The Well-Rounded Theatre Person.

J. Kelly Nestruck posted this piece to his blog on The Globe and Mail today. It's about whether or not theatre critics should moonlight in the theatre. An interesting question...

The argument against it is basically that moonlighting impairs objectivity. How can you be objective in your review of someone's play if you might be auditioning for them the next day? It is somewhat of a dilemma...but only if you allow it to be. First of all, I'm not sure "objectivity" really exists anyway, it's more like points on a line--more objective, less objective (or more subjective and less subjective, depending on how you see the cup), etc. I think it is possible to maintain some sense of objectivity regardless of your relationship to whatever it is you're reviewing (and the reality is that even if a critic isn't moonlighting, if he or she has been covering theatre for any length of time, there are bound to be relationships there anyway). It just takes a very specific kind of person to be able to do both and do them well; you need a thick enough skin to not care what the backlash of a scathing review (when deserved) may be on your moonlighting career.

Part of the argument for critics playing other roles in the theatre, whether on stage or behind the scenes, is that it encourages them to "get their hands dirty." This idea is sort of in keeping with my training--that in order to do one thing well in the theatre you have to know how the whole thing works. I learned film crew stuff, tech crew stuff, theatre history, theatre theory, the construction of theatres, the business of theatres, etc. etc. etc., and, you know, it did make me a better actress. So, shouldn't working in a theatre in some capacity make a critic more rather than less capable of writing a review?

We should all hope to have critics who moonlight in theatre reviewing us because at least that means they have some idea of what it is that we do and of what it is we are trying to create. Perhaps this will make them more forgiving, perhaps less so, but what's more important is that it gives them greater knowledge of how theatre works. I guess what I'm saying is, better to be reviewed by the person who auditioned after you than by some pseudo-intellectual critic who has no interest whatsoever in the theatre world. The disclaimer being that there are, of course, critics who don't moonlight but are still good critics. Although, maybe they'd be even better with a little stage time? And maybe some theatre artists out there could moonlight in writing reviews...It's all about diversifying, after all.