctions, including John and I improvising around a frightening wig pin he discovered in my Bertha wig, which i finally ripped out of the fake hair. Then I nearly obliterated the phone as Pearl, dialing with my cane. Earlier, I came on with my Pearl dress jammed into my underware, so I was flashing a sizable part of the house.

But all of this is the fun of this show. These kinds of "mis-haps" are going to happen a lot, and the warmest moments we had last night we ones in which the audience felt spontaneously included, either in a wayward wig pin, or in the second act, when Vera and The Reverend speak directly to them. The truth of the comic energy of Greater Tuna has been born out through the previews: it's the playing of it that's fun. The jokes, as written, vary in comic punch, and some of them are frankly dated (agent orange?). So what the audience delights in is me and John, whirling around in outrageous costumes and silly accents, with enough character precision and actor chops to lift it slightly above burlesque. And when we invite them into the fun, through ad libs or staged moments, they have obliged with gusto.

Some jokes that got reliable laughs in rehearsal are falling flat in performance. Two examples: my over-emnphasis of "ass" in the Sheriff's line "Yeah, I'm going to charge your ASS, boy." Gets a chuckle or two, that's it. And R.R.'s deranged cat U.F.O. chase is a chuckler too, not a belly laugh. I think it's because, in rehearsal, the gags were set up, and it was their invention which which amused. In performance, the audience has less information, and has to react much more immediately, and so the jokes lack the set up they had previously.

Looking forward to more fun in Tuna . . .

PS: The Inquirer critic liked it. To read her review go here.

The following is part of an ongoing debate in Philadelphia over a particular critic. For more on that whole thing, check out We Love Toby!

This was a response to a list-serve post to Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia.

***

Dear Ed,

There's no way I can match your epic posting. You've posted me into oblivion. I've been ass-posted. Stick me on a post, I'm done. But thanks for reading my book.

Anyway, y'all know how I feel about T-Zin (See? It's come to this - I'm making up new nicknames for her.) Ed, we agree on this: she can be nasty. So for the last time, here it is. It's like I tell my kids - don't be nasty to people. Just. Don't. Be. Nasty. To. People. In person. In print. On line. There is a way to tell people they can do better without hurting them. Do unto others. What goes around comes around. And with this blog, it done come around.

But here's the thing. Underneath all the hot air about the Zinmeister, her virtues, her sins, lies a troubling question. A breathtaking question. A question which calls into question all other questions. A question which cuts to the heart of criticism, of theatre training, of theatre making. And the question is this:

Is there any such thing as good theatre?

Or for that matter -

Is there any such thing as bad theatre?

And now, beloved fellow Philadelphia theatre community, because I have devoted myself to working with you, to performing for you, to studying with you and learning from you, allow me to stick my neck directly on the chopping block:

I think there is no such thing as good theatre, and no such thing as bad theatre.

And that belief has profoundly shifted my approach to theatre making, to teaching acting and to reading criticism. If I was sitting at Fergie's with ten of you, and we gave ourselves the task of coming up with a definition of good theatre we could all agree on, at best we would politely agree to disagree, at worst we would end up drunk and throwing bar stools at each other. Now let's say there were nine of us and one Inquirer theatre critic. Does her definition trump all others? I think not. A person's intellectual pedigree doesn't mean her perceptions are better than anyone else's. What if nine of us agree that Closer Than Ever was one of the most charming evenings of theatre we had ever attended - for whatever reason. But Tobitha doesn't. Are we all wrong? Is she right?

Of course not. Once we admit there is no such thing as good or bad theatre, all we are left with is our subjective response. A great piece of criticism is an articulate description of a subjective response, which can be persuasive without passing judgment on something as either "good" or "bad". The height of arrogance in criticism is this notion that there are such things as "standards" in theatre, and that it is the critic's job to name and defend them. Once upon a time there might have been theatrical standards in America, maybe in the 50s when 95% of the actors were white and everyone thought they should sound like Grant or Hepburn. But in our glorious melting pot, in the mixture of styles and the blending of genres that "theatre" encompasses today, there can be no standards beyond the most elementary (i.e. actors should know their lines). Confronted with the myriad staged events which may fall under the designation "theatre", what possible standards can apply? In our fair city, are we to judge West Side Story on the Walnut Main Stage by the same standards we judge storefront Fringe theatre? And I'm not only talking about the economic differences from one company to another. I think each individual piece of theatre essentially makes up its own "standards", its own criteria for success. The same "standards" which may apply to The Crucible cannot apply to The Imaginary Invalid, even though both shows are produced by the same theatre with many of the same artists in common.

This kind of show-by-show assessment is hard. It requires meeting each new experience without preconceptions and formulating a fresh response to each play you see. It's easier to sit back and pass judgments. I think we have fallen in love in passing judgments - not just critics, but a lot of us. It feels so good to say "That was terrible", "How embarrassing", "It sucked". By taking something down a notch, we are lifted up. In this light, the ugly truth about passing judgment is seen for what it really is: a way for people feel powerful. I've noticed how much more often I hear and read these negative judgments passed than their positive opposites. It's a bit risky in our culture to be an advocate or a cheerleader for something. You become a target for ridicule. It makes me think of all those horrible TV shows in which someone is getting fired, voted off or shot down. The brutal passing of judgment has become mass-cultural entertainment in America, so it's no wonder that the savage review is held up as "fun to read". It's no wonder that the editors at The Inquirer think the Zinster is so witty and smart. We're so much more cool when we shoot something down. But when we smirk at the savage review, all we're riding on is the critic's lust for power.

"Oh come on Ben" I hear some of you muttering, "if you had seen [fill in the blank with the show you hated], you would have said it was bad, very bad." Yeah, I might have. Or I might have said I really, really didn't like it - which is different. The first response passes judgement on something. The second response describes the way I reacted to it. If I didn't like something, I'm going to do my damndest to tell you exactly why. Try sometime to talk or write about something you saw that you had a strong response to one way or the other, without resorting to value laden terms like good and bad. You'll soon discover that it's difficult. Good and bad (and their derivatives) are short cuts - sound bites used by lazy writers who don't have the time or energy to put into words what they saw and felt about something. Speaking about how you reacted to something brings an important component into the conversation - you. Yours tastes, your predilections, your biases, the kind of day you had, all these become a part of the way you reacted to the thing you saw. Then, suddenly, the see-saw comes into balance: on one side, the play; on the other, the witness. A review is a mixture of these two, and the qualities of the witness are intertwined with the thing witnessed in the review. But people invested in their power to pass judgments will resist this approach to criticism. Why? Because when they are drawn into the discussion, their biases are called into question and their power is diminished. This is why La Tobe refused to be interviewed by Vicki Glembocki of Philadelphia Magazine. Being a part of a discussion about criticism admits there might be another point of view besides her's, and all her obnoxious swipes at Vicki described at the end of the article are a lot of fearful hot air.

Once we get away from passing judgments, in other words, once we imagine a way to respond to something that admits our subjectivity, something gentle happens. We cease to be offended by something we don't like, since we know we play a role in not liking it, and we begin to speak and write about people with respect. Because when I admit my role in my response to the thing being evaluated, then I am fully present. And when I am fully present, I am concerned with how I may be treated by others, and so I treat them well. Even more important, but more ethereal, when I am present in word or in person I am acknowledging the human exchange taking place. When I am present, I am witness to the effect I am having on others, and I feel the effect they have on me. But most criticism, both in newspapers and in academia, speaks in a disembodied authoritarian voice in which the word "I" is never uttered. Judgments get passed Oz-like from behind the protective walls of an office, their origins clouded by the smokescreen of academic reputation. The artist in the cross-hairs then ceases to be human, but rather becomes an object to be scorned, the collateral damage of the savage review.

The implications of a judgment-less approach to theatre training are staggering, some might say ludicrous. I think it's for another post (or another book - I hope you'll read that one too). But let me finish with this. It gets back to my previous post, which you referred to. A judgment-less approach to theatre training leads not to the making of "good" theatre, but rather to an involved examination of the theatre which needs to be made. This examination leads to an awareness of one's audience, it leads to a connection to one's community. And we in Philadelphia (and our brothers and sisters in Chicago, where another critic revolt is under way) are ideally positioned to embark on this examination, being Citizen Artists who live where we work. Indeed, this entire donnybrook is a celebration of a community of artists bold enough to spook some sacred cows, passionate enough stand up and say we demand to be treated with respect and adult enough to converse about it without being nasty. It is evidence of our inter-connection.

Submitted to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Never published.

***

What happens when a play gets panned by a critic? I have long suspected that, in our thriving artistic community in Philadelphia, the answer is: not much. We are blessed in this city by an audience community that seems not to sway with the critic’s bluster. Since I arrived on the scene in 1994, I am not aware of a play closing in Philadelphia because of a bad review. If you are a part of the theatre community – as I am – a bad review is read with a kind of horrified wonder as long as it’s not your play being panned. I read them guiltily. I can’t take my eyes off them, the way I stare at an awful car accident or a wounded animal. Quite often, I am outraged. More often than not it is my friends that are being pilloried. But more and more, I think: what’s the point? What purpose does art criticism serve in the 21st century? More specifically, how does it serve the community of art makers and art viewers a newspaper serves? From what I can tell, most newspapers view art criticism as simply the expression of their critic’s opinion about something he or she saw. But then I am led to ask, why is this worth printing? What is it about critics that makes their opinions worth taking note of? And, what else might be possible, were the simple expression of an opinion deemed not enough?

When a play you are in is panned, it’s gut-check time. One of the great challenges for the actor (at least actors who read reviews – like me) is that we still have to go on. I had the opportunity to witness this phenomenon recently after reading this paper’s nasty review of People’s Light & Theatre’s production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, in which I play the Reverend Hale (for the record, I was not mentioned in the review). I use the word nasty intentionally, as intentionally as the critic sought to wound various artists associated with the production, and impugn the theatre which mounted it. I use the word nasty since an editor at this paper signed off on the headline of the review: “’Crucible’: a puny production of a powerful play”. I use the word nasty since in her review, the critic never acknowledged the subjective nature of her response to the piece, but rather used the declamatory language of most criticism with which to pass judgment. This kind of language leads to two deceits perpetrated upon the readers: 1) the notion that any work of art can be objectively judged “good” or “bad”, much less “puny”, “plodding” and “disappointing”, words she chose to describe our production, and 2) that the critic is the judge.

Newspapers seem to have a great deal invested in allowing their critics to simply pass judgments on what they see and then leave it at that, as if, because their paychecks say Knight-Ridder on them (for instance) their opinions automatically acquire a kind of infallibility. This follows a notorious tradition best exemplified by New York critics like John Simons and Clive Barnes, whose pans were works of vicious entertainment in themselves. Indeed, reading the review of The Crucible, it occurred to me that perhaps this is the point: to entertain readers by artfully maligning a local production with clever quips and surgically applied bitter wit. It’s the kind of entertainment that appeals to our baseness, in the same way that TV shows like The Apprentice or American Idol do, which trade on public humiliation.

We rallied the day after that review came out. We performed that morning for 400 high-school students from Norristown and Delaware Valley Friends School. That night, we played to a nearly full house of ticket buyers. In both shows, I was struck with the force of the performances. I have experienced this before: it’s a kind “shout out” to the critic, in which the ensemble gathers and releases it’s indignation in a more focused performance. In a perverse way, the critic inspires greater artistry through our shared loathing of what she wrote. I was also struck in those shows with the stillness with which the play was received. An actor learns to read audiences, and there is a kind of listening that has tension in it, like a taught string before it’s plucked. This is how our play is being heard. It is no small feat to keep teenagers still and engaged for two and half hours. That they were soaking up the ethical force of Miller’s play made their attention all the more rich, all the more compelling.

I am pleased to share the stage with some of Philadelphia’s brightest young actors, people like Jeb Kreager, Annie Berkowitz, Kim Carson, Kristy Chouniere and Julianna Zinkel. They have chosen to stay and work in our city because they believe in what Philadelphia has to offer artists: world class performance opportunities and the possibility of living the semblance of a normal life while you pursue your calling. What a shame if criticism will not grow up with them, evolving into something approaching a civil dialogue, in which the critic treats the thing criticized with respect at least, and perhaps even compassion, even when the thing is found wanting.

What happens when a play is panned? We bristle for a moment, then we shrug and say, the critic didn’t like it. The review then becomes irrelevant. It’s an empty event. And this emptiness carries over and informs the good reviews as well (also for the record, our production has gotten a couple of those too). None of it seems to matter anymore. It’s a shame, because I feel there is an opportunity being missed.

What if the critic spoke to a theatre’s history, it’s stated mission, the careers of one or two of the artists involved? What if the critic saw the thing reviewed against a wider sky, one in which the trajectory of the artist or the theatre might be witnessed and evaluated? What if the critic rose to the level of wise educator, who is able to speak to our successes and failures against what we have done before, and where we claim to be going? What if critics acknowledged the power they have to influence the tone of aesthetic dialogue in the community, and take responsibility for being leaders, setting an example we would be glad to follow? What if we were actually speaking to each other? Critics must criticize, and this is not a plea for nice-only reviews. But how are we in the theatre community to take a critic seriously when we aren’t treated with respect in print? What weight should we give one person’s opinion? After all, there’s a joke about opinions, and the punch-line goes like this: everyone has one.

About Revival: Meetings for Theatre, an exploration of Quaker spiritual practice and actor creativity:

We are left with the question of application. How, then, can we offer this work to theatre artists, or to artists of other disciplines, who have not self-selected as receptive to this investigation? How might our work morph into a new kind of performance medium? How can this work apply to the contemporary rehearsal structure, bound as it is by the constraints of time and money? How can this work influence what we offer our students in the classroom?

I think meetings for theatre, as we have facilitated them, will remain a forum only for those drawn to them. I can see no way we can offer a meeting for theatre to group of people with no expressed interest in the link between spirituality and creativity. What meetings for theater can be, however, are places of affirmation for those so inclined. We who are stimulated by this investigation may come to meetings for theatre for spiritual sustenance, exactly as we come to any other form of worship. The “clearness committee” idea I proposed to Abbey in September never materialized. But, as I noticed in my work in Jason, we may bring the energy and insight gained in meetings for theatre into our more conventional work, where we may have a soft and steady “ripple effect”, being undercover ministers as it were, shedding a new and gentle light on the harsh life of the professional theatre. We may feel less embarrassed to discuss the spiritual-creative link with those we work with, thus engendering conversations which may lead to others’ openings. Those of us who direct may be more inclined to value stillness and quiet in the rehearsal structures they create. Those of us who act, may be more trusting of the Divine nudge, and more willing to wait for the energy to flow through us, rather than trying to squeeze it out.

The challenges in academia are more thorny. Revival has caused me to reflect on the state of actor training in this country, where it has come from, and where it might be going. There was an explosion of theatre training institutions in the 1960s. This coincided with the emergence of “method” acting as pedagogical model which could be articulated and taught, a burgeoning fascination with the human psyche and increased government funding for the arts. It is my opinion that there was another element that contributed to this sudden surge of acting classes, and that was the great cultural release of that decade, when young people sought to escape the emotional repression characterized by middle class social norms of the previous decade. In other words, there was suddenly a great market for acting classes, as a wave of young people arrived at universities excited by the work of Freud and Jung and eager to explore themselves through creative means. At it’s core, this is what Method acting is: a creative means to explore oneself. Leaving aside for a moment the mangled history of that term, it nevertheless provided a way universities could cater to this new population of young people.

The problem is that, from a career point of view, it’s a giant pyramid scheme. There aren’t and never were enough jobs in the fields of acting and directing to employ this new population of young theatre artists, fresh from their training programs and wearing their shiny new degrees. And yet these proved to be very popular programs and lucrative for the universities, who had no incentive to downsize successful programs (successful because they were making money) simply because their graduates were entering a marketplace with regular 85% unemployment. To this day, most graduate acting programs, the ones we call “conservatories” offering M.F.A.s in acting, will have between six and ten applicants for each space they can offer. Clearly the lust for acting among our youth has not diminished, even though most young people have a fair idea what they’re up against professionally. As I describe in The Actor’s Way, I believe that many of the young people compelled to make acting the center of their lives are potential “wounded actors”, using the art not as a means of ministry in the world, but rather in a self-perpetuating failed attempt to resolve issues from their childhoods. A cynic might submit that these training programs use these troubled young people by perpetuating a lie, the lie being that if you train with us you will have a successful professional acting career. The lie is needed to continue bringing in fresh students and tuition each year. The whole thing is a nation-wide “hollow form”, with institutions teaching skills that promise professional rewards, but do not, in fact, have a prayer of delivering them; institutions which exist mainly to feed the bottom line.

These training institutions perpetuate themselves in another way. They have provided an alternate career track for their own graduates in the field of teaching. But here too there are way more candidates than places – I speak from experience, friends. And once inside these institutions, there is tremendous pressure to conform to the points of view espoused by them, such as the “value” of what that institution is offering its students. In the pursuit of tenure, theatre educators in higher education are not rewarded for truth-telling, for creativity or innovation. They are rewarded for perpetuating the status quo. I am not aware of any theatre training program dealing honestly with it’s own acting and directing students about the realities of what they’re facing upon graduating. I worry that many of the people in these teaching positions perpetuate the lie I described above in order to ensure their own job security. My sense is that most of these places behave the way my conservatory, the Yale School of Drama, did. They virtually ignore the realities of life for the young actor and teach only the craft itself. There is certainly a kind of pedagogical purity in this, and in my case the training was excellent as far as it went. But it didn’t go far enough, and looking back, I think there was deceit in it. What else can you call it when the people in charge know the truth but don’t do anything about it? Many young actors are utterly unprepared for what they’re up against in the real world, and, like me, enter their careers with a vague yet fervent hope that the dream will somehow come true. An honest training program for actors would reserve at least one third of its class time for the teaching of skills designed to help the student survive when they’re not acting. Revival put me in the midst of many citizen-actors (and citizen-directors) who are living in their lives as they are, full of compromise and yet abundant in creativity. There must be a way we can teach this citizen-actor model.

Revival also perpetuates some other designs and archetypes that make the academy nervous, I think. The first is a celebration of the non-hierarchical creative structure. Revival is about as ensemble-based as you can get, with no leader, no director and no script. This certainly has its challenges, but many in the meetings expressed a delight in the collective energy explored, unguided by human hands. The academy perpetuates the conventional, hierarchical model, for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is the model at work in the professional rehearsal room. But there is a chicken and egg question here. If we weren’t so attached to hierarchical structure in our institutions teaching theatre, would they be so prevalent in the professional theatre?

Our meetings for theatre were populated mostly by artists who would self-identify as actors. The discussions we had about the nature of our exploration and the implications it had for the way we live our art were deep and as intellectually stimulating as any classroom dialog I’ve ever had. One of the debilitating aspects of the hierarchical model is that is that it perpetuates “stupid” actors. Since the hierarchical model is inevitably a power relationship, in which decision-making authority is invested in one person, there is a tendency to avoid collective discussions about the, well, the direction of the thing being made. As my experience with Shannon (and with many other wonderful directors) demonstrates, this is not always the case, and the best directors are the ones who most successfully perform the balancing act between authority and power-sharing. Still, it is undeniable that in the conventional theatre, the ultimate responsibility for the vision of the production lies with the director. The harm this does to actors is that it conditions some of us to make obedience more important than free thinking. Revival allowed the thinking actors among us a venue in which to not only envision a creative event, but to enact it spontaneously.

It is interesting to note that there is a tradition of the thinking actor in England that seems not to have taken hold in the States. British actors like Simon Callow, Anthony Sher and Vanessa Redgrave have each written important, thoughtful and entertaining books on their craft and their lives as actors. In America, obsessed as we are with exhibitionism and voyeurism, our actors tend towards tell-all autobiographies (my God – am I following in this tradition too?!?)

Lastly, the hierarchical model has a symbiotic relationship with judgment, which is a big reason it will not be de-emphasized in the academy any time soon. We are steeped in a culture which loves winners and loves reviling losers. This is partly because of the capitalist need to vanquish the competition, and partly because we are so in love with sports (and I speak as an avid sports fan). Sports has affected the way we evaluate art, and partially explains our enjoyment events like the Academy Awards, in which one person wins over four “losers”. Any artist worth their salt will tell you the whole idea of winners and losers in art is absurd. These award shows are nothing more than elaborate popularity contests, and we are fixated on them because of the small orgasm we experience after the phrase “and the winner is . . . “ than because we appreciate any value they claim to celebrate.

Revival essentially removed judgment form the equation. As my blog posting called “Doubt and the Full Professor” articulates, I have a bone to pick with judgment, and the whole concept of “good” and “bad” as it applies to theatre. Revival was empirical research: we reported on what we witnessed and felt. Judgment is theoretical: it holds an experience against an invented system of values in order to name that experience as “good” or “bad”. Judgment is deceitful in the area of art, because it masquerades as objective and thoughtful, when it is only ever subjective and opinionated. This is why I hate so much artistic criticism. Most of it is entirely invested in judgment, and never acknowledges its own subjectivity.

Quakerism has something useful too say about all this, based as it is not in Biblical interpretation but rather in personal experience. The ideas that guide us in the religious Society of Friends are called “testimonies”. That word testimony is important, because it implies an idea that is born out of personal experience. So we live by the lives that have come before us, and the Holy Witness of those lives has been informally collected into testimonies: about peace, equality, integrity, stewardship of the earth, community and – if my Yearly Meeting is moved as we in Revival have been – creativity, the newest testimony. So for a Quaker, what you experience is far more important than what someone else has written about it. The Quaker actor (the Quactor?) might de-emphasize script-analysis, and focus more on what is experienced up on one’s feet. This is what makes us such renegades, stubbornly insisting that what we feel in our hearts is good and true when the rest of the world seems to be headed in another direction. And this is what made Revival such a good fit for the thinking actor. It freed us to give testimony based on experience. We needed no permission other than that granted by the Spirit itself.

Jason and the Golden Fleece rolls along. We have just crossed the half-way point in our run. When I arrived at People’s Light, I was skeptical about the family theatre thing, and I even though I said the opposite, I felt, deep inside, that it wasn’t “serious” enough for a highly developed artist like me. But I am finding my experience with Jason to be very meaningful. The change is in me.

One of my rituals is peeking through a seam in flat which covers a stage-left entrance. I love to watch the children watching. I love to see their guileless, wide open receptivity, their open appreciation of magic, their complete giving over of their experience into our care. Even the middle-schoolers, who are so often tormented by the just-appearing concerns of being cool, sit with mouths open as Pelius comes quite close to stabbing the hero early in the first act.

When I enter as Phineus, I fall in his weakness, and had a worry early on that this would create a great laugh from the kids, who, as we know, can find humor in the misfortune of others (don’t we all from time to time?) I love the absence of that laugh, the way I feel them gathered around me both in fear of this ghostly old man, and in concern for his feebleness. And of course, I love the laughter I hear as I perform Inos, the swamp creature, who has become a consistent favorite among the ten and under crowd who see the play. There is something very child-like about Inos, and that, combined with his outrageous appearance and absurd behavior make him irresistible to children. I love that.

We have “talk backs” after each performance of Jason. This is unheard of in modern theatre, in which talk backs – fora in which the audience meet the artists – happen at most once a week, usually once a run. But it is an example of People’s Light’s commitment to its community, and especially to the children who come to the plays, that we do this after every show in the family series. It’s not required of the actors, but no one in the cast has missed one yet.

I have felt ambivalent about this feature of the family series too, worrying that it dispels the magic of the experience they have just witnessed. And in my ideal theatre, I might have the talkbacks in the lobby perhaps, except our lobby can’t hold everyone. But I have grown very fond of these actor-audience encounters. Certainly, there is an ego thrill to be on the receiving end of compliments from the audience you have just performed for. But I have also felt quite clearly that I am changing these children’s lives in very important way. When one considers the assault arts education is under in our culture, and the few opportunities most children have to see live theatre, I feel we are participating not only in an act of community bonding, but also in a ritual meant to assist in the survival of our very art form.

Recently, we had a talk back in which Inos was practically the sole topic. It’s not always this way. Sometimes it’s the Argonauts, or the boat, or Medea. But this night it was Inos. The kids wanted to know about the walk, about the noises I make. So I led the group in an “Inos master class”, demonstrating the movement I developed for the creature, getting a kid up on stage to join me, and then leading everyone in making Inos noises. That night, driving out of the parking lot, I passed three girls with a Dad, the girls chasing each other as Inos. They caught sight of me as I passed and squealed with excitement. I gave them a beaming thumbs up. I thanked God for my career, Hollywood by damned.

At another talk back, an adult asked “Why did you want to be actors?” Sometimes we get these dumbfounding questions, and usually the actor leading the talk back will toss it to someone else. That night, Peter tossed it to me. To my surprise, I answered honestly: “Well, I’m a recovering narcissist and ego maniac, “ I began, as I felt my dear actor friends around me freeze. “I was also incredibly insecure, “ I continued ‘and I needed more attention than everyone else to compensate. I found out I had a knack for acting, and that everyone lavished praise on me for it, so it was natural fit. Later, I went to New York to become famous. I really had no clearer goal than to have a version of Tom Cruise’s career.“ This was when Michael, who plays Jason, dissolved into hysterical laughter. I shot him a comically dirty look. Then I went on. “When it slowly dawned on me that the Tom Cruise career wasn’t looking likely, I crashed and burned. If I had a version of Tom Cruise’s career, I might have seen a lot of things, but I never would have seen those three girls running like Inos in the parking lot. We mustn’t desecrate our blessings by ignoring them in favor of ones that only live in our diseased fantasies. By the way, I’d still drop everything to by in a movie with Tom (I think). But I’m okay about it not happening. That’s huge progress for an actor like me.

Then I came to Philly to do a show, and was astonished to meet actors like Peter D. here, who were staying in one place, raising families and doing really interesting work. To make a long story short, I decided that’s what I wanted. And that’s what I have today. It’s a huge blessing”. The poor woman who asked the question had a deer in the headlights look, and several actors on stage were just staring at me with mouths open. It’s interesting to notice what happens in the theatre when you tell the truth.

Jason has not been reviewed, and will not be. I think the theatre has elected not to chance the impact a bad review might have, and instead relies on word of mouth and it’s own advertising efforts, which have been compromised by a fiscal crisis the theatre has been working through this year. I have a similar relationship to reviews that I have with alcohol: they render me powerless. I know they’re bad for me, but I can’t stop looking for them, reading them, feeling puffed up by the good ones and outraged by the bad ones. I have developed a reputation in town as an actor who will take on a critic: a reputation I worry has left a bad taste in some mouths, both inside and outside the theaters. I wish there was a recovery program for review junkies.

But I have come to realize that I am not alone. By and large, it’s the theater professionals who care the most about the reviews. The theatre aficionados (and I am fortunate to live in metropolitan area with a large audience of them) will generally see what they want to see, regardless of what the papers say. It’s a sad but true commentary on the state of criticism in this country that People’s Light is so sure that a production like Jason and The Golden Fleece will be misunderstood by critics that it declines to invite critics to see it. It is a wise choice. I have not met a critic yet who values nor understands the goals of theatre for families. In the pecking order of the theatre, theatre for families lurks just below fluffy musicals in terms of the respect it gets. But it is a testament to the investment People’s Light has made in its community that it can mount a production like Jason, make a little money on it and never have it reviewed. Perhaps this is the wave of the future: theatres and their communities rendering the judgments of critics irrelevant. There’s a consummation devoutly to be wished.