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By Mark Fisher. Reviewed by Don Rubin*<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>(Canada)<\/p>\n In matters connected to writing \u2013 and with only a few honourable exceptions — \u00a0\u201cHow To\u201d books are usually best to be avoided by all but the most inexperienced in a field.\u00a0 How To Write A Play.\u00a0 How To Write A Poem.\u00a0 How To Write a Presidential Tweet.\u00a0 Enter at your peril. But this recent contribution to what is really a fairly dubious form \u2013 Mark Fisher\u2019s How To Write About Theatre<\/em> \u2013 is actually quite good as an entry level primer for would-be reviewers, curious students and ambitious bloggers interested in\u00a0 getting into the field.<\/p>\n Formulaic, of course (as \u201cHow Tos\u201d must be), this modest paperback by a well-known Scottish critic (Fisher has long been one of The Guardian\u2019s <\/em>go-to theatre reviewers from Scotland and he is also the author of The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide) <\/em>actually does more than focus its users on the lowest common denominator with standard (read boring) advice. It even offers up some useful theory and history as it enthusiastically bounces along its \u201cHow To\u201d path.<\/p>\n Among its twenty short chapters are some useful words on \u201cHow to learn from critics of the past,\u201d and \u201cHow to do research.\u201d There\u2019s some sage advice about \u201cHow to find your voice\u201d and \u201cHow to write about context,\u201d\u00a0 \u201cHow to write in the moment\u201d and \u201cHow to write about culture, society and politics.\u201d These are not the usual banalities found in such guides.<\/p>\n Fisher tells us disarmingly right at the beginning that \u201cWriting about theatre is an act of translation\u201d turning \u201cthe languages\u2026 of performance into the language of words.\u201d He adds that as a translator \u201cwhether you are writing a tweet, a Facebook update, an overnight review, a critical essay, a blog, a radio broadcast or a YouTube review, you will find yourself moving from the rich Babel-like conversation of live performance to plain two-dimensional prose.\u201d And he adds, \u201cThings will get lost in translation.\u201d<\/p>\n Fisher provides valuable historical context by touching on numerous early critical thinkers and writers from Aristotle to the British writer Richard Steele of the 18th century journal The Spectator<\/em> whom Fisher says was \u201cone of the first journalistic theatre critics.\u201d In the same section the quotes Coleridge (in a How To book?) and even David Mamet.<\/p>\n In his mini-history of criticism, he impressively ranges from Horace to neo-classicism, from \u201cthe birth of the newspaper in England in the 1600s\u201d through London\u2019s coffee shop criticism of the late Restoration period to the appearance of The Gentleman\u2019s Journal <\/em>in the 1690s and The Prompter<\/em> begun as a twice weekly publication in 1734 by Aaron Hill and William Popple. The latter two, he says, were arguably \u201cthe first professional theatre critics.\u201d<\/p>\n In a very short space, Fisher manages also to look at early theatre coverage in the US and even in Canada (though he does not mention Anton Wagner\u2019s major study of the field \u00a0— Establishing Our Boundaries: English-Canadian Theatre Criticism <\/em>(University of Toronto Press, 2010).<\/p>\n Fisher\u2019s history is of necessity a very modest and very potted one but it is certainly a useful starting point for discussions about the long tradition of critical discourse.<\/p>\n When it comes to evaluative criteria, Fisher\u2019s how-to does turn to the old standby \u2013 Goethe and his three core questions: what was being attempted, how well was it done and was it worth doing. \u00a0The surprising difference here is that he suggests that these critical ideas were not first put forward by Goethe but rather by the Italian Allesandro Manzoni, a novelist and playwright (and someone whose name I was certainly not familiar with).<\/p>\n \u201cManzoni,\u201d says Fisher, \u201ccame to the conclusion that every work of art had its own reason to exist and should therefore be judged on its own terms\u201d and not according to some set of pre-established rules. In Manzoni\u2019s preface to his play The Count of Carmagnola <\/em>(1819), he wrote that the following questions should be asked of every work of art: \u201cWhat did the author set out to do? Was this a reasonable ambition in the first place? Has the author achieved what they set out to do?\u201d<\/p>\n Fisher argues that Manzoni\u2019s preface\u00a0 therefore contained \u201cthe first iteration of a philosophy that has characterized theatre criticism to this day.\u201d He tells us that though Manzoni\u2019s play was a failure, these evaluative \u00a0ideas were picked up by Goethe who championed them in Germany from 1821. Goethe, he says, was also \u201cdismissive of dogmatic rules-based criticism and in favour of a more fluid, artist-centred approach\u2026.Goethe usually gets the credit for these three questions,\u201d says Fisher, \u00a0\u201cbut they properly belong to Manzoni.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps most useful in this book for the teacher of critical writing as well as for the neophyte student are Fisher\u2019s dozens of suggested writing exercises. These include, for example, writing 250 words focusing specifically on the intentions \u201cof the theatremakers\u201d to see if it makes the writing harder or easier looking from their perspective; writing 200 words as a reporter containing \u201cno judgement and no direct evidence of your own presence\u201d; writing 400 words connecting the production to some issue in society at-large.<\/p>\n Near the end of the guide, Fisher has a section called \u201cCriticism for theatre\u2019s sake\u201d in which he takes on the old saw \u201cThose who can \u2013 do. Those who can\u2019t \u2013 criticize.\u201d He says that the words can be easily switched around and they make just as much sense: \u201cThose who can \u2013 criticize.\u00a0 Those who can\u2019t \u2013 act.\u201d<\/p>\n He argues that \u00a0most \u201ccritics take up the job not out of desperation nor to wreak revenge on an industry that has let them down, but because they want to. That may be a difficult concept for a theatremaker to grasp,\u201d he says,\u00a0 \u201cbut all the unpaid bloggers who write reviews for the love of it demonstrate it to be the case\u2026.What\u2019s wrong with wanting to be a critic and aiming to be a good one.\u201d<\/p>\n He then quotes musician-critic Roseanna East who once said that \u201cperforming and reviewing happen simultaneously, but in parallel worlds\u2026.What matters most to the participants, isn\u2019t always the most important thing to the wider world.\u201d<\/p>\n Fisher ends his how-to with basic sage advice: \u201cThere are no rules\u2026get out there and paint.\u201d<\/p>\n A wry and useful how-to for the newest would-bes working in this changing and maddeningly difficult area of theatre.<\/a><\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>280 pp. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama.<\/strong><\/p>\n
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