Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

Theatre 319
admits to life’s messiness: it begins from the view that
life is difficult and problematic and that relationships
are demanding. Sensitive critics are questing, not smug;
humane, not self-absorbed; eternally eager for personal
discovery and the opportunity to share it. They recognize
that we are all groping in the dark, hoping to encounter
helping hands along the way in the adventure of life—
that this indeed is the hope of theatre artists too.
To be a demanding critic is to hold the theatre to the
highest standards of which it is capable. As we have seen
so often in the preceding pages, the theatre wants to be
liked. It has tried from its very beginning to assimilate
what is likable in the other arts. Like a hungry scavenger,
it absorbs the latest music and dance forms; the most
trendy arguments, vocabularies, philosophies, and technologies;
and the most fashionable artistic sensibilities.
In the process, though, it often panders to tastelessness
and propagates the meanest and most shallow values of
its time. And here the drama critic in each of us can play
a crucial role. Cogent, fair-minded, penetrating criticism
keeps the theatre mindful of its own artistic ideals—the
ideals that transcend the fashions of the moment—and its
essential responsibility to communicate. Criticism can
prevent the theatre from either selling out completely to
the current whim or bolting the other way into hopeless
indulgence.
To be an articulate critic is to express our thoughts
with precision, clarity, and grace. An utterance of “I
loved it” or “I hated it”—or, perhaps most deadly of all, “I
didn’t get it”— is not criticism but rather a crude expression
of a general opinion, or an admission of not having
an opinion at all. Articulation means the careful building
of clear ideas through a presentation of evidence, logical
argument, the use of helpful analogy and example,
and a style of expression neither pedantically turgid nor
idiosyncratically anarchic. Good criticism should be a
pleasure to write and read; it should make us want to go
deeper into the mysteries of the theatre and not suffocate
us with the prejudices or egotistical displays of the critic.
In sum, the presence of a critical focus in the
audience—observant, informed, sensitive, demanding,
and articulate—keeps the theatre honest. It inspires the
theatre to reach its highest goals. It ascribes importance
to the theatrical act. It telegraphs the expectations of the
audience to producer, playwright, director, and actor
alike, saying, “We are out here, we are watching, we are
listening, we are hoping, we care: we want your best—
and then we want you to be better yet.” The theatre needs
such demands from its audience. The theatre and its
audience need to be worthy co-participants in a collective
experience that enlarges life as well as art.
If we are to be critics of the theatre, then, we must
be knowledgeable, fair, and open-minded; receptive to
stimulation and excitement; open to wisdom and love.
We must also admit that we have human needs.
In exchange, the theatre must enable us to see ourselves
in the characters of the drama and in the performers
of the theatre. We must see our situations in the
situations of plays and our hopes and possibilities in the
behavior staged before us. We must be drawn to understand
the theatre from the inside and to participate, in our
own way, in a play’s performance.
In this way, we become critics, audience, and participants
in one. The theatre is then no longer simply a
remote subject encountered in a book, in a class, or in the
entertainment columns of the world press; the theatre is
part of us.
It is our theatre.