Who are you to criticize me?!
Exciting legislative action!
Last week on News and Notes, we took a hard, insightful look at the Minnesota Film and TV Board, the state of its funding, and the fallout of an inconclusive audit, after which I probably said something flippant. I'm not sure. I don't read the News and Notes column. That guy's a jerk.
In the waning days of the state legislative session, the two chambers of our most esteemed representatives have been hard at work creating new legislation concerning the Board, and, after much careful craftsmanship, they have done what they do best: absolutely not agree on anything. The House and Senate could not be further apart in their competing omnibus bills when it comes to subsidizing film and TV production, with the Republican-controlled House voting for a bill that eliminates all support for the Film and TV Board, and the Democratic-controlled Senate passing a bill that raises the funding for the Snowbate to the highest level it has ever seen.
As our elected officials start groping toward compromise on this issue, backers of the Film and TV board have been joining the ranks of lobbyists clogging the arteries of the capital building in St. Paul. They tried to put a little pizzazz in the process by bringing in a celebrity to dazzle the lawmakers: Andrew Zimmern, host of Bizarre Foods. (I guess the Coen brothers were busy)
In the meantime, we'll all have to wait and see. Will the legislature decide that the Snowbate program is a horrible boondoggle that should be buried and never spoken of again? Or will they decide that it's the key to saving the entire Minnesota film industry? The future depends on this answer! We need to know if Mallrats II will be filmed here!
Ha, banishment! Be merciful, say "death"
See what I did there? This is a column about theater. That's a quote from Shakespeare. Don't you feel smart and literate and superior for knowing that already? Are you not entertained?!
But, seriously, let's talk about banishment. In this case, the "banishment" of critics from shows. We've talked previously about the Wall Street Journal critic who was "disinvited" from some Broadway shows for admitting that she often walks out of shows at intermission. There have been all sorts of opinions about Joanne Kaufman's admission, and I'm not here to decide whether she's a brave soul who's just tellin' it like it is, or someone who looked at her job description of "see shows and write about them" and decided to ignore 50% of the requirement for her paycheck.
A few weeks ago, we talked about the brouhaha in Chicago over a pair of critics' extremely critical views of Steppenwolf's This Is Modern Art, which brought to my mind the question of the role of the modern theater critic.
And now, it all comes together in the UK. Recently, Daily Mail theater critic (and winner of my "most English name of the day" award) Quentin Letts was disinvited from reviewing The Audience, a West End play about Queen Elizabeth II and the various Prime Ministers she dealt with over the decades. The play had originally premiered with Helen Mirren as Elizabeth and was recently relaunched with Kristen Scott Thomas replacing her. Letts has not been shy in the past about announcing his distaste for Thomas' work. The producers of the show told the Daily Mail that the production was sold out and there were no more tickets for them, yet Letts was able to buy a regular ticket on opening weekend and attend anyway.
And, no, he didn't like Thomas' performance (though, he did give the play four stars).
Since then, critics in the UK have been speaking up about how poorly the producers of The Audience seemed to have handled this situation. Lynn Gardner at the Guardian warned of the creeping insidiousness of producers attempting to control the press that's written about their shows. Mark Shenton at The Stage warned that attempts to ban press will always backfire, because they draw more attention to the person who was banned, and who happens to have a platform to speak to a lot of people.
Of course, that's coming from critics, and their "platform to speak to a lot of people" has been getting smaller every day. As newspapers consolidate or go out of business, arts criticism is usually first on the chopping block. Perhaps producers do have more power now to pick and choose who they want to cover their work.
In our neck of the woods, the Star-Tribune newspaper bought out City Pages last week and promptly put an end to their own arts and culture-centered Vita.Mn. There's no doubt that City Pages will experience some house cleaning, probably at the expense of arts criticism, and the power of critics will continue to erode.
Maybe you find that a good thing. Maybe you feel like criticism doesn't matter. Maybe you are one of those theater artists who says "I don't care what critics think" and actually mean it. Maybe you're also a unicorn.
Editor's Note: If you're really interested in this question of arts criticism, you might check out the upcoming Superscript conference at the Walker Arts Center at the end of the month.
Parting shots
At the end of next month, Joe Dowling will Artistically Direct the Guthrie for the last time. If you were not one of the few who were able to attend his interview with New York Post theater columnist Michael Riedel last month, Minnesota Public Radio now has the entire interview available for your listening pleasure.
Riedel didn't exactly hit Dowling with any tough questions about his 20 years at the reigns of the Guthrie; but as Dowling ranged through one entertaining anecdote after another, even I, who have never been enamored by his artistic choices, found myself a little nostalgic for him already. And there is Dowling's secret weapon that has carried him through two decades: he's just so damned affable, funny and charming that people usually forget to ask him those tough questions.
Like, this for example: "Despite all your talk of making more accessible work, why is your audience still mainly older upper-middle class? Why do the poor and less-educated stay away?"
Or this: "While you were having all your crazy times building the new Guthrie with your stubborn French architect, did anyone ever stop to ask 'Why is building bigger better?'"
Or: "Why hasn't the Guthrie worked more closely with playwrights in developing new work? Are you waiting on a Mellon Foundation grant?
And, of course, the obvious question: "Why don't we have holograms of dead performers replace those troublesome live actors?"
It belongs in a museum
Every once in a while, I see a really amazing set for a show, something that truly qualifies as a work of art. It makes me sad to know that it's going to go in the trash very soon, when it could very well be on display in an art gallery. But that's the ephemeral nature of theater. Sets just aren't built display in galleries.
Except when they are. Right now, the Soap Factory has the whole set for the upcoming opera Wise Blood on display. Before opera singers go climbing over it, getting their dirty fingerprints on just everything, you have a chance to see artist Chris Larson's work in its pristine state.
