Whatever one's role in life is, we all have our own particular style, our own particular character.
Jim Capaldi
******************
Hello Rose
******************
There is always a narrative involved, always a story. Whether it is a painting, a sculpture, a symphony, a song, a novel, a legal document, an essay in a scientific journal. a play or a life, there is always a story involved.
Some people tend to tell their life stories, in bits and pieces, by writing it out in their blogs. I had a conversation today with someone who mentioned a man she knew who said that he thought a second person, disinterested or not, should edit our blogs. Well, I thought, that might not be a bad idea if you are unsure of things like spelling and grammar. But if someone takes it upon themselves to be editor and critic of my blog I'm going to say "Mind your own business."
I enjoy reading other people's blogs because they are all different. Every one has a style and purpose of it's own. The character and personality of the blogger makes it what it is, and any editor should take that into consideration if they are called upon to read and make corrections or suggest changes.
The world is full of critics. Everyone, it seems, is a critic. Some people actually make a living as critics. Most of them, alas, do more harm than good. New York City critics are infamous for destroying a perfectly good show or gallery exhibit by doing nothing more than expressing an opinion. The artists, hopefully, will survive it, many don't. But the critic will generally be forgotten. The composer Jean Sibelius put it succinctly when he wrote "There has never been set up a statue in honor of a critic."
Critics love to analyze artists. 99.99% of the time they don't really know what they are seeing or hearing. Actors are particularly vulnerable to that kind of misplaced energy because it is the actor's own person that is the canvas, the musical instrument that is being played. The actor is the one upon whom the story is being told. And a good actor never forgets that. His first obligation as an artist is to tell the story.
Those who observe and comment on actors come in three types: those who are helpful, those who are abusive and those who seem satisfied. The helpful ones are those who can make good suggestions because they can recognize what the actor is doing and how to enhance it. Those who are abusive are usually the most ignorant ones.
I ran into one of those idiots in a directing class at a major New York City film school. I played a scene for the class and after it he immediately began tearing apart what I was doing. It was a directing class but he was trying to teach me acting. I had been an actor for many years.
What he couldn't understand was that as an actor I had made a choice and was acting on that choice (and doing it well, let me humbly add). If he didn't like the choice then as a director he could ask for a different choice or suggest one. I had worked with many good directors in my day. That man was not one of them. I pitied the kids in the class. He wasn't teaching them to properly direct a scene. He was teaching them how to abuse actors.
No two actors will play a scene the same way. The important thing is to get the story told. I can't live your life, and you can't live mine. We both have our stories, and how we tell them is what makes us unique in personality, character and style. That uniqueness should be respected, and not abused.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
****************************
HEAR YE, HEAR YE
With the holidays coming up I'm going to risk it all and ask for some guest bloggers to enter my journal with special thoughts on the holidays. So be thinking about it. Beginning tomorrow I'll state the specifics. Admission is free. All are welcome.
DB
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Showing posts with label critics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label critics. Show all posts
Monday, December 5, 2011
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Crumbs Of Praise
As a single slab of rock won't budge in the wind, so the wise are not moved by praise, by blame.
Dhammapada
****************
People in the arts, especially the performing arts, have their work judged by critics in the media. Strange, since no one writes critiques of congressional speeches, class lectures or sermons. Perhaps they should.
Early in my career I determined that most critics are just people, usually without much knowledge of what they are seeing, expressing an opinion. So I paid no attention to what they wrote until after the show closed when the producers would pass out a folder containing pictures, a contact sheet and copies of the reviews. Then I would look at them. If I got a good review I would extract from the review what was said about me and attached it to my resume. If I got a bad review I would crumple it up and throw it away. In neither case did I pay much attention to what was written.
The shameful fact is that some critics, particularly New York critics and especially the New York Times critics, can close an excellent production and keep a mediocre one running just by expressing their opinions.
I knew actors who would rush right out and buy the papers after opening hoping to find some tid bit, some crumb of praise about themselves. I felt certain enough about my work not to need those crumbs.
I knew a Japanese man, a director/choreographer, who came to New York with a theatre piece he had developed and toured in Japan to great acclaim from the Japanese critics. It opened at an Off Broadway theatre in the city. I went to the opening. I found it confusing, difficult to understand, not because of the language, there was no spoken language, it was all mime, dance and music.
After the performance he and I and a few other people went out to a restaurant for dinner. A friend brought the reviews from the early editions of the papers. Across the board they were bad reviews. No critic had anything good to say about his production.
He read them all and became enraged. "Who are these people? What do they think they know? Why did they say these things?" I tried to assuage him by explaining something about New York critics and why he should pay no attention to them. His show was going to run through it's contract anyway. It didn't matter. But he was deeply hurt, shocked and angry.
I have a big box in my apartment and in it is a large envelope containing reviews I've received for my work over the years. They all have nice things to say about me. I don't remember the nasty things because I threw them out.
Moral: If you believe in yourself and what you do it doesn't matter what anyone says about you. Or as Nehru put it "What we really are matters more than what others think of us."
DB - The Vagabond
******************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)
In your opinion what is the most amazing thing that could happen during this decade? Make it as outrageous as you want but keep it within the realm of what you consider a possibility.
13 responses so far.
Answers will be published the first day of Summer.
Thank you.
dbdacoba@aol.com
DB - The Vagabond
*******************
Dhammapada
****************
People in the arts, especially the performing arts, have their work judged by critics in the media. Strange, since no one writes critiques of congressional speeches, class lectures or sermons. Perhaps they should.
Early in my career I determined that most critics are just people, usually without much knowledge of what they are seeing, expressing an opinion. So I paid no attention to what they wrote until after the show closed when the producers would pass out a folder containing pictures, a contact sheet and copies of the reviews. Then I would look at them. If I got a good review I would extract from the review what was said about me and attached it to my resume. If I got a bad review I would crumple it up and throw it away. In neither case did I pay much attention to what was written.
The shameful fact is that some critics, particularly New York critics and especially the New York Times critics, can close an excellent production and keep a mediocre one running just by expressing their opinions.
I knew actors who would rush right out and buy the papers after opening hoping to find some tid bit, some crumb of praise about themselves. I felt certain enough about my work not to need those crumbs.
I knew a Japanese man, a director/choreographer, who came to New York with a theatre piece he had developed and toured in Japan to great acclaim from the Japanese critics. It opened at an Off Broadway theatre in the city. I went to the opening. I found it confusing, difficult to understand, not because of the language, there was no spoken language, it was all mime, dance and music.
After the performance he and I and a few other people went out to a restaurant for dinner. A friend brought the reviews from the early editions of the papers. Across the board they were bad reviews. No critic had anything good to say about his production.
He read them all and became enraged. "Who are these people? What do they think they know? Why did they say these things?" I tried to assuage him by explaining something about New York critics and why he should pay no attention to them. His show was going to run through it's contract anyway. It didn't matter. But he was deeply hurt, shocked and angry.
I have a big box in my apartment and in it is a large envelope containing reviews I've received for my work over the years. They all have nice things to say about me. I don't remember the nasty things because I threw them out.
Moral: If you believe in yourself and what you do it doesn't matter what anyone says about you. Or as Nehru put it "What we really are matters more than what others think of us."
DB - The Vagabond
******************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)
In your opinion what is the most amazing thing that could happen during this decade? Make it as outrageous as you want but keep it within the realm of what you consider a possibility.
13 responses so far.
Answers will be published the first day of Summer.
Thank you.
dbdacoba@aol.com
DB - The Vagabond
*******************
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Pure Poetry 9/29/09
A great work of art, like a job well done, needs no critique.
DB - The Vagabond
****************
Welcome to wonder land.
_____________________
There are some great works of art and literature that still baffle me. The Bach B minor Mass, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Wagner's Tristan and Parsifal, certain works by Mahler and Stravinsky, paintings by Raphael, DaVinci, Matisse, Van Gogh and Picasso, some novels of Dostoyevsky. Shakespeare's Hamlet and King Lear are among them.
Perhaps "baffle" is the wrong word. I am in awe of them because there are mysteries there that haven't become clear to me yet. And so I sit in wonderment whenever I confront one of them.
Generally I don't like or admire critics, although there are some excellent ones. But I don't envy what the critic has to do when called upon to assess a great work of art. How can you describe in words something as monolithic as Beethoven's Ninth, or DaVinci's Last Supper? It would be like trying to describe a mountain. Each time you climb it the experience is different.
That's what makes for the mysteries. Every time I go back to King Lear, for example, I go "Wait a minute. What's this?" There is something there I didn't see before. I read it, of course, but I didn't SEE it.
I believe it is so important to keep the art that we love and admire always in the active part of our lives. Let the critics try to describe it in their scholarly tomes, if they must. The works speak for themselves and will keep on revealing their mysteries if we only watch and listen.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
*********************
May you have a vigorous Autumn.
___________________________
DB - The Vagabond
****************
Welcome to wonder land.
_____________________
There are some great works of art and literature that still baffle me. The Bach B minor Mass, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Wagner's Tristan and Parsifal, certain works by Mahler and Stravinsky, paintings by Raphael, DaVinci, Matisse, Van Gogh and Picasso, some novels of Dostoyevsky. Shakespeare's Hamlet and King Lear are among them.
Perhaps "baffle" is the wrong word. I am in awe of them because there are mysteries there that haven't become clear to me yet. And so I sit in wonderment whenever I confront one of them.
Generally I don't like or admire critics, although there are some excellent ones. But I don't envy what the critic has to do when called upon to assess a great work of art. How can you describe in words something as monolithic as Beethoven's Ninth, or DaVinci's Last Supper? It would be like trying to describe a mountain. Each time you climb it the experience is different.
That's what makes for the mysteries. Every time I go back to King Lear, for example, I go "Wait a minute. What's this?" There is something there I didn't see before. I read it, of course, but I didn't SEE it.
I believe it is so important to keep the art that we love and admire always in the active part of our lives. Let the critics try to describe it in their scholarly tomes, if they must. The works speak for themselves and will keep on revealing their mysteries if we only watch and listen.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
*********************
May you have a vigorous Autumn.
___________________________
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Ridiculous Rancor 8/05/09
Do whatever you feel in your heart to be right - you'll be criticized anyway.
Eleanor Roosevelt
********************
Come join me.
-------------------------
One evening in New York I had a late dinner with a Japanese gentleman who came there to produce, direct and perform a very contemporary theatre piece of his own. While we were dining a friend arrived with the early editions of the papers. The Japanese fellow read the reviews of his work and was outraged. "They missed the whole point" he said. "Most likely" I replied. I tried to get him to relax and pay no attention to what the reviews said, to believe in the work he had done and to keep on performing as if it was a success. I think he did.
It is always a shock to people who aren't from New York to read what sort of blasphemy critics will write for the sake of selling newspapers. I knew a woman who directed a piece Off-Broadway and got a terrible review from a New York paper. She went back into rehearsal and when she was ready invited the critic to return whereupon she got an even worse review. I think, I hope, she learned her lesson.
In the world of the performing arts the court of opinion is most often incorrectly and ineptly presided over by critics. Why that should be so is due in part to the expense and hence the urgency of providing a production that is both an artistic and financial success. With the exception of films, which will pay for themselves if they are good and popular, the performing arts are not financially supported by the box office unless they run for a long time. So the future of a theatre piece is generally in the hands of the critics and not the performers or producers.
Critics have too much power. The critics in New York will close a very good show and keep a mediocre one running. It has happened many times. Why? Because criticism is a very subjective thing and because most of the critics are very good writers. People will read them for their clever and sometimes vicious comments and accept their judgements. I have often said that if a critic is a good writer he should stick to literary criticism and keep his nose out of show business.
Not all critics are bad apples, some are excellent. The bad ones are bad because they don't know what they are seeing. They will praise a mediocre play because it was acted so well it's flaws were covered up. They will deride the actors not knowing they were directed poorly. They will blame the director or the ploy for some bad acting.
So what is the lesson? It is the same in any area of life. If you believe in what you are doing and you can honestly put your heart into it, it doesn't matter what someone's opinion is. You are not anyone's opinion of you and neither is your work. I find joy in that. I like my stories and my paintings, I enjoy reading and looking at them and it doesn't matter to me what anyone else thinks of them. If I get a good review, great. If I get a bad review, well, Wednesday night is trash night.
DB
_____________________
May the midsummer pixies tickle your nose.
------------------------------------
Scrape up can, priest. (8)
Eleanor Roosevelt
********************
Come join me.
-------------------------
One evening in New York I had a late dinner with a Japanese gentleman who came there to produce, direct and perform a very contemporary theatre piece of his own. While we were dining a friend arrived with the early editions of the papers. The Japanese fellow read the reviews of his work and was outraged. "They missed the whole point" he said. "Most likely" I replied. I tried to get him to relax and pay no attention to what the reviews said, to believe in the work he had done and to keep on performing as if it was a success. I think he did.
It is always a shock to people who aren't from New York to read what sort of blasphemy critics will write for the sake of selling newspapers. I knew a woman who directed a piece Off-Broadway and got a terrible review from a New York paper. She went back into rehearsal and when she was ready invited the critic to return whereupon she got an even worse review. I think, I hope, she learned her lesson.
In the world of the performing arts the court of opinion is most often incorrectly and ineptly presided over by critics. Why that should be so is due in part to the expense and hence the urgency of providing a production that is both an artistic and financial success. With the exception of films, which will pay for themselves if they are good and popular, the performing arts are not financially supported by the box office unless they run for a long time. So the future of a theatre piece is generally in the hands of the critics and not the performers or producers.
Critics have too much power. The critics in New York will close a very good show and keep a mediocre one running. It has happened many times. Why? Because criticism is a very subjective thing and because most of the critics are very good writers. People will read them for their clever and sometimes vicious comments and accept their judgements. I have often said that if a critic is a good writer he should stick to literary criticism and keep his nose out of show business.
Not all critics are bad apples, some are excellent. The bad ones are bad because they don't know what they are seeing. They will praise a mediocre play because it was acted so well it's flaws were covered up. They will deride the actors not knowing they were directed poorly. They will blame the director or the ploy for some bad acting.
So what is the lesson? It is the same in any area of life. If you believe in what you are doing and you can honestly put your heart into it, it doesn't matter what someone's opinion is. You are not anyone's opinion of you and neither is your work. I find joy in that. I like my stories and my paintings, I enjoy reading and looking at them and it doesn't matter to me what anyone else thinks of them. If I get a good review, great. If I get a bad review, well, Wednesday night is trash night.
DB
_____________________
May the midsummer pixies tickle your nose.
------------------------------------
Scrape up can, priest. (8)
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Reckless Rascality 5/19/09
No amount of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.
Harold Rosenberg
Welcome, your table is ready.
-------------------
In Shakespeare's play "Twelfth Night" is the line "Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage." I was curious to find the meaning behind the line. In Elizabethan England, when a felon was condemned to be hanged they would drive him through town in an open cart. The spinsters and widows came out to watch and if one of them wanted to she could claim him. So instead of being executed he had to become the husband of the one who claimed him, for good or ill (usually ill). But sometimes, considering the hag who was doing the claiming, hanging would be a preferred choice, Hence a good hanging could prevent a bad marriage.
There are probably almost as many jokes about critics as there are about lawyers. The difference is that critic-humor is usually true. Show business is full of funny stories about things critics have written. I have some of my own which I will save for another day.
While it is true that a critic with a good eye, a good ear and a good sense of theatre can put a bad play out of business and keep it from climbing up onto the world's stages like poison ivy, it is also true that the same sickle has been used on a worthy piece of theatre, chopping it to death with irresponsible reviews. But, as the Bible says, there is hope of a tree that if it is chopped down in my blossom again and live.
One of the masterpieces of 20th Century play writing is Samuel Beckett's "Waiting For Godot." When it was performed in New York the critics panned it because it didn't make any sense to them. It was also performed at San Quentin Prison and the inmates there had no trouble understanding and appreciating it. Someone suggested that maybe the critics should spend some time in prison. I don't know but that might not be a bad idea on several levels.
Then there was Beethoven. The critics found his music noisy and chaotic and rarely gave him a good review. Beethoven.
As the composer Sibelius said, No one ever constructed a statue to a critic. My advice to any critic is to show up, pay attention, then go home, report what you saw and keep your opinions to yourself. Or better yet, don't show up at all. Let us write and publish our own reviews, as Richard Wagner did for one of his early operas,
But what is even worse, in some ways, is when the critics will see a hunk of junk that should never have been produced, has no theatrical merit, no possible shelf life, a "turkey" as we refer to it in show business and then go and write a fabulous review, praising it to the sky and thus letting it loose on an unsuspecting and unprepared public. The widow has claimed the felon who should have been hung. I think all actors have experienced being in a superficial, badly written and maladjusted piece of trash that some critic has raved over. It makes one shake one's stunned head in disbelief. There is a perfect example of that running the circuits of regional and college theatres, taking up time and space, right now. It shall remain nameless,
Don't read the review then go see the show. Reverse the process and you'll be astounded. My habit as an entertainer was if I got a good review, earned or not, I copied it and mailed it out. If I got a bad one I threw it in the trash can and got on with life.
The Vagabond
______________
Have a happy surprise today.
******************
Harold Rosenberg
Welcome, your table is ready.
-------------------
In Shakespeare's play "Twelfth Night" is the line "Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage." I was curious to find the meaning behind the line. In Elizabethan England, when a felon was condemned to be hanged they would drive him through town in an open cart. The spinsters and widows came out to watch and if one of them wanted to she could claim him. So instead of being executed he had to become the husband of the one who claimed him, for good or ill (usually ill). But sometimes, considering the hag who was doing the claiming, hanging would be a preferred choice, Hence a good hanging could prevent a bad marriage.
There are probably almost as many jokes about critics as there are about lawyers. The difference is that critic-humor is usually true. Show business is full of funny stories about things critics have written. I have some of my own which I will save for another day.
While it is true that a critic with a good eye, a good ear and a good sense of theatre can put a bad play out of business and keep it from climbing up onto the world's stages like poison ivy, it is also true that the same sickle has been used on a worthy piece of theatre, chopping it to death with irresponsible reviews. But, as the Bible says, there is hope of a tree that if it is chopped down in my blossom again and live.
One of the masterpieces of 20th Century play writing is Samuel Beckett's "Waiting For Godot." When it was performed in New York the critics panned it because it didn't make any sense to them. It was also performed at San Quentin Prison and the inmates there had no trouble understanding and appreciating it. Someone suggested that maybe the critics should spend some time in prison. I don't know but that might not be a bad idea on several levels.
Then there was Beethoven. The critics found his music noisy and chaotic and rarely gave him a good review. Beethoven.
As the composer Sibelius said, No one ever constructed a statue to a critic. My advice to any critic is to show up, pay attention, then go home, report what you saw and keep your opinions to yourself. Or better yet, don't show up at all. Let us write and publish our own reviews, as Richard Wagner did for one of his early operas,
But what is even worse, in some ways, is when the critics will see a hunk of junk that should never have been produced, has no theatrical merit, no possible shelf life, a "turkey" as we refer to it in show business and then go and write a fabulous review, praising it to the sky and thus letting it loose on an unsuspecting and unprepared public. The widow has claimed the felon who should have been hung. I think all actors have experienced being in a superficial, badly written and maladjusted piece of trash that some critic has raved over. It makes one shake one's stunned head in disbelief. There is a perfect example of that running the circuits of regional and college theatres, taking up time and space, right now. It shall remain nameless,
Don't read the review then go see the show. Reverse the process and you'll be astounded. My habit as an entertainer was if I got a good review, earned or not, I copied it and mailed it out. If I got a bad one I threw it in the trash can and got on with life.
The Vagabond
______________
Have a happy surprise today.
******************
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