The Last Word

Peter Hay[1]

American comedian and writer Mel Brooks was once asked what he thought of critics. “They're very noisy at night,” he replied at once: “You can't sleep in the country because of them.” When the interviewer tried to explain that he was asking about critics, not crickets, Brooks went on: “Oh, critics! What good are they? They can't make music with their hind legs.”

Noises on and off stage are among the many professional hazards that beset critics. William Archer declared more than a century ago that the first qualification of a dramatic critic is to be able to sleep while sitting bolt upright.

US critic Kelcey Allen, who was reviewing Broadway for the New York fashion newspaper Women's Wear Daily in the twenties and thirties, often fell asleep in the theatre. One night fellow critic Walter Kerr heard him snore and remarked to his companion: “I see Kelcey is writing his review early.”

One of the most famous confrontations in living memory between a critic and an artist was that between the English playwright David Storey, who had also been a professional rugby player, and Michael Billington, long-time drama critic of The Guardian in London. Smarting under a review that began with the opening sentence, “It stinks”, Storey went up to Billington at the Royal Court bar and knocking off his glasses, called him an 'i-di-ot!” while emphasizing each syllable of the word with a poke. He only stopped when another well-known critic, Irving Wardle of The Times, pressed Storey against the wall while begging, “Don't hit me!”

 

Producer David Merrick, who dominated Broadway in the post-war period, once said about the two most powerful critics of the time: “I had a wonderful dream last night that Walter Kerr dropped dead on his way to Howard Taubman's funeral.” This was during previews for a soon-forgotten play, Subways Are for Sleeping; when reality set in and all the major New York papers had panned the show, Merrick perpetrated what he called “a delicious gag.” He searched through all the New York City telephone directories and found seven people with the same names as the critics. He paid them to give him glowing quotes about the show they had not seen and published these in full page ads under their names. Walter Kerr's Herald Tribune was first to discover the prank and to kill the ad. By that time the stunt was the talk of the town.

[1] Peter Hay, born in Budapest and educated in England, worked as a dramaturg and theatre critic in Canada and the United States. His books include four volumes of show business anecdotes (published by Oxford University Press) from which the stories included in this issue are adapted.

Lady Anne’s Blog: Some Initial Thoughts on the Evolution of Theatrical Commentary in South Africa [1]

Temple Hauptfleisch[2]

[the Theatre] ... was opened for the first time a few days ago – a very pretty one indeed. We felt ourselves obliged to go and to pay a sum for our box, else we should have been call’d stingy and ill-humoured. The scenes were well done, some of them by young Cockburn…. It opened with an address to Apollo, spoken by Dr Somers, and wrote by Mrs Somers. It was too fine for anyone to understand it, and seem’d rather an index to pretty learning than to any conversation which Apollo could have liked to listen to – however the scene was good and all was new. The piece was a dull one, the first part of Henry the 4^th. The Doctor thought he shone in Falstaff, we did not agree with him. (Lady Anne Barnard, Cape Town, 1801)

In her diary entry, considered by many to be the first formal and extant “review” in South African theatre, the influential socialite and hostess of Cape Town society described her (reluctant) attendance of the opening performance in the newly built African Theatre at the start of the nineteenth century. Today she might have used an internet blog and written something much less circumspect.

So much of what one talks about in the field of the humanities, and specifically so in arts criticism, is highly dependent on its use in a particular context and epoch. For example, the very notions of drama and theatre―even ideas about performance (and indeed criticism and scholarship), are at best slippery in post-Apartheid South Africa and the surrounding regions.

Over the course of the first 300 years after the arrival of the first Europeans on these shores in the seventeenth century, the political history of the region basically brought over, imposed and entrenched a particular way of looking at and thinking about the new continent. An effect was to overshadow local traditions and cultural practices and devalue them. It was only during the twentieth century, and more particularly its second half, that cultural expressions and practices of the indigenous peoples, and the values underlying them, were slowly recognized. Then writings about them became more than marginal commentaries on what appeared to be radical, oppositional, esoteric, or possibly even eccentric. Today of course indigenous forms have become a much more serious field area of study and contemplation and, for most of us today, experimentation and exploration with the forgotten forms and traditions have become major driving forces in the arts. Yet, the process of reinterpreting the original histories has only begun and obviously still has far to go, as formerly hidden aspects of the history are unearthed, re-evaluated and integrated into the new thinking. This change has naturally been heavily influenced by the arrival of a spate of new paradigms for thinking about African and South African history in itself, especially during the transitional period (1987-1994).[3]

A necessary, wider and more flexible concept of theatre would include the products of and oral/kinetic, or “performance” culture, as David Coplan (1985) so aptly termed it. Today we tend to accept that theatre history, and particularly in the non-Western contexts, needs to be a study of the history of performance, rather than a literary study of (printed) texts―and this is particularly true of contemporary theatre in Southern Africa. However, colonial thinking had long favoured a focus on the text and thus tended to exclude a wide, comprehensive world of theatre, performance and what Wilmar Sauter (2007) has termed “theatrical playing,” in the region.

Like so much of the early history of mankind, the history of this period in Southern Africa is still extremely tentative, and based on much theorizing and speculation. This also applies to ideas about the social life of indigenous communities and the function of art within them, which no doubt were as varied as the social, economic and political conditions. There are certain indications however of a widely spread material culture in the region, notably represented by San rock-art, and the pottery, beadwork and other artifacts of the Nguni, Sotho and other peoples. The salient point is that creative tendencies seem to have been integrated into communal life, and not separate entities with an own discrete existence outside of their communal function. Also, following the argument of Mudimbe (1988), one has to bear in mind that none of this history is static; it is as changing, as evolutionary, as open to the impact of social, cultural, economic and political pressures as any period to follow, as any period about which we have more information. So, though one may speak of general tendencies, there must have been vast and constantly shifting differences between forms, themes, occasions and the like.

While there are many who may believe that indigenous practices changed as a result of white arrival, and that the reverse traffic is more recent―post 1994 in the eyes of some―I have come to believe this is a slightly parochial point of view―blinkered precisely by the kind of thinking discussed here. In the 1960s Guy Butler had already remarked that “The English are being Afrikanerized, the Afrikaners Anglicized, Africans Westernized and the whole lot Africanized.”[4]

Actually the evolution of the Afrikaans language and Cape cuisine alone are testimony of a far more pervasive and interactive hybridization taking place, from the very first contacts between Africans and Europeans. And I certainly believe it happened in performance as well. It was simply not noticed, that is all.

But the more important factor, from a Western point of view, is that we are dealing with a set of oral cultures, where no orthography or any tradition of written history existed. We know less about the performance art in this period than about any other form, quite simply because of the ephemeral nature of the theatre as form and because no demonstrable examples have survived unmediated. Nor are there documented (written) critical responses available. Nevertheless, the few fragment we do have, plus the later records provided by incidental travelers and scribes from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, do allow certain deductions concerning the kind of performance activities which existed in these societies―if not their origins, their functions and/or their meaning within specific historic societies.

The oldest known performances in the region are the shamanistic dances among the San, recorded in certain San rock art paintings – some of them up to 25 000 years old, some dating back to the nineteenth century. Remnants of these dances still occur today in the Kalahari among the descendants of the San. In a similar vein the arrival of that later crystallized out as the Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho and other peoples brought a rich heritage of social, religious and military performance and ritual to the region. These performance events, including wedding ceremonies, initiation ceremonies, harvest festivals and the like, informed the daily lives of these peoples and seem to have been communal actions of a purposeful nature and participative in format, very formally structured and containing a strong mimetic content. Remarkable to us today is the sheer scale on which some of these events took place, involving large groups of dancers and thousands of spectators, and stretching over a period of days.[5]

While there is strong evidence that the performances themselves, being of a purposeful nature and participative in format, often offering social, cultural, ethical and political comment, there is little evidence that there was ever a structured system of critical commentary on performances. The participative work of course was not “seen” by outsiders, hence not “criticised” and thus not recorded in any way. Also, while one has little doubt that performers and performers needed and received comment, even where there was an audience present, the feedback would have been informal, oral or gestural, one-on-one perhaps – and certainly not recorded for posterity.

From the foregoing it is clear that it really only becomes possible to discuss critical commentary in the region when we reach the time of European settlement and the known history of written criticism, about which there have been substantially more records.

While the odd descriptions appeared earlier, the formal arrival of the critical comment came in the 1800s, when first newspapers began to appear in Grahamstown and Cape Town, and the first formal theatre was being built. Early newspapers include Fairbairn and Pringle’s South African Journal (1824), New Organ (1826) and South African Commercial Advertiser, and they certainly contained commentary on the arts. However, as mentioned above, the popular version is that the first critic was Anne Barnard, wife of the colonial secretary at the Cape of Good Hope, who, interestingly enough, commented in her diaries on the performances of the soldier-amateurs of the Garrison, but also on the Dutch amateurs of the town. And it was thus natural that she would be one of the first to comment on theatre in Cape Town’s new theatre.

However, the first well-known critic in the formal sense was a British immigrant, William Layton Sammons, (1801-1882) an author, journalist, columnist and editor best known by his nom-de-plume Sam Sly. His weekly review - Sam Sly's African Journal – was founded to promote culture and entertainment in general in the Cape. Gradually, as the various mining towns (Kimberley and Johannesburg in particular) and ports (Port Elizabeth and Durban) developed, this form of journalism and accompanying critical practice spread to all the major metropolitan centres. Some examples of early reviews tended to be little more than notices and announcements (i.e. advertising and reports), or commentary on social events (gossip or “news”, including comment on audiences), but by the 1860s more substantive reviews (comments about technical and theatrical matters, such as texts, performers and productions themselves) began to appear and gradually became more frequent, more incisive and more influential. These reviews also often contained some kind of evaluation of the experience. This was not yet what we would consider formal criticism today (i.e. in depth discussion of the merits of play, performance and so on, with reference to a wider cultural, political and social sphere), but the theatre reviewer had arrived and people like Peter Plymmer, Frederick York St Leger and later Vere Sent were feared for their attacks on poor acting and production values and their opinions were respected.

As can be gathered, the basic format and philosophy behind the writing was borrowed directly from British practice and the colonial versions thereof and was to last well into the first half of the 20^th century.

 

The evolution from report to review accompanied the enormous increase in theatrical activity as well, as more and more companies and artistes – traveling through the various British colonies - visited the country, many settling down here. Among them strong personalities from England and Australia, such as Sefton Parry (1857 – 1862), Disney Roebuck (1873 – 1885), the Wheeler brothers (Ben and Frank, 1886 – 1910), Luscombe Searelle (1887 – 1896), the Holloway Company (1886 - 1899), and particularly Leonard Rayne (1905 – 1925).

By 1920s these twin forces meant that there were increasing numbers of critics of substance, for by now a fully fledged professional theatre system had evolved in English dominated by actor/directors as Rayne and actor/writer Stephen Black, while the newspaper business also flourished. The influences in this case were interesting―they were largely based on the British model brought to the country through the British education system, as we have seen, as well as the many British journalists who over the years settled in South Africa, to work with SA papers―including Thomas William Mackenzie (The Friend in Bloemfontein), Hedley A Chilvers, Joseph Langley Levy (Sunday Times, Johannesburg, 1910 - 1940).

In the 19th century however, another tradition had also been surfacing among the descendants of the 17th and 18th century Dutch settlers. Regular debating and cultural clubs (“Rederykerskamers”), the basis of a performance tradition, were slowly evolving in the Dutch/Afrikaans tradition. In contrast to the primarily entertainment objectives of the English language theatre and media, growing Afrikaans cultural nationalist was establishing a literary and cultural context for the new, emerging language of Afrikaans. This meant more rigorous demands of cultural purpose being placed on arts and literature. Thus, part of the conscious drive to promote the cause of Afrikaans and Afrikaner nationalism―utilising the educational system and the emergence of a powerful press and publishing industry―was also a desire to establish an own indigenous cultural, literary and theatrical tradition, one devoted to the nationalist cause.

As far as theatre is concerned, the last aim initially came into being via the wide-spread amateur movement, a direct descendent of the earlier Dutch organizations, with more and more farces and melodramas being written for performance by schools and societies. But there was also a more serious side to the movement, which slowly evolved in educational centres such as Stellenbosch, Bloemfontein and Pretoria, spearheaded – not always effectively – by the literary heavyweights of the language struggle, such as novelist D.F. Malherbe and poet Eugene Marais.

However a even more significant thrust towards a fully fledged Afrikaans theatre came with the arrival in South Africa of a number of Dutch and Flemish performers, in particular a superb Dutch actor-manager named Paul de Groot, who brought professionalism and in-service training in Afrikaans to a host of versatile and creative performers. In 1925, the year Afrikaans was formally declared an official language of the country, De Groot himself went on to found the first professional Afrikaans theatre company, with two energetic amateurs, Hendrik and Mathilde Hanekom, following suit and taking to the road with a number of farces they wrote themselves. This coincided with the emergence of a second generation of playwrights, much more serious individuals who sought to emulate the European theatre and actually set the tone and style of Afrikaans theatre for the next three decades or more.

In this context we meet up with the first Afrikaans critics of note and become particularly aware of two dominant strains in theatre reviewing and criticism that would dominate a large part of the mid-century: the pragmatic, journalistic writing in English newspapers on the one hand, and the international, often more erudite writing by better educated cultural figures in Afrikaans newspapers. Unlike their English-speaking counterparts, who did not come from an intellectual tradition (few had tertiary education till the 1970s), a number of the Dutch (and later Afrikaans) critics were university trained individuals who had gone to Holland and Germany for their post-graduate work, usually in philology, philosophy or literature. As a result they tended to be influenced by a more Germanic and Dutch tradition, as well as an European view of theatre and the arts, and adopted a far more intellectual approach to their craft. More importantly, in contrast to the primarily entertainment focus of the English-language theatre, the second group of performers were part of the growing Afrikaans cultural nationalism. This became particularly noticeable in the reviews of the first half of the twentieth century, when the Afrikaans community was trying to establish a formal literature and artistic identity, as noted above.

A good case in point was one of the most prominent of later critics and arts editors, W.E.G. Louw, who claimed to have seen over 1 000 European performances during his frequent visits to the continent, and he would draw on those experiences when writing about South African plays. Similarly erudite critics of the time included Frederik Rompel, F.E.J Malherbe, G. Cronje, Ignatius Mocke, H.A. Mulder, E.C. Pienaar and A.M. van Schoor. They became the harbingers of the new language, its literature, and its associated performances―thus helping to shape and promote Afrikaans as a fully fledged cultural tool.

And this tradition would remain for a very long time, for once the drama departments were established in the 1960s, and the formal training in what came to be known as theatre studies began, a number of similarly trained people would become the leading figures, entrenching this tradition till late in the 1970s. It is from these academic sources that, increasingly, the more prominent English-speaking critics would also come. Thus it appears that the Afrikaans approach even to the evolving field of theatre studies included a strong interest in the role of text focused critic, researcher and historian at the start – perhaps because the departments were largely founded and/or partially led by academics or journalists rather than practitioners, and these were people who came from the Dutch/Belgian/German world of formal drama study. The most influential of these were Geoff Cronje, F.C. L Bosman at University of Pretoria (with leading actress and director Anna Neethling-Pohl as the practical voice), playwright Gerhard Beukes and critic Louw Odendaal at University of the Orange Free State (Bloemfontein) and Fred Le Roux following the Belgian actor-director Fred Engelen as head at University of Stellenbosch.

However the 1930’s also saw the first stirrings of another cultural awakening, a formal theatre interest among the various urban blacks―under the influence of missionary schools and the university of Fort Hare―and the significant appearance of writer, practitioner and teacher H.I. E Dhlomo. Others writing at the time include W. Mbali and Walter Nhlapo (who both worked for Bantu World 1930s-1940s). However, the Eurocentric training supplied by the missionary schools and the University College at Fort Hare or the University of South Africa remained largely text bound, as indeed it did at most other (“white”) institutions till the mid 1970s. And more alarmingly, for much of the century “criticism” remained tied to the study of the nine indigenous African (Bantu) languages, and therefore was immensely literary in approach (analysis of plot, characters and so on, and moral issues in the plays)―again premised on the British or European model. Unfortunately the legacy of this approach is still immensely powerful when one looks at theses and critical writings on African theatre texts―not only in South Africa, but across the continent of Africa.

By 1950s this mix of influences was well entrenched, but was still largely European in style, although now increasingly affected by the exciting “new journalism” from the USA and the winds of political and cultural change sweeping though Africa. It is from a mix of these factors that some of the more powerful critics, writing for the daily and weekly newspapers, now emerged. These writers not only had substantial space and influence, but increasingly had academic training and something to write about in the flourishing professional and state-funded theatre of the country. They wrote in either English or Afrikaans, (or in some cases, both languages) and at times with great authority and impact. Names such as Oliver Walker, Phyllis Konya, W.E.G. Louw, Merwe Scholtz, Lewis Sowden, Percy Baneshik and Terry Herbst soon became familiar and considered formidable in arts circles. By the sixties a number of younger, even more politicised, critics would join them – including André P. Brink, Wilhelm Grütter, Philippa Breytenbach, Owen Williams, Johan van Rooyen, Michael Callenborne, Fiona Chisolm, Raeford Daniel, Michael Venables, William Pretorius, Derek Wilson, Cas van Rensburg and Rykie van Reenen.

By and large these were professional critics, who not only responded to the arts, but in many ways shaped and influenced their direction. However, again there is possibly a rather important distinction to be made: In the golden years of the printed media critics in England, the USA and Europe tended to be seen as “professional” in that writing criticism was their full-time occupation: few of them were actually fulltime newspaper employees. In South Africa we only had a few such examples, some Afrikaans artists/critics (such as WEG Louw and André P. Brink) perhaps falling into this category of professionals. Most of the other critics however, were fulltime professional journalists, entertainment reporters and interviewers, covering the generality of the arts and entertainment, as well as writing reviews. They multi-tasked, with reviewing being only one of their tasks. Their “professionalism” thus lay not so much in the nature of their employment, but in the rigour they brought to their reviewing practice.

It was in this time that a new brand of black journalism began to make its appearance. Often termed the Drum-magazine generation (after the most famous of the new magazines to appear), these young writers and activists found a vibrant and dangerous world to report on in the so-called “freehold” areas of Sophiatown and District Six, places where all races could still mix and black citizens could own urban property, and in the multitude of performances, poetry readings and theatrical events occurring there. Writers such as Ezekiel Mphahlele, Lewis Nkosi, Nathaniel (Nat) Nasaka, William (Bloke) Modisane, Arthur Maimane, Bob Leshoai, Elliot Makhaya, Joseph Latakgomo, Aggrey Klaaste, T. Leshoai, Victor Metsoamere, Sipho Sepamla began with journals like Drum and later S’ketsh, and then moved on. Some into exile, some on to the daily and weekly papers, like the Ilanga Lase Natal, Post, Sunday Post, World, Weekend World and The Sowetan - even the Rand Daily Mail, the Weekly Mail - writing about township culture and the cultural struggle. Some went on to become significant literary and academic figures, others faded away or moved elsewhere. But their influence on the shape of the arts in the long run was enormous. What was intriguing has been their attempts to create an own style, strongly based on American new journalistic principles, but also a little more aware of the African performance traditions that gradually invaded and have come to dominate theatre performances, particularly musical and dance works.

With them, far more that with the formal (white) critics of the commercial newspapers and media, art truly became a weapon in the ongoing struggle for freedom and recognition. At the same time many artists were beginning to reject the aesthetic considerations of Western theatre, in favour of a much more crude and visceral form of confrontational theatre of immediate response.

Somehow, out of this mix of cultural traditions would come what some may call the “pre-post-colonial” theatre critic―someone initially schooled by the writers of the heyday of big professional theatre companies (1960-1980), but also immersed in the day-to-day rough-and tumble of the Apartheid/anti-Apartheid real-politik. Such critics were well equipped and able to respond to the major wave of experimentation and energy that washed over the country in the 1970s and early 1980s. The fact is that the appearance of the so-called “alternative” (political) theatre spaces and processes (the Space Theatre, the Market Theatre), and the concomitant emergence of a substantive body of work by black playwrights, directors and performers,―as well as the many workshopped plays making their way into the theatres―left many of the older critics dumbfounded and floundering. With the immense range of styles, traditions and forms on offer―drawing on many traditions, including 1960s experimental workshop processes and a variety of African performance forms―they at times found that their “traditional” training was totally inappropriate for dealing with works such as We Shall Sing for the Fatherland, The Island, Woza Albert, The Hungry Earth, Sophiatown, etc. Indeed there was a built-in antipathy to the new work among many established critics. For example, Robert Greig recalls it being referred to as “junior theatre” by a prominent editor (an adjective that was apparently even applied to the first work done by Athol Fugard) and few dared to travel into Soweto and other areas to review the work.[6]

What made the situation worse in many ways for the traditionally trained critic was the surprising impact the cultural boycott (instituted in 1966) would have on the way the arts would develop in the country. For one of the most positive effects of the boycott was that it (inadvertently) enforced a focus on local writing and the production of local plays―thus ironically liberating many of the new (English) writers and performers from the competition with renowned international writers and the pressure to conform to dramatic models evolved in Europe and America. This in turn saw an increasing number of university-trained actors, directors and theatre writers emerging from the “liberal” anti-Apartheid atmosphere of the 1970s, with a growing sense of that the state arts councils were tainted. This then led to the establishment of the many alternative theatres where - because of Fugard, Simon and Mshengu’s work in the 70s - the notion of the workshop theatre and experimental plays became central to, even emblematic of, so-called “struggle theatre”. And, as we now know, from these theatres would gradually emerge a number of totally new, specifically South African theatrical forms and conventions, forms that―as I have mentioned―would challenge and stretch the new critics in a multitude of ways over the next few decades.

By the 1980s the competent critic found that he/she was again being challenged by a new phenomenon: the arts festival. The arrival of the Grahamstown Festival (National Arts Festival) in 1976, Kampustoneel (Campus Theatre) in 1981 and a rash of later festivals from 1990 onwards (notably a string of Afrikaans language festivals in Oudtshoorn, Stellenbosch, Bloemfontein, Potchefstroom and Cape Town), tested the critic’s ability to adapt to the new even more. There was just so much, of such varying and alarmingly diverse quality and style on offer, it left one dizzy. It is this festival circuit which became the real training ground (and challenge) to the most outstanding critics of the alarmingly unfocussed yet exciting pre- and post-apartheid periods (about 1984-1998). Among them are such outstanding individuals as Adrienne Sichel, John Mitshikiza, Kaiser Ngwenya, Barry Ronge, Barry Hough, Paul Boekkooi, Robert Greig, and Gabriel Bothma, writers able to “read” the radical new local work in performance and respond to it as South Africans. And by the 1990s a new generation of professional critics has emerged. It is schooled in a new and evolving South African theatrical system represented in some 40 festivals that constitute a theatre season. These exhibit a proliferation of performance styles reflecting new spaces, techniques and issues. The newer critics thus have a much greater awareness of and freedom to write about the multi-cultural and lingual context represented by a changed

These then are some of the origins and key influences in critical debate now. However, it may be important to end by making a few comments about the technical aspects of the system, for these too has played a dominant role in shaping the kind of critic we have today.

For much of the twentieth century South African criticism was primarily a media and economy driven system, governed by the growing influence of newspapers and radio (and to a smaller extent later, TV), with a limitation on space and time. Over the years there have been many attempts to try to have an alternative, more substantive, system of review, for example by founding arts journals or magazines (e.g. Helikon, Scenaria, Theatre SA, S’ketsh, Teaterforum, Critical Arts, South African Theatre Journal.) Few of them have actually been able to sustain any kind of longer term review response to the industry or to place the substantial reviews they hoped. This is because: (a) they were not financially viable (with a remarkable exception in Julius Eichbaum’s Scenaria, funded out of his own pocket), (b) South African runs of plays are too short (average a week or two) to have the luxury of time that someone writing in London, New York, or Paris might have and (c) most critics are really general journalists or part-timers used as reviewers. Nevertheless some of these reviews did offer us alternative reviews of less formal work in the townships and banned venues, notably in journals such as Drum Magazine and S’ketsh.

Today (post 2000) this situation has become far worse, since there is now no real focus or system to theatre and performance anymore―it is largely driven by a relentless circuit of festivals (many of them with anything but cultural intentions) and large-scale (imported and local) popular musicals and dance shows (Phantom of the Opera, Cats, The Lion King, Zulu, African Footprint, etc.) Some of the best critical writing in journals now tends to describe and analyse trends (e.g. about nature of the festivals themselves as cultural events), rather than review individual presentations, since this kind of summary review would have a better chance of publication (and does not necessarily require in depth knowledge of theatre even). Thus it appears the old English tradition of generalists, rather than critics, may be reasserting itself.

There is perhaps some cause for concern amid this flood of work on offer, when one considers the kind of people who are now at times called upon to help out as additional reviewers, particularly for festival productions. The evolution of an almost overwhelming festival culture, and its need for instant “notices”―has thus lead to the return of the amateur critic, the “public opinion poll” and the student reviewer as solutions to the desperate need to respond to the enormous growth in number of performances (see festival newspapers such as CUE, and Krit, as well as the many free newspapers, town and suburban newspapers, etc, which all have to respond to local work.).

An additional concern lately has been the advent of the digital media as a major force. For instance, the internet has made self-expression in public media generally available. Print media, the previous vehicles of informed opinion, have to compete more for advertising revenue and reflect advertisers’ target market―the young and affluent or potentially affluent. The ultimate effects of both have been to establish cyber platforms for self-expression and to erode newspapers as sites for informed judgement. Theatre has tended to be recast as entertainment; the critical role replaced by entertaining readers. The theatre has been upstaged. Here and abroad certain genres of arts no longer have space reserved for them in newspapers. Space formerly reserved for other genres―fine arts or dance―has diminished.

By eliminating the critic who, being a specialist, was costly to employ, newspapers have saved money and replaced critics with entertainment guides. This approach has the advantages reducing newspapers’ overheads, rendering employees more easily replaceable and assuring commercial advertisers that they have the advertisers’ interests at heart. While this new development is certainly not all bad―the internet has much to offer as a source of information and an “information highway,” and I think we will debating this for a while to come―but I fear that, perhaps, among the casualties of the sudden rush to embrace the digital revolution may well be have been those qualities associated with criticism at its best: independence and informed dissent.[7]

Bibliography

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________ .1997. Modern Drama Scholarship and Criticism, 1981–1990: An International Bibliography. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

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HAUPTFLEISCH, Temple .1997. Theatre and Society in South Africa: Reflections in a Fractured Mirror. Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik.

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LARLHAM, Peter .1985. Black Theater, Dance, and Ritual in South Africa. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press.

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PETERSON, Bhekizizwe .1995). “ ‘A rain a fall but the dirt is tough’ Scholarship on African Theatre in South Africa” in Journal of Southern African Studies, December 1995, Vol. 21, Issue 4.

RETIEF, P.J.B. 1966. Toneelkritiek en die Nasionale Toneelorganisasie (1947-1961). ‘n Ondersoek na die aard en bestaan van kritiek rakende die verhoogaanbieding van die drama. [“Theatre criticism and the National Theatre Organisation (1947-1961). A study of the nature and existence of criticism regarding the staging of drama.”] Unpublished MA thesis, University of the Orange Free State , 1966.

SAUTER, Wilmar .2007. “Festivals as Theatrical Events: Building Theories” in: Temple Hauptfleisch et al, Festivalising! Theatrical Events, Politics and Culture. Amsterdam: Rodopi Press.

TUCKER, Percy .1997. Just the Ticket. My 50 Years in Show Business. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.

ZEEMAN, Estelle .1970. Toneelkritiek in Johannesburg in 1969. [“Theatre criticism in Johannesburg in 1969”] Unpublished MA thesis, University of Pretoria.

[1] I would like to thank Robert Greig for his valuable advice, many subtle suggestions and editorial insight when editing this article for me.

[2] Temple Hauptfleisch teaches Drama at the University of Stellenbosch. He was Head of the Centre for SA Theatre Research (CESAT – 1979-1987), Chair of the University of Stellenbosch Drama Department (1995-2005) and director of the Centre for Theatre and Performance Studies at Stellenbosch (1994-2009). Founder-editor of the South African Theatre Journal (1987-) and a member of the editorial boards of Critical Stages (the IATC e-journal), African Performance Review and the book series of “Themes in Theatre – Collective Approaches to Theatre and Performance” (Rodopi Press, New York/Amsterdam). He has produced more than eighty works on the history of South African theatre, research methodology and the sociology of theatre, the latest being Festivalising! Theatrical Events, Politics and Culture (co-edited with Shulamith Lev-Aladgem et al.). His current project is the Companion to South African Theatre.

[3] Vide for example the writings of V.Y. Mudimbe (The invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge, 1988; The Idea of Africa, 1994) and others.

[4] Guy Butler said this at a conference 1960 – and quoted himself in his essay “On Being Present where you Are: Some Observations on South African poetry 1930-1960” (Poetry South Africa: Selected Papers from Poetry ’74, AD Donker, 1975)

[5] Vast as this history is, the fact is we know precious little about it compared to what we know of say Afrikaans theatre of the 1920s-1940s or the British touring companies of the 1860s-1890s. And one reason is the existence of a history of critical writing. The other is our attitudes about the Other or foreign cultural uses and products. See for example the work of Peter Larlham (1985) and David Coplan (1985) in this regard.

[6] E-mail correspondence with Temple Hauptfleisch, Stellenbosch 16 February 2010.

[7] For this closing discussion of the impact of the digital media I am once more greatly indebted to comments made by Robert Greig (16 February, 2010), as well as some of the initial research undertaken by Hugo Theart for his masters’ thesis at the University of Stellenbosch.

Three Questions I Keep Asking Myself in Practicing Criticism

Yun-Cheol Kim[1] (President, IATC)

Abstract / Resumé

In the following paper―presented as keynote speech at the Gujarat conference on theatre criticism in India in January 2010―Korean critic and President of the IATC reflects on his philosophy of theatre criticism.

Dans cet article – qui fut une conférence principale au colloque du Gujarat sur la critique de théâtre en Inde, en janvier 2010 –, le critique coréen et président de l'AICT réfléchit sur sa conception de la critique.

Theatre criticism is usually directed towards those local readers who want to be advised as to what to see and what not, and this is even more so with journalistic criticism than with academic criticism. This consumer-guide approach to criticism, however, is not very relevant in countries like Korea, where most of the reviews are published posthumously, and then by academic-critics like myself. This is why I am more concerned, in my reviews of domestic productions, about writing the history of production aesthetics than about guiding consumers, more about reading than about judging the performances, and more about educating than about entertaining readers.

Criticism is serious work. It is both the end game of theatrical signification and the beginning of a theatrical debate. Journalist critics exert their power to resuscitate dying productions or, from time to time, to close them much ahead of their schedules. Academic critics record the aesthetic history of ephemeral performances with their scientific analyses and relevant readings. Some critics, whether journalistic or academic, feel more pleasure in their power to kill than in shouldering their social responsibility, while other critics are the other way around. Some critics make it their primary goal to entertain their readers, while others seek to serve the art of theatre and its makers. Some critics foreground their value judgments, while others try to make their judgments invisible.

It is true that the theatre has always been in crisis, but never been dead. It is also true, however, that the theatre has never been this critically deadly. The most popular nomenclature for today’s theatre is “postdramatic theatre,” which was first used by the German critic, Hans-Thies Lehmann. To put it simply, or simplistically, it means theatre in which drama is absent or dead. The current crisis of the theatre largely derives from the fact that we have not succeeded in finding or inventing new or alternative theatricalities to replace this absence or death of drama. Critics often say that good theatre makes good criticism. That truism is a luxury that today’s critics cannot enjoy. We have to ask ourselves what theatre critics can and should do when the theatre is not good. I know it is neither fashionable nor right in this era of postmodern relativism to judge a show in black-or-white terms, as good or bad. But to be honest, we cannot help but conclude our experience of a theatrical performance with our inner judgment in terms of “good” or “bad,” can we? As Irving Wardle says, “[the human] appetite for judgment” is almost “as basic as the need for food.” (Wardle 1992: 6). To be politically correct, we may have to say “the theatre that we like” and “the theatre that we dislike,” instead of “good theatre” and “bad theatre.”

It is rather easy to practice criticism when the theatre is good. Your own enthusiasm for the performance will be interesting enough to attract the attention of all three bodies concerned in theatrical communication: theatergoers, general readers, and theatre artists. All you need to do is justify your enthusiasm by means of lively descriptions, scientific analyses, and verifiable evaluations. The difficulty arises when the theatre is not good. It then becomes our critics’ double assignment to verify scientifically why the theatre is not good on the one hand, and still to write an interesting review of the show so that it may attract the attention of all those three concerned bodies on the other hand. A theatre review, rave or negative, should always be interesting in the sense that it claims its moral values of fairness and honesty, its educational value of giving readers insights into the nature of the theatre, its social value of making the theatre matter in society, and finally, its own artistic values of substance and style.

I aim high in my work as a theatre critic. I do want to transcend the critical “blindness to fresh experience” (Wardle 1992: 11), by keeping myself open to new ideas, forms, styles and practices. I do want to serve the theatre art by discovering its new theatricalities and reading their relevance to our times. I do want to serve the art of theatre criticism by expanding my professional horizons and keeping my integrity intact under any circumstances. I do want to serve the theatre artists and general readers by motivating that “permanent debate about the nature of the ideal theatre” with my intellect. Whenever I finish the draft of a theatre review, I ask myself three basic questions and check myself to see whether I am not betraying my own definition of “good criticism.” My final review text is usually the end product of reflecting on and editing my own answers to the following questions:

Question 1: Have I seen the performance in the best physical condition?

Maichael Billington says that critics are rather born than educated. He is right in terms of the temperamental qualities required of critics: innate shyness, preference to belong to the watchers rather than to the watched (Billington: ix). I add one more that I think is the most crucial temperamental quality for a theatre critic: his/her ability to enjoy solitude. This is the quality that guarantees a critic’s fairness, and his courage to be honest. Of course there are exceptional critics who enjoy socializing with practitioners and still remain faithful to their professional ethics. However, exceptions are exceptions. Critics are human, and they share with other humans weaknesses as well as strengths. When they develop good friendships or camaraderie with practitioners, it is difficult for them to remain fair in evaluating their friends’ achievements; they will be more likely to perpetrate ‘constructive criticism’ even when the artists do not deserve it. This is why I never accept an invitation to a private meeting with the artists after a performance. Theatre critics are voluntary loners working in a gregarious art form. In fact, there are two additional obvious qualities for critics to cultivate throughout their careers: sensitivity in the areas of both production and perceptual aesthetics, and openness even to forms and styles they do not have a natural affinity for. These two should become second nature to them if they want to avoid what Patrice Pavis has called, that “ultimately reductive, albeit elegant, [critical] impressionism” (Pavis 2006: 3).

Even if you are an ideal, born critic with all of the qualities above, however, you need to see the performances in the best physical condition in order to implement those qualities in your reviews. Through experience I know that the slogan “healthy minds, healthy bodies” applies to theatre criticism, too. I am living an overloaded life just like you, teaching full-time at the university level, serving on several national and international juries and still seeing 150 or so shows each year. This is why I always look tired. Our physical condition affects our mental receptivity enormously. When you are tired, it becomes a little bit more difficult to concentrate. Your mind does not function as well as when your body is fresh. In the worst case, when you are exhausted, you may fall, without noticing it, into a state of blind hostility towards what you are watching. All our efforts to write a good review may end up futile because of our unprofessional/unhealthy physical condition. Whenever I go to see a performance to review it, therefore, I make it a rule to have as much rest as possible before arriving at the theatre. Even on my way to the theatre, I give up that pleasure of reading in the subway and close my eyes to protect them from getting tired. In order to stay alert throughout the performance, I do not drink before a show. And I can assure you that the wine or beer that you drink after a show is much more delicious and refreshing than the one you take before the show. I, too, fall asleep from time to time during a performance when I am extremely tired, or when the show is extremely boring. In that case, I do not review the show. If I have to review it, I see it again. Of course this is a luxury that journalist critics cannot enjoy, whose deadline is much more harrowing than that for academic critics. I believe that the work of theatre makers should be respected no matter how great or ignoble their achievements, and that critics should watch the theatre in the best physical condition as a sign of respect, not only for the integrity of their own job but for the artists’ work, as well.

 

Question 2: Have I Generated Social Interest in the Theatre Arts?

I firmly believe that the most important function of theatre criticism is—and should be--to generate interest in the theatre arts in society. Eric Bentley has reiterated over and over again that the most important thing for a good theatre critic is intelligence—a point he made most recently in his interview for the inaugural issue of Critical Stages, the IATC Webjournal (www.criticalstages.org). This intelligence, I believe, is most needed when the critic attempts to read the relevance of a performance to society, to the spectators’ everyday life. This is a very challenging assignment for theatre critics—challenging because in today’s theatre the connection between drama and theatre is becoming ever more irrelevant, and the boundaries between artistic genres are blurring. But we need to remember that every theatre work is a comment on society. It may be true that much of contemporary theatre employs new theatricality that denies logocentric communication. Nonetheless, theatre critics should be well-informed enough to read the relevance of a show to society. Michael Billington’s political reading of Harold Pinter’s absurdist plays is a good example of this. This social relevance interests people in the theatre arts. I confess that my usual answer to this Question 2—have I generated social interest in the theatre arts?—is ‘No.’ Of course it is quite disappointing to be disappointed in my own achievement. Fortunately, however, I am a diehard hope-er, and this frequent ‘No’ simply motivates me to work harder and harder.

Question 3: Have I Created an Interesting Review?

Criticism should also be interesting in order to generate interest in this time of difficult theatre: interesting enough to stimulate a reader’s intellectual curiosity about the relationship between theatre and life, interesting enough to provoke thinking about the nature of the theatre and, most importantly, interesting enough to motivate people to go to theatre. This is why I find yet another “most important” qualification for today’s critics in their faculty to reach beyond conventional criticism, and to bring to bear a philosophical dimension on the production aesthetics, to carry on eschatological or other creative discourse in plain and humorous language. If we can further combine philosophical thought with scientific analysis, we will certainly be able to capture the public’s interest in today’s theatre, which may seem so remote from, and irrelevant to, their reality. And the appropriate form of this ‘new’ criticism may be closer to an essay, some much more leisurely form for delving into thoughts about life and theatre. I wouldn’t mind being called “an essayist,” not “a critic.”

Let me close with one more confession concerning this last question—one to which I can only once-in-a-long-while answer ‘Yes.’ More frequently than not, I find my draft of a review to be either intellectual or humorous, in spite of my wish for it to be both intellectual and humorous at the same time. But again, I don’t usually get disappointed with my own disappointing achievements. For critics, getting disappointed is not professional. To stay hopeful is. Thank you.

Works Cited

BILLINGTON, Michael .1993. One Night Stands. London: NHB.PAVIS, Patrice .2006. Analyzing Performance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

WARDLE, Irving .1992. Theatre Criticism. London: Routledge.

Daily Telegraph, November 2.

Critical Stages: the IATC Webjournal. www.criticalstages.org

[1] Yun-Cheol Kim is President of IATC, teaches at School of Drama, Korea, National University of Arts, and edits The Korean Theatre Journal, a quarterly. Two time winner of "The Critic of the Year Award", he has published nine books so far, two of which are anthologies of theatre reviews.

[2] Charles Spencer responds to the draft of the IATC code of practice in his column in Daily Telegraph, November 2.

Finnish fathers and daughters drive around in Europe in It’s a Girl!

Matti Linnavuori[1]

Tyttö tuli! Author and director: Otso Kautto. Light, sound and video: Mikko Hynninen. Stage design and costume: Nina Mansikka. Venue: The National Theatre, Helsinki, Finland. Run: 13 February 2009 to January 2010.

Normally one cannot expect to be intellectually impressed when viewing a new Finnish play. Finnish texts regularly portray characters with an obsession, and the production then is a series of loud physical manoeuvres, in which the protagonist pursues his obsession. This is in conflict with his girlfriend and/or others who act in a permanent state of rage as well. Permanent, however, usually means short-lived but noble in an obscure fashion. If a motivation is given, its analysis may be heartfelt but shallow, a mere conviction that the society is rotten.

In the 1990s young playwrights began to give reasons for this rage, from family history and growing pains, particularly Reko Lundán in his Einer verirrt sich immer (1998) and Can You Hear the Howling / Quand rôdent les chiens-loups (2001). No longer trying to overthrow the existing social order by the sheer volume of one’s shout, Lundán’s approach meant that the rage gained different shades of meaning, e.g. disappointment and timidity.

Thinly veiled autobiography, perhaps, and then it is only logical to further thin the veil.

In competition against reality television the theatre looks clumsy. Why spend six weeks rehearsing a story about made-up characters, when real people are only too willing to expose everything live between commercial breaks? Finnish theatre has tackled this problem by employing some tools of reality television, but not to maximize gossip and self-pity. In Odotus (2009, The Wait, a Performance about Characters Named Pirkko Saisio and Marja Packalén), two sixty-year old actresses Pirkko Saisio and Marja Packalén exchange relaxed dialogue about life in general, their careers, looks, former boyfriends and girlfriends, politics in a spirit where feminine self-doubt mixes with amused butch arrogance. The changes of atmosphere always surprise the audience, both because of the command these veterans have over their stage skills, and because of the intellectual alertness of the text. The director Heini Junkkaala edited it down to 100 minutes from 600 transcribed pages of taped reminiscences of the performers.

Otso Kautto (born 1962) is a father of four daughters. His family divides its time between Finland, France and Spain, which means countless hours spent in a car. Kautto’s first novel Matka Mundakaan (2003, The Road to Mundaka) is the story of a surfboarder in search of a good wave in the Bay of Biscay. Kautto has numerous kilometres under his belt also as a member of the Finnish international swimming team in his youth. Therefore, it would be tempting to see his Tyttö tuli! (It’s a Girl!) as an autobiographical piece. The play portrays fathers and daughters driving around on the roads of Europe. In the programme Kautto says that the play is too personal to be autobiographical.

 

In Nina Mansikka’s set there are six front seats of a car side by the side on the stage. On the back wall Mikko Hynninen’s blurry video shows an anonymous road which the characters keep leaving behind.

There is very little traditional acting for the three fathers and three daughters. Most of the time they remain seated, keeping their hands on an imaginary steering wheel. Kautto writes in the programme that in a normal play the actors get to act the subtext, but here the playwright has spelled it out in its entirety. The characters do their best to voice every possible archetypical and subconscious motivation there could be in a father-daughter relationship. In Finland, both artists and critics place great value on “sincerity” or “being genuine,” i.e. portraying emotional turmoil. In this production sincerity takes place in the actors’ minds rather than their gestures, which is rare. There is a light-hearted and poetic innocence in the atmosphere of the production.

The actors change pairs twice during the course of the performance to emphasize that this is about all fathers and daughters, not about specific individuals. The fathers are middle-aged but also dead in some scenes; the daughters’ age varies from thirteen to near thirty. Kautto also considered a final scene where the fathers would be old and blind, and they would drive once more to their favourite spot, and the daughters would describe how it looks now, and nothing has changed, which makes the fathers very happy, and the audience would see that the daughters talk about the landscape in an old photograph they are holding. This scene exists only in the author-director’s foreword in the programme.

The play is about letting go, about coming to terms with growing up. A scene does not really lead to the next scene; every scene is a variation of the same situation. Driving is not just a phase, the father says, when the daughter wants them to reach a destination. Kautto seems to joke with a cliché theatre makers love, in interviews in particular, that life is a journey. Kautto is so fond of the act of travelling that here driving is no metaphor. The driving is endless, beyond mortality, and therefore there is time and opportunity to discuss, confess or deny anything and everything to their hearts’ content. And they do. However, the play is by no means a collection of quotable aphorisms.

Kautto combines poignant observations with unmasked honesty in an intellectual dialogue. Below I translate and paraphrase my favourite train of thought in the play to give you an idea of how Kautto’s argument goes. Perhaps I should not. As a father says in the play, dreams are tricky: if one voices them and talks about them, they wane into topics and lose their magic. Please take the risk and read on.

Having daughters allows fathers to stay young, whereas having sons instantly makes fathers old. Sons replace their fathers, but daughters cannot realize their fathers’ dreams for them.

 

One dream a parent has is for his or her child to be happy. The daughter says: “It is a terrible burden to try and get a happy life so that you can be happy. It would be far easier if you wanted me to become rich or successful.”

Both fathers and daughters regret that growing up means giving up certain hugs. The father’s friends now sneak a look at the daughter’s breasts, and the daughter asks if the father looks at her friends the same way. The daughter says: “Everything you did to women will be done to me.” This is exactly what the father cannot bear, and he devotes plenty of time and effort to self-defensive exercises. (The martial arts moves give the actors an opportunity to change pairs in the course of the production.)

One half of a daughter is born of the father, and because parents and children love each other unconditionally, it is stronger than the loyalty within the female gender: the daughter understands her father better than the wife does, and they are all aware of it. Sex, however, is the wife’s domain.

During stops at cafés along the road people stare at them. Women disapprove of seeing an older man together with a young woman, and men envy the father, until the daughter says “papa” loud enough for everyone to hear in the café. The fathers and daughters are thrilled by the attention.

The daughter asks the father whether he was disappointed, because a girl was born instead of a son. The father says no. The daughter quips: “You hesitated one hundredth of a second too long before answering.” The father says it took him all that time to think how to give an answer which would not be wrong. The daughter says casually: “So you were not disappointed?” and the father says no. The daughter: “This time you answered too quickly.”

The fathers were Jukka-Pekka Palo, Kasper Nordman and Ville Keskilä, the daughters Marja Salo, Leena Pöysti and Marjaana Maijala.

---

[1] Matti Linnavuori is a free lance critic of theatre and television. He writes for Finnish newspapers and Teatteri Journal. Since the early 1990's he has written, translated and directed radio plays for YLE the Finnish Broadcasting Company. He is also the co-author of one stage play.

Publisher		Editor-in-Chief
	Yun-Cheol Kim President, International Association of Theatre Critics		Maria Helena Serodio, Academic and critic, Portugal
Co-Editors
	Lissa Tyler Renaud, English language Director and scholar, U.S.		Michel Vaïs, French language Critic, Canada
Editors
	Randy Gener, Critic, U.S.		Hervé Guay, Academic and critic, Canada
	Temple Hauptfleisch Critic, South Africa		Manabu Noda, Academic, Critic, Japan
	Matti Linnavuori, Critic, Finland		Tomasz Milkowski, Critic, Poland
	Halima Tahan Critic, Argentina		Rodolfo Obrégon Critic, Mexico
	Ludmila Patlanjoglu, Academic and Critic, Romania		Patrice Pavis, Theoretician, France
	Maria Shevtsova Academic, U.K.		Don Rubin, Academic and Critic, Canada
	Mark BrownTheatre Critic, U.K.
Editorial Assistant		Webmaster
	Yu-Jin Kim, Korea		Myung-Jae Yim, Korea

Critical Stages / Scènes Critiques is published online twice a year, in April and in October.

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