Are We Too Nice?

This question has dogged me my entire time here in New York City in two different ways. The first is whether or not the blog community wasn't critical enough of each other's thinking and/or work, and the other is whether or not as a professional artist myself and the other artists I know are too nice to each other.

These are, in fact, very different questions.  There's a real difference between something said on the internet and something said in the back room of a bar to friends.  Environment matters. Context matters.  I've seen work by friends that I really didn't like and talked to them about it, but I would never say so on the internet. For two main reasons: (a) It's up there for anyone to see. Someone googling a friend of mine is going to get a quote by me saying negative things about their work and (b) Mastering tone on the internet is nearly impossible. I've been blogging for five years now, and I'm still not great at it.  This is both because you can't hear me say the things I'm writing, nor can you observe my body language etc. but it's also because you aren't reading this blog as closely as you do something on the printed page; if scientific studies on reading comprehension are to be believed, you're paying roughly 20% less attention to what I'm writing right now. 

So anyway, back to the two different kinds of "Too Nice". Let's take the personal one first. I think, ultimately, the answer is... yes. Yes we are too nice in general. Or at least, I think I am and I think most of the artists I know are too. When I was at the Lincoln Center Director's Lab, I saw plenty of bad work and heard a lot of absolute horseshit thrown around in our group discussions.  other people did too. No one really said anything about it.  In fact, the visiting artists who worked with us routinely said we were too nice to each other. 

I find this bleeds over into most conversations I have with people I know about our work.  It's hard to get an honest answer out of someone when they don't like something.  It's even harder (in my experience) to find people who actually honestly want criticism of their work.

I also feel- to speak the other side of the conflict for a moment- that there are people who think that the act of giving criticism is what matters, and I don't agree.  If art is a gift to its audience and the world (and I agree with Scott's excellent post about this subject here and have said many similar things before) then feedback on the work is to some extent the gift to the artist. If the artist doesn't want it, and you give it anyway, there's a more masturbatory impulse at work. You think the important thing is that you speak, but you are wrong, the important thing is that what you say be heard and be helpful. 

Now that being said, having an artist friend who isn't particularly interested in criticism may negatively affect your relationship to them and their work, and that's a price they're going to have to pay. They're making a choice to live in a bubble, and the end result will inevitably be fewer people want to live in their with them.  This is the weird paradox of the everyone-being-giving, other-focused system.  Graciously receiving a gift is itself a gift. 

I tend not to offer my opinion on something beyond the generic-and-dreaded "congratulations" unless the person asks for it, and I certainly don't do so immediately after the work is performed, when people are at their most vulnerable and least-receptive.  I have no problem, however, offering my honest and critical opinion to other people should they be so interested. I don't think of this as talking behind someone's back. Doing that would be if I did not honestly express my criticism when it was asked for and then told other people what I thought of the show. Also, i think it's worth pointing out that publicly discussing ideas is generally how I think.

Anyway... then there's blogging. Are we too nice as bloggers? I think as I said we're in a bit of a trap. Theatre isn't like politics where you can really go after someone one day and then form coalitions with them the next.  People take all of this really personally.  I remember reading one week a debate via blogs where Andrew Sullivan called Ezra Klein a party apartchik and then Klein responded with a full-scale decimation of Sullivan's tenure at the New Republic.  A month later they were both linking approvingly to stuff the other one was writing. I don't think that sort of exchange is common in the theatrosphere.  Nor do I necessarily think making it more common would be healthier for us all.

There's certainly stuff that I haven't said on this blog out of fear of it negatively impacting my future potential relationship with a company or an artist.  I might be a highly regarded blogger, but I'm still just a blogger, my power within the American Theatre is very, very slight which makes the potential for things to come back and bite me in the ass greater. 

It generally takes a lot to get me to really call someone out, which is probably why when I do it I'm pretty furious by then and it may seem to come from nowhere.

I don't know if we're not critical enough of each other and theaters and work here on our blogs.  Sometimes I feel like a coward, other times I think I'm being considerate of other human beings.  Certainly, the relationships I've built via blogging where I can have constructive disagreements with people I've really enjoyed and found very growthful. Matt Freeman and I have routinely disagreed on stuff over the years, but I still count him amongst my friends and I think we've been able to do it in a way that's respectful. I feel nurtured by our disagreements, I feel like my opinions and arguments are better honed as a result (and so are his).

Certainly Scott and Don both enjoy the argument-as-death-match-sport and get a lot out of it.  You can tell they enjoy it, when they argue with each other their sites practically light up and start blushing.  I enjoy that kind of argument in person. And I sometimes enjoy reading it. But I don't enjoy engaging in it, and I try not to unless it seems necessary.

Comments

[freeman]

My arguments have been utterly degraded by your constant babble.

No, no. I think this is worthwhile for discussion. And I do think that although we occasionally disagree, we all have to remember we're on the same team. And I don't just mean the blogging community, or people you get to have a beer with every once in a while. I mean all of us. I'm on the same team as a lot of people I've never met. We're all out there fighting the good fight, engaging in discussion, trying to make something we love a little bit better.

Do I sound too nice? Sometimes I probably am. But it's never done me a disservice to try to give people the benefit of the doubt, or be a little kind, or careful.

I've certainly have had very good friends tell me they thought my work was great, or very clearly politely NOT tell me so, or get good and whiskey'ed up and told me how far they'd throw one of my plays if they could (I'm looking at YOU Comtois!). It's all part of the journey.

[freeman]

I'd like to add, though, that not all criticism is a gift. Some of it is, expressly, not. There is a responsibility on the part of the person expressing their opinion to an artist; it's not just how the artist hears what's said. Being gracious is important, but there's no such thing as a one-sided conversation.

[99]

I definitely hear you on this. It's one of the more frustrating aspects of working in theatre. Part of it is the good frustrating, where you like a person, see what they're trying to do, but know it isn't working. You want to help them, but since the work we do is usually quite personal (even when it doesn't seem so), you have to tread lightly. We all have had projects that we cared about, or at least thought were interesting, and then got the wrong kind of feedback at the wrong time and it all evaporated. It's a difficult dance between being honest and clear and constructive and being harmful (even unintentionally).

Is there a line between the workshop space, the rehearsal hall and the theatosphere, though? I know that some folks open their writing process up to the world here, but mostly, we're talking about ideas, theories, opinions. Maybe we do bring that workshop sensibility to these conversations that could be meatier, or more pointed, because, in the end, we're talking about results. If I go see a play, any play, and it's unsuccessful, I think it's a worthy endeavour to try to figure out why. But, of course, that starts to butt against criticism (I know that I don't post thoughts about a play until it's officially "opened"...even though I don't consider myself a "reviewer.") Ezra and Andrew know that they're talking about ideas and they have a solid understanding of where those ideas are based in. Theatre artists, in general, don't always have that same basis.

To be honest, even blogging anonymously, the larger fear is fear of reprisals, not fear of hurting someone's feelings. If I don't like a friend's show, I think I can talk to them about what worked for me or didn't work, and they'll hear it in the spirit that it's given. If I trash a show at Playwrights or MTC, and wonder why it was produced, well, that certainly won't endear me to the people making decisions there. But it doesn't help the larger community. So...I use a pseudonym. Not so much so I can be not nice, but so I can be as honest as I can in a community that sometimes rejects honesty.

[Jason Grote]

Yes, definitely -- I think people, even good friends, used to argue much more passionately about this stuff, (and people still do, when it comes to TV, movies, and music).

Obviously part of the issue is that everyone knows everyone else, but I think a lot of it has to do with the fragility of peoples' careers and of the art form in general. For example, if I go off on Slumdog Millionare (which I haven't seen) or M. Ward (to whom I am pretty much indifferent), it's unlikely to make much of a difference. But if I go off on a show at, say, Playwrights' Horizons by a relatively unknown writer (or for that matter a first novel by a relatively unknown author), it's likely to do at least a little damage, or to cause reverberations that could potentially harm a production or even a career (or maybe it wouldn't, but that's a pretty risky experiment to attempt). Ditto with a more successful writer, like Neil LaBute -- things might get a little awkward if I ever met the guy, but honestly nothing I can say will ever make much of a difference to his actual working life.

I also think a lot of it had to do with the fact that, back in the day, more working artists and critics used to be rich. Nowadays most artists I know are from fairly humble backgrounds, and even the ones who I know come from money are trying to eke out expensive city rents and exorbitant student debt on a meager theater salary. I've got my Rutgers job to basically subsidize my career, *and* I've been more financially than artistically successful lately (as I measure both things), and I'm still swimming against the tide.

[Emma]

I have often been frustrated about not being able to speak my mind about theatre. I want the work I see to be great, and I want the work I'm in to be great. How can we improve the quality of our work without an honest discussion? I have been shushed in public when talking about a director I don't care for. And that's because as an actor I am low on the food chain, so I can't upset anyone.

As for my own work, when I take a class I often find that my favorite teachers are the ones everyone else calls "mean." They actually call me out on my shit and I actually learn something from them! But I have also paid them and asked for their criticism. It is different if it's unsolicited.