Fear of flailing?: Returning to regular blogposting August 2022
Much to my surprise, I see that I have been on hiatus for over two years. Rather than wait for a beloved sensei or mentor to pass away, I thought I would return to my initial impetus for starting this blog. I go to a lot of performances: concerts, dance, theatre, and especially kyogen. Before Covid, this would include occasional buffet feasts in San Francisco London, Bali, and New York. Since Covid this has mainly been online, and limited to Kyoto. I doubt if there is anyone else in the world with the same tastes as I: noh as a matinee, E9 little theatre experiment in the evening, research showing the next day. But although I take notes, keep programs, and file it away in my memory, I rarely commit to writing down critiques, much less posting it on a public blog.
Why? I reflect here on my background in theatre reviewing, consider its technique and utility, then once again plunge back into the critical appraisals that may, perhaps be useful to others (at least my mom might like them ;))
I edited the high school paper and so naturally immediately got involved with the college weekly newspaper. It was a chance to meet girls! (women; this was Bryn Mawr), get books and comps to all sorts of events, and hone my writing with experienced journalists (Don Sapatkin and David Wertheimer were two who went on to illustrious careers). As arts editor, I could also network, encouraging new writers and nudging veterans to greatness (or at least get them in on deadline). The all-night sessions at the printers, literally cutting and pasting columns, headlines, and photographs in my 2-page center spread were some of the most rewarding in my life. What joy to see them perused every Thursdays as my serious (and poor) fellow students scanned for things they might enjoy that weekend. It was a bully pulpit, if a small one.
On my junior semester abroad, I wrote for the U London Senate (although I was never a student there), becoming friendly with the editor, the playwright Julie Kabat. I even considered a career as a critic, on graduation even writing a review of D Bair's Beckett biography for the Philadelphia inquirer, where I had once interned. I was paid $75 and thought, "if I could write just one a week," before an editor brought me up cold with the hard facts that NObody survives through newspaper criticism. Instead, I was off to London and a very different direction under ED Berman and Inter-action. But the word-count care, paragraph division, headline hints, and need to copyedit myself constantly served me well (I was my own grammarly) as I turned to press releases, scholarly work, and editing.
When in London in my junior semester, and a year after graduation, I made it a point of writing longish critiques (in my notebook, by scrawling pen) of plays that I saw. John Simon was my hero: opinionated guys who had seen everything by the playwright, actor, and director and could assess their trajectories converging in this particular play. Later I learned from Michael Kirby (and Geertz) the need for thick description: that 90% of historic theatre reviews were useless to historians, as they failed to note the basics of staging, costume, lighting, or dramaturgical dynamics, merely gave self-inflated opinions onaccording to fluid personal tastes. I came to write in-depth previews for the Kansai Time Out, the monthly bible for we Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe ex-pats, trying to find productions that were visually spectacular (or provided with synopses) for non-Japanese speaking audiences to enjoy. And I was an early contributor to Kyoto Journal, before its focus shifted from local to glocal Asian subjects. It was fun when I would hear that people took my advice, and groups that used the clippings for overseas' festival tours. The word "dento bento" for a variety show for tourists caught on.
Then the internet happened: everyone's a critic (and KTO ceased, ;(). I got busy in Kyoto and rarely made it to Tokyo, and then only saw shows recommended by colleagues. So I returned to my notebooks, and eventually just my head, more aware than ever of my relative blindness to the Japanese theatre scene. Yet realizing that I need not worry about readers, that this blog is my own public notebook, where I could continue to hone my craft and reflect on things I've seen, I started this a decade ago. Joining Writers in Kyoto made me realize: I was a NON-writer in Kyoto for too long, so time to get back in it and pay my dues, figuratively speaking (I think I also owe this year's fee, literally btw).
There is trepidation in putting opinions down on paper (or up on net). You may have missed the point. You may have been so focused on the action that you missed the political or social or aesthetic context. Your colleagues will mock you; your friends don't care. Re-reading immature works is embarrassing; others' reading them is just plain shameful.
And yet: if only for my selfish interest, to keep me "in training", but hopefully as a service to the theatre I have been in thrall to since teenage days, I will continue to post regularly what I see in Kyoto these dark days of year 2 1/2 of Covid. If only as a small signpost on the road to recovery, and hopefully as a service of discovery and engagement by a few readers.
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