{"id":338,"date":"2016-02-12T18:37:47","date_gmt":"2016-02-12T18:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/2\/?p=338"},"modified":"2022-05-29T09:34:22","modified_gmt":"2022-05-29T09:34:22","slug":"too-important-to-be-left-to-amateurs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/2\/too-important-to-be-left-to-amateurs\/","title":{"rendered":"Too Important To Be Left to Amateurs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Don Rubin<\/strong>[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

\"1046328122\"<\/p>\n

Abstract \/ Resum\u00e9<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the following paper<\/em>\u2500presented at the final Plenary Session of the Gujarat conference on theatre criticism in India in January 2010<\/em>\u2500Canadian critic Don Rubin establishes a taxonomy of criticism while arguing that expertise and judgment will always be essential elements of the higher forms.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dans cet article<\/em>\u2500pr\u00e9sent\u00e9 \u00e0 la derni\u00e8re s\u00e9ance pl\u00e9ni\u00e8re du colloque du Gujarat sur la critique de th\u00e9\u00e2tre en Inde, en janvier 2010<\/em>\u2500, le critique canadien Don Rubin d\u00e9veloppe une taxonomie de la critique, soulignant que l’expertise et le bon jugement constitueront toujours des \u00e9l\u00e9ments essentiels de cet exercice.<\/em><\/p>\n

*<\/strong><\/p>\n

The subject this week has been public theatrical commentary. By which I mean criticism at its most sophisticated level; reviewing at its most widely-known and recognised professional level; reportage and personal opinion at its most basic level.<\/p>\n

As our discussions and debates have evolved over the last few days, it has become clear I think that there is some confusion about these differing levels of theatrical response, how they work, how they interact and overlap, how they contribute to popular discourse, to artistic discourse and to public and social discourse.<\/p>\n

Underlying much of this has been the question of expertise and judgement, two notions currently in intellectual disfavour. But even intellectual fads disappear and I am confident these views too will fade in the not too distant future. So the question remains for us: how much expertise is needed to even enter this field of theatre criticism. Can anyone do it? Indeed, is expertise needed at all? How innocent\u2500or perhaps how guilty\u2500need one be to claim a public voice?<\/p>\n

I am reminded here of a story I heard recently about a famous Canadian novelist. Some of you may know her name and her work, Margaret Atwood. She is probably Canada\u2019s foremost literary voice and one of our most ironic and sarcastic voices when she is provoked. As the story goes, she was invited to be the keynote speaker at some major international gathering. At a dinner for guests and sponsors, she was seated at the head table with a group of people who had put much of the money in to sponsor the event. She found herself across from a man in his fifties who told her that he was a brain surgeon and that he admired her books greatly. He went on to tell her that when he retired in a few years, he was going to write a novel himself. I feel I have much to say, he told her. Atwood, without missing a beat, said that she too was thinking of retiring soon. The doctor asked her what she was planning to do in her retirement.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m planning on practicing brain surgery,\u201d she told him.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut you know nothing about medicine,\u201d he sputtered.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd you know nothing about writing novels. Why do you believe you can work in my field without training and experience any more than I can work in yours?<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t have any record of the brain surgeon\u2019s reply.<\/p>\n

What I am trying to say here is that we all know how many people there are in the world who believe passionately that simply because they breathe the same air as artists and writers, and perhaps only because they have opinions on everything from the quality of food in Gujarat to whether they think India can beat Bangaldesh in cricket that they somehow possess the necessary skills to be public commentators on the arts.<\/p>\n

The distinguished Korean scholar Yun-Cheol Kim, President of the International Association of Theatre Critics, said this week that he sought a state of innocence whenever he entered the theatre as critic. If some hardened newspaper editor had been in the audience, no doubt they would have said something to the effect that this is why they seek people whose only qualification for such a job is that they are both innocent and supremely average. That is, they want to have the so-called man or woman in the street as their public voice.<\/p>\n

They would be profoundly wrong in their understanding of what Professor Kim really meant. The word he used was \u201cinnocent,\u201d not \u201cignorant.\u201d He said \u201copen to experience,\u201d not \u201cwithout experience.\u201d And therein lies all the difference. It was Michel Vais from Montreal who quickly added to Kim\u2019s statement, \u201cyou must be very experienced as a theatregoer to create a state of innocence for yourself as a theatre critic.\u201d<\/p>\n

I am sure that a doctor whose mind is clear, whose mind is open to each new patient, who is innocent\u2500medically speaking\u2500performs far better surgery than one who walks into the operating theatre determined to excise some particular part of someone\u2019s brain without first looking closely at what the patient\u2019s problem really is.<\/p>\n

Which leads, I think, to that old and probably by now quite tired question about objectivity and subjectivity. Let\u2019s stay with the medical comparison. Is a brain surgeon really objective when approaching a patient? Would you want them to be? Or would you\u2500like me\u2500want your brain surgeon to bring with him or her every bit of personal experience they could muster? Would you not want them to weigh the benefits of what they do at that moment with the long-term effects of their actions? Yes, they could cut out everything in the way of the problem area in two minutes but when that part of the brain is gone perhaps the patient will no longer be able to walk or talk.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t you want a doctor who makes decisions based on a very personal understanding of what quality of life really is. Certainly if you want to define objectivity as not drinking before performing surgery so one can actually see the patient anesthetized on the table then I am obviously all for objectivity. But if objectivity means leaving one\u2019s own humanity at the door and one\u2019s values in the washroom then I say \u201cthank you but no.\u201d I prefer judgements to be made at that moment with humanity rather than by some pre-established notion of intellectual framing. You can keep objectivity. Indeed, I don\u2019t believe that it even exists except as some sort of theoretical pretense.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s move on to publication of experience, the act of re-viewing, seeing again in another form. When that same brain surgeon decides to share her information with the world\u2500when the critic starts to write\u2500to what audience should the writing be addressed, how technical can it or should it be. I am assuming that if the brain surgeon were writing for other brain surgeons\u2500scholars for scholars\u2500technical language would be absolutely appropriate. But if the writing is not aimed at brain surgeons but say others in the general health field or at those who might be looking for understanding or experience\u2500theatre professionals or more general audiences\u2500then it is obvious that the language must change from technical and\/or theoretical jargon to genuine communication allowing that communication does not have to be monosyllabic and dull.<\/p>\n

We have\u2500let us say it proudly in the field of human communication\u2500progressed beyond grunts. Some of us have even progressed beyond simply saying good or bad about particular experiences whether we are eating biryani or watching a boxing match. Indeed, it was Brecht who said that the arts would be much better off when audiences\u2500and by extension theatre commentators\u2500had as much expertise and sophistication as people who attend sports events. Understand his point well: it\u2019s an important one. Sporting enthusiasts are called fans because they are fanatics. That is, they know far more about their subject than most so-called theatre enthusiasts. Let\u2019s at least strive in our theatre commentaries, said Brecht, to at least reach the level of sports writing and those who attend such activities. Would we really send someone to cover a football game who has only seen a handful of matches and knows little about the sport? I think not. Imagine saying to a sports reporter, tell us what the crowd thought. Don\u2019t include anything that might show us you are expert in this field. Try to show how average you are when you write.<\/p>\n

Indeed, should the response of an audience even be part of what is written? Is it included in sports reporting? Certainly not. And if I knew a commentator was swayed by or even modestly influenced by audience responses, I would make sure that my whole family was seated around them and I would instruct them all to applaud wildly throughout the show, to laugh, to cry and so on.<\/p>\n

Certainly the only real way to know what an audience thought of something is to take a survey and that is quite another thing. \u201cThe audience loved it\u201d is a totally meaningless statement in this context, as is a totally qualified statement such as \u201cmany in the audience seated near me seemed to be enjoying themselves for certain periods in act two although others seemed to have no visible reaction at all which could mean they were bored or sleeping.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Don
Don Rubin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Let me move toward the end of these random remarks by saying that I think we all learned much this week not only about theatre criticism in India over the last 2500 years but also about Indian theatre in its many traditional and modern forms including my favourite, creative copulation. The performances we saw certainly gave those of us from abroad important insight into the richness that is Indian theatre and the uniqueness that is Indian classical and folk theatre, truly unique forms that exist nowhere else in the world in quite this way, forms which must continue to be treasured and protected. We learned as well that western forms too\u2500whether high or low tech, whether political or escapist, whether literary or post-dramatic\u2500are also clearly alive and battling for recognition in India as they are all over the world. Some of these forms\u2500as many papers we heard suggested\u2500are making real connections with urban audiences while others are as still as exotic in rural communities as Gujarati folk theatre might be to media-mad teenyboppers in Bangalore or Boston.<\/p>\n

Which leads me to something that was not spoken of so much this week\u2500theatre and the internet, theatre criticism and the web, the mad, mad world of personal blogging. Is this the future for theatre criticism? Certainly I don\u2019t know. What I can say with some certainty is that even if it is the future, I continue to have no doubt that there will always be a place\u2500even there\u2500for expertise, for experience and for people who have the ability to communicate effectively. These are the cornerstones of almost any field in contemporary knowledge-based societies.<\/p>\n

Hopefully by now we have agreed that just as we would not wish to have theatre critics perform brain surgery without expertise or experience, so too do we not want brain surgeons\u2500or any other well-meaning amateur\u2500doing our imagination-rooted work. Art is too important a field to be left to the hands of those who really do not know.<\/p>\n

\n

\"1046328122\"<\/p>\n

<\/a>[1] Don Rubin<\/b> is the founding director of the Graduate Program in Theatre Studies at Toronto’s York University and former Chair of its Department of Theatre. He is the Editor of Routledge’s six-volumeWorld Encyclopaedia of Contemporary Theatre<\/i> and founding editor of the quarterly journal Canadian Theatre Review<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9<\/strong> 2009 Don Rubin
\nCritical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques<\/em> e-ISSN: 2409-7411<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This work is licensed under the
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