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
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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
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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
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Claudio's Song

Our chief defect is that we are more given to talking about things than to doing them.

Nehru
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Yesterday afternoon I had a conversation with a woman I've known for many years. We're former colleagues. She's a stage manager. I was reminded about another conversation we had one day. During a break in rehearsal we were sitting together and I was talking about the role, the play and about acting in general. She listened to me with attention. Finally she said "Why do you talk about it? Why don't you just do it?" The question took me back a step. Of course I was doing it. Most of the day was spent doing it. I didn't realize I was spending my free time and her free time talking about it. I had to come up with an answer. If not right then, eventually.

I finally concluded that I talk about it because I enjoy talking about it. I enjoy analyzing things, particularly the art of acting. That's why it tends to show up so often in this journal. If I just talked about it and didn't do it I would be all mouth and no meaning, as we so often see these days on TV.

There's a rule in public speaking which goes: Tell them what you're going to say. Say it. Then tell them what you said. The same rule could be appplied in any of life's activities, although it's probably advisable to forget the first. Do it. Then tell them what you did. If you do it then you have the right to talk about it.

On the other hand you can do what my friend suggested, do it, and not talk about it. I think most of the doers in the world are not the talkers. The doers are those who identify the problem, gather the proper tools together and fix it.

Unfortunately, as Nehru points out, the world is full of the other kind. Go to any civic board meeting, any town meeting, any tenants association meeting and hear the talk. The Latest Up To The Minute News? A few tid bits of information then talk. A fact finding committee? Talk. A board meeting? Talk. The court is in session? Talk. Congress? You guessed it.

Someone, I don't remember who, perhaps you do, once described a committee as that which keeps minutes and wastes hours. I like the old saying that a camel is a horse designed by a committee.

One of my favorite stories in the history of music is about the origins of opera. There are musicologists who will disagree with me about this, but it is open to opinion, and here's mine. During the Renaissance artists were trying to recreate ancient Greek drama which had recently been discovered. They didn't know much about it so they formed a committee, called the Camerata, whose task it was to come up with a consensus, design formal elements and put down some rules of writing and composition. They met for a long time, took expert testimony, learned a little bit about how the ancients sounded and looked. They were carefully and conscientiously designing a camel.

While all that discussion was going on, another man, Claudio Monteverdi, who was basically a song writer, invented opera. Monteverdi was a doer not a talker and when his first opera appeared on the stage everyone knew this was a new art form and it was exciting. Sung drama.

Opera is such an important art form that people are still writing them today, joining story, words and music into a theatre piece on the grand scale of the ancient Greeks. And thanks to Claudio we hove operettas, musical comedy and probably a few MTV videos,

I'm a talker as well as a doer. There's no one around here to talk to so I write. But at least I don't talk about writing. I do it.

DB - The Vagabond
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Weekend Contest Answer.

There were 3 winners (actually 4).
The Grand Prize, a set of aluminum doilies, goes to Barry of the Email Lions
Second prize to mrs. miss alaineus of the Blogspot Tigers
And a tie for third place between the Amazing Sister Act of Val and Krissy also of the Tigers.
Pacifica62 came in just under the wire for 4th place.

Which two items do not belong on this list?
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Cuba
Guatemala
Iceland
Ireland
Madagascar
Manhattan
Puerto Rico
Rhode Island
Sardinia
Sicily
Sri Lanka
Tasmania

The answer is Guatemala and Rhode Island. All the rest are islands.
Thank you folks.
Now here comes the Sunday Puzzle.
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Sunday Puzzle

The bear went over the mountain to see what he could see.
A secret word opens the treasure chest.
Can you discover the secret word?

I'm found at MacDonald's.
I'm good for a view.
I don't take to camels.
But I might be on your shoe.

Good luck.
DB
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