What do you get when you mix seven incipient theater critics, eight professional-critic mentors, two new musicals, three new plays, two community productions, 90-degree weather, 100% humidity, and zero air conditioning? A recipe for theatrical homicide?
Well, if you're lucky, you get a two-week experience nonpareil, with lots of opportunities for networking, professional growth, and the occasional cat fight.
Regular readers will recall that I spent the last two weeks in southeast Connecticut at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, recipient of the 2010 Regional Theater Tony Award, taking part in the National Critics Institute, sort of a boot camp for theater critics. It was an experience I will never forget, and I hope to share much of what I learned with you, dear reader, over the next few weeks. I'm also hoping that the experience will make me a better blogger, and perhaps help me line up some more paying gigs as a critic and arts journalist.
A typical day at the NCI would go something like this: Each night we'd see a show. Then it was home to write a review, with a 7:45 a.m. deadline. After breakfast, we'd read each other's critiques and get feedback from our critic mentors and each other. After lunch, we'd have workshops on such topics as writing opinion pieces, using new media for self-promotion, and using descriptive language. Then, after dinner we'd see another show in the evening, and the whole process would start again.
The shows we saw and reviewed were part of a number of longstanding programs at The O'Neill that run concurrently with the NCI. Via the National Playwrights Conference, we saw the following plays in development: Creation by Kathryn Walat, Follow Me to Nellie's by Dominique Morisseau, and The Dream of the Burning Boy by David West Read. Courtesy of the National Music Theater Conference we caught workshop presentations of the nascent musicals Eden, with music by Mel Marvin and words by Jonathan Levi, and Clear by Paul Oakley Stovall.
We also made a couple of off-campus trips to see Carnival! at the Goodspeed Opera House and Buddy - The Buddy Holly Story at Ivoryton Playhouse. We're not allowed to blog about any of the productions we saw, since most of them were under development, but it was really a great experience to write about so many shows in such a brief span of time.
We had the great fortune of having the following pros as our mentor critics: Mark Blankenship, Michael Feingold, J. Wynn Rousuk, Michael Phillips, Andy Propst, Leonard Jacobs, and Julius Novick. The NCI program is run by the fabulously avuncular and Yoda-like Dan Sullivan.
One of our sessions took place at the Monte Cristo Cottage, the site of Eugene O'Neill's childhood home. We had a chance to read through Long Day's Journey Into Night in the very room where most of the play is set. I got the chance to read the lines of James Tyrone, the fictionalized version of O'Neill's father, James O'Neill. Were I a drinkin' man, I might have broken out the Irish whiskey, but instead I made do with Diet Coke.
As luck would have it, our stay at The O'Neill coincided with the annual convention for the America Theater Critics Association (ATCA), which gave us the opportunity to sit in on a number of session about how...well, how the industry is going to hell in a hand basket, and that the chances of any of us landing a full-time gig are approximately zero. We also attended a panel discussion about how arts critics can use social media to promote their work.
OK, enough with the press release. Tune in tomorrow for my "Critic's Manifesto," a distillation of much of the collected wisdom that I gleaned over my two-week stint. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to blast the A/C and watch some trashy TV.
Recent Comments