“I actually think one of the reasons why the theatrosphere essentially died is that things got better on our big issue (new play development),” someone wrote on a Twitter account yesterday, “and then crazy trolls started taking up a lot of the oxygen.” Now among the other things that are dead (politics, theatre, the book, newspapers), we have the theatre blogosphere. Is it time to write its obituary after all?
I do not mention the name of the person who wrote this because Twitter and Facebook, unlike the blogosphere, are essentially private. People who use these social media can now control who sees their tweets, status updates, and what have you, and unlike the blogs living on the World Wide Web membership is required. But if, as I maintain, the theatre blogosphere is not at all dead, it’s because Twitter and Facebook are no substitutes for it. The theatre has always had self-promotion and gossip as two of its most robust extracurricular activities, and Facebook and Twitter are excellent for these. But what appears under the heading of drama criticism in the mainstream media is still no substitute for the more contemplative and theoretical kinds of drama and theatre criticism necessary to the health of the form itself.
New play development in the United States has been a theme of many blogs in the past, as well as this one, but it was never “The Big Issue” to the exclusion of others. The theatre blogosphere has investigated the same issues as drama criticism always has, to a depth rarely found in the mainstream media these days. It was this — the need for an outlet for extended critical expression of the art form — that led to the rise of the medium, and that need remains.
In the past year or so that theatre blogosphere has had good and bad news. Alison Croggon’s departure from the scene and the suspension of the “Noises Off” weekly aggregation of blog posts at the Guardian have been regrettable, to be sure. But on the other hand, the George Jean Nathan Award recognized the theatre blogosphere for the first time as a source of important criticism when it honored Jill Dolan’s The Feminist Spectator earlier this year; collectively-authored outlets like Howlround and 2amt are robust second-generation theatre blogs which are flourishing; and, from my own standpoint, there are just as many readers of Superfluities Redux as there ever were, and the number is growing. Indeed, I experienced my most successful post ever in terms of number of pageviews with this post yesterday, for a story entirely unreported either in the mainstream media or on Twitter and Facebook.
That said, enthusiasm is always best curbed. Three out of the five most recent posts at The Feminist Spectator are about films, not plays or theatrical performances. This is not at all a bad thing, generally speaking — the perspectives of critics as well as artists are broadened and informed by art and reading outside their specific disciplines. But it does tend to dissipate the concentration of these blogs on these disciplines themselves and leads to some diffusion of attention. Howlround and 2amt are primarily addressed by theatre practitioners and administrators to other practitioners and administrators. And in the not-too-recent past, a post like yesterday’s would have generated a very long string of comments and argument below the post itself — which are, I suspect, now appearing on Facebook and Twitter instead. But I, for whatever reason, don’t see them; a shame, really, because I am interested, but remain shut out.
As to the argument that “crazy trolls started taking up a lot of the oxygen” — well, the same can be said for the blogosphere generally, and there’s no lack of crazy trolls on Facebook or Twitter either. Crazy trolls will always be with us, online or off; that’s no reason, though, to start piling dirt on the corpse of a medium.
Times change, of course, and if the theatre blogosphere does not seem as vital as it once did, there are a number of reasons for this entirely unrelated to the theatre blogosphere itself: the rise of Twitter and Facebook, waning enthusiasm for what was once a novel undertaking; and disappointment that the critics and writers for the mainstream media remain fairly oblivious or dismissive after ten years. But what I described as “the need for an outlet for extended critical expression of the art form” addressed to a general, unrestricted readership remains urgent, as it always will for any art form. Culturebot is doing this for performance; others are doing so for text-based theatre. And that big issue is never going away.
I agree that the blogosphere isn’t dead, but I also agree it isn’t vibrant. I haven’t written Theatre Ideas for a while, and for a variety of reasons: lack of time, lack of interest in mainstream issues, another outlet at Huffington Post, and lack of a sense of thoughtful community. The latter is particularly important. As you note, in the “old days” a post would garner not only a string of comments, but also a variety of rejoinders on other blogs. I don’t see that much anymore — there is less a sense of conversation, and more a sense of “brands” trying to get their own message out. The problem of following the conversations on Twitter and Facebook is something I became deeply aware of with my latest Huffington Post article “The Wal-Marting of the American Theatre.” According to the data collected on the page, over 1,100 people have shared the article on Facebook, and presumably those “shares” led to some comments — but as the author of the article, I am not able to follow that conversation. The same with Twitter — almost 100 tweets,” but I found only a handful. On Thursday, Howlround.com will host a “weekly howl” about the article, and I have been invited to participate, but I have no idea at this point about the state of the conversation or what to expect.
You are right: Facebook and Twitter (especially Twitter) are not a place to have a conversation. They are places to chat, which is what theatre people much prefer to actually thinking through issues that pertain to the art form and the way art is created. Twitter rewards glibness, Facebook rewards sharing. Blogs promote the exploration of ideas, and that is becoming an increasingly scarce element.
I agree with you on both of your major points and believe they are related. The exclusionary nature of both Facebook and Twitter permits the maintenance of one’s own prejudices or opinions without opening them to either debate, agreement, or a deeper consideration of this issues involved. Many people within theatre communities believe they are besieged and lacking engagement with their larger communities, yet continue to engage in intellectual exclusion. How they expect to evolve into anything but continued solipsism is hard to see.
Speaking as a non-academic theater practitioner I am deeply thankful for your blog and others to clue me into the broad range of ideas and concerns being discussed in the theater world. I am mostly to busy to see the work of my colleagues and don’t have the opportunity to participate in academic discourse. I do, however really want to know what is happening in my extended community and hear how others are confronting the myriad issues I find myself encountering in the practice of my craft. I’m guessing there are many other “silent” consumers like myself who depend on your work. Thanks.
Thanks for your kind words, Tal. Next year I’ll have been writing this blog for a decade, and with each year the project seems that much more Quixotic. But so long as there are windmills to tilt at, I’ll have my lance drawn. Your enthusiasm for it is much appreciated.
You can use my name I don’t mind. If anything, I’d appreciate the link to my feed. My twitter page is a public page. If someone quoted something I wrote on facebook without my permission, I’d be far more upset, as my facebook page is actually private. I would just caveat that this was a tweet, and thus the scope of it and its ability to make a really extended argument is quite limited. Of course NPD wasn’t the only subject we tackled. But it was one of the biggees.
I actually think you, Scott and I are just looking at the same evidence and calling it something different. If you look at the activity we all engaged in over, say, Development Hell or Rachel Corrie or localism in theatre, or How Theater Failed America or diversity or Outrageous Fortune, or any of that other stuff and compare it to today, it’s hard not to see a real lull. By your own admission you don’t see theatre anymore, and this is reflected in your writing on it. I barely write about it, and don’t see it as often as I used to. Scott hasn’t written about it much on his site. Alison hung up her spurs. Laura barely ever writes about it. Dan and Mac got out. Mark Armstrong too. J. rarely posts at Parabasis. Terry almost never writes about theater outside of links to his reviews. Playgoer has been “on hiatus” since August. Josh James never writes about theater anymore. Jill Dolan moved her website and doesn’t write about theater as much. Jason Grote’s blog is private and password protected. Jaime Green no longer works in or blogs about theatre. Moxie the Maven doesn’t really write anymore.
At least a couple of people who used to write more frequently about theater have told me privately when I’ve asked them about it that they don’t anymore because all the oxygen got taken up by clearly dysfunctional people axe-grinding and personally attacking those who disagree with them.
Thanks for the shout-out George and thanks for continuing to do such important work and great writing here at Superfluities. To be honest I don’t pay much attention to the “theater” blogosphere because I experience the same frustration and disappointment that I get when I see most “plays”. But I think it the theater blogosphere is hardly “dead”. In fact, if anything, it is merely the term “blogger” or “blogosphere” that is dead, and to that I say good riddance.
I have had a personal website since 1998 and been “blogging” since 2000 when Blogger first launched. “Blogging” has evolved and changed over the years to the point where what constituted a “blog” in 2003 (when I launched Culturebot) or 2004 (when I started an all-blogger reading and performance series, documented online at wysiwygtalentshow.org/). Web-native writing of all forms continues to evolve and will persist, it is here to stay. There are those who see the form as an easy way to share opinions and those who see it as a legitimate critical and creative endeavor unto itself. Those people who just want to spout off or address what they consider short-term issues, those people who aren’t committed to a rigorous continuous writing practice, will inevitably fall off. The internet has, thankfully, started to change ideas of sustainability and duration. Do we need to build institutions and projects that will exist indefinitely or in perpetuity? Or should things have a shorter, more focused, predetermined life cycle and end point? Most things, we have discovered, should end and often quickly.
But web-native writing and specifically criticism, is a new form. Old media are going to go away or morph into something unrecognizable and those of us who take the work we do online seriously are laying the groundwork for what that future will look like. It is up to us to redefine criticism, to develop a pedagogy for web-native content development (text, media, hyperlinking) and to develop aesthetic frameworks that may embrace archaic performance technologies while making room for new ones.
Which is to say, George, that your endeavor is not Quixotic at all. It is the essential endeavor, the persistence that creates change gradually over time, often unnoticed, until that moment when the world looks around and realizes what has happened and what you have accomplished by looking forward, while everyone else was walking into the future gazing behind them like Orpheus at Euridyce.
Onward, comrade!
Isaac — Points noted (though I find the trolls you mention momentary annoyances rather than a reason to shut down altogether). And I didn’t know that your Twitter feed had a public page; not everybody has one, and it’s hard to say who does and who doesn’t; but I do note that it’s like hearing only one side of a telephone conversation.
Andy — Many thanks to you as well. And I suggest that Exeunt, another collaborative — well, let’s call it “journal” — is doing quite well covering the text-based theatre. I am old school and prefer to continue to go solo. To paraphrase Karl Kraus’ words upon his decision to write all of his journal Die Fackel alone, if there’s any alienating or insulting to do in these pages, I prefer to do it myself.
It’s widely-accepted knowledge that individually-maintained blogs have waned in popularity in recent years, because many people are able to say what they have to say through Twitter (a public micro-blogging platform), Facebook. More serious writers were absorbed into publications or think tanks as they incorporated web-based writing. In this, the theater blogsosphere (roughly 2004-2009, RIP) simply reflected trends in all disciplines. It had its heyday during a time when web-based self-publishing tools were available, but not yet widely used. Now, those same individuals can publish work online in many ways, not just blogs.
Long-form dramatic criticism was never, aside from your work, a project that took place on many theater blogs. The medium was always best suited to dialogue-based short-form discussions about industry trends and issues, which continue in different spaces these days. And that’s not all bad: longer, more substantive pieces actually find a much wider audience through sharing than they did when one had to follow individual blogs, as Scott can certainly attest.
The reason crazy trolls are such a deterrent in the theater space is because the community is so small that one random person can grab an exorbitant share of the oxygen, whereas on topics more prominent than theater they’d be rightly ignored.
I always shudder when I read phrases like “widely-accepted knowledge,” Mark, especially when it comes without attribution, but you make a good if arguable point. I do find much of my traffic coming from pointers on Facebook and Twitter; but again, the closed nature of ensuing discussion on the same platforms tends to marginalize new or dissenting viewpoints. Twitter is only “public” up to a point, it is possible to maintain private lists there.
Again, I don’t find controlling the trolls much of an issue, even in a small community like that which reads this blog. I can and do moderate comments here, though I try to be fairly liberal up to a point. And people will write what they write on their own blogs, or on Facebook, or on Twitter, without much that anybody can do about it. That which doesn’t kill me doesn’t make me stronger, necessarily, but in most cases it can safely be ignored.
One man’s troll is another man’s truthteller. Altogether too often, people just weren’t willing to be questioned about their ideas. They hated being forced to go beyond opinion to an actual argument. And for the most part, readers were content to allow them to do so. Perhaps this is the “spouting off” that Andy mentions. Or perhaps I am one of those trolls who caused the flight from the theatrosphere flight (soon to be a major motion picture).
What has always astonished me, and continues to do so, is the sanguine nature of the discussion. Here we are, in the midst of the diminution of the American theatre, and theatre people are sharing tips on how to use Facebook to increase their audience. Sheesh.
I agree with most all the points made by George and others. There are pros and cons to all of this though.
Centralization of industry discussions at sites like Howlround and 2AMT theater is a helpful development, but I kind of miss the freewheeling nature of the blogosphere where everybody had a home base from which they could dissent from or add to the discussion. And, in the instance of Howlround, there is a slight air of the institutional to it, at least to my mind.
Twitter and Facebook do help spread the word about posts, but responses to those posts are increasingly DONE on Twitter. A few months ago a post generated quite a bit of Twitter conversation, but tumbleweeds were blowing through the comments section of the original blog post. I’ve noticed this happening more frequently.
Also, I notice that many stories or blog posts are responded to by people with a single 140 character tweet. The author of the tweet tries desperately to cram as much into it as possible and, of course, has to make it witty! I’ll confess, I’ve done this, too. However, sometimes the discussion has to spill into multiple tweets from multiple users. At this point it becomes difficult to follow, and everybody gets frustrated because they admit, “I’m having trouble expressing my point”. Call me old fashioned, but a few times I’ve found myself saying, “I just wish so and so would write a quick blog post about their reaction to this.”
And it gets worse, the discussion is then lost, within mere minutes, to the ever flowing Twitterstream. Although the Library of Congress is archiving Twitter.
Although, there could be an upside to this. Perhaps there were a lot of wasted blog posts in the old days? Maybe there were a lot of discussions that should have just been a few tweets and then lost.
(George, just for clarification on the discussion., as Isaac points out, Twitter is generally used as a publishing tool, meaning that Tweets are public. Users can block other users, or set their Twitter feed to invite only, but only a small fraction of people actually do this. )
Thanks, Art. And though I don’t want this to devolve into a primer on Twitter privacy, there is this:
https://support.twitter.com/articles/14016
I have no idea how many people do this, but clearly, if it’s there to do, it’s done.
Theatre blogging is dead, long live theatre blogging! I’m writing from a different place and culture, where long-form theatre criticism and debate became the accepted form of theatre blogging, not just on my blog but in the network of discussion that particularly centred around Melbourne. It’s certainly dialed back from the heights of a few years ago, when bright young bloggers like Jana Perkovic, Andrew Furhmann, Matthew Clayfield, Carl Nillson-Polias and others were writing at length and arguing regularly about theatre. People move on: Jana and Andrew are still writing about theatre (Jana from Berlin) but less regularly, Matt’s become a freelance world correspondent and Carl is working in the theatre now. And so on. However, I can say categorically that my blog showed no signs of a declining readership, and that the hunger for debate and for longform reviews seemed as sharp as ever. One of the most intense discussions the blog has had, the crazy fuss over Queen Lear, occurred this year.
Twitter is incredibly useful for getting word out, but of course micro-comments aren’t the same as long, considered discussions. I’ve always seen it as a useful complement to blogging; it’s certainly no replacement. Detailed discussion is where blogs still reign supreme. The real issue (it seems to me) is the question of sustaining the kind of concentration, research and labour required to write decent responses to theatre. Especially for younger people, given that the career model for arts critics has all but completely collapsed. Here there are constant, even increasing, calls for theatre critics to be funded.
It seems to me that a certain era is over. I don’t know that that is good or bad: these things, like theatre itself, have a life, and then something else happens. I don’t see that the desire and need for serious commentary on theatre has changed. If the need is there, something will rise to meet it. How and what that will be is another question, of course.
“I’m writing from a different place and culture, where long-form theatre criticism and debate became the accepted form of theatre blogging, not just on my blog but in the network of discussion that particularly centred around Melbourne.” Why this happened in Australia but not in New York is one of those things we must leave to the machinations of the gods, I suppose. I remember once, long ago, I was named by someone or another an honorary Melbournian — I will continue to wear the designation with pride.
It’s one of those accidents of history, I think, George: a serendipitous confluence of what was happening in the theatre at the time, what wasn’t happening in print, and the emergence of digital media. (And, to be immodest for a moment, me). And yes, you’ll always be an honourary Melburnian, although I think we have to insist that one day you come to visit us.
Speaking as one of those “trolls” who stepped on various toes – what can I say? My blog rises and falls a bit in readership, but is basically as popular as ever, and certainly more popular than it was 3 years ago, when people were viciously calling me a racist and whining about how mean I was for pointing out their tunnel vision. Yes, most bloggers eventually gave up, basically because it didn’t serve their personal goals (whatever else they may say) – and no one really misses them, let’s be honest.
But frankly, my goal was to help shape the Boston theatre scene, and blogging DID suit that goal. And as for it being “over” – well, I have to say as a reviewer I’m more in demand than ever. Sure, there are one or two companies that have boycotted me – having called out the A.R.T. so often, I don’t expect to ever be invited there – but the attempts on their part to silence me all failed (surely a first in Boston theatre history – Harvard’s will was ignored), and I’m in demand not just in theatre but also in music, dance, opera and art. That’s partly because I am just about the only person in the city of Boston who writes high-quality, long-form criticism – although not just for Boston; I have a worldwide readership, and I’m struck by the fact that a recent two-parter, “David Mamet, the Art of the Con, and the Magic Vagina,” apparently has been read by more people than read the theatre column at the Huffington Post (which I would have imagined had a much larger reach).
Beyond that, I have to say I’m pretty obviously a vital link in Boston’s theatrical ecosystem. The vast majority of actors, directors and designers who have made a career in this town got their first rave from me, and more than one company has jumped to higher visibility because I championed them. In the music, opera and ballet scenes, I have likewise been influential – indeed, the print press often only echoes what I was saying two years ago. Basically, people gnash their teeth about me on Twitter, but when I notice someone, they are officially on the map. So everyone wants me to see their best work.
It’s true that blogging at my level is a grind – and I’m lucky in that I have the personal resources to allow me to invest this much time in it. But even though it wears on me, I realize that if I stop, there is no one else to pick up the mantle. There will simply be silence in Boston, really. Theatre will go on of course, but honestly, no one with a large audience will be saying much that’s interesting about it. And so I’m not sure how young artists will move from the fringe to the mainstream – I am one of the last stepping stones in that process (other local bloggers write about the fringe, but they only have a small fraction of my audience).
Of course it’s true that my commitment to difficult artistic decisions above all makes it tough to “friend” me – by my nature I’m opposed to the kind of “relationship-building” that was the be-all and end-all of much of the blogosphere, and which I’m afraid is basically antithetical to the kind of critical judgement I’m interested. So I realize that I myself will only be in business as long as my talent for perception lasts. Which won’t be forever. But until then, I think I’ll keep going, and frankly I’m a little grateful that most of the other bloggers I remember won’t be.
Since I neglected to leave a citation in a blog comment, feel free to check out the work of Chris Bowers, who’s written a lot on this topic. Or Google “end of blogging”.
I’m not sure what your point is about public/private Twitter feeds. Blogs can be private too. As can conversations, etc. I don’t get the sense that there are lots of individuals who would have publicly blogged about theater, but are now privately tweeting about theater. Whatever the quality of dialogue on Twitter, it is indisputable that larger numbers of people, from more diverse aspects of the field, participate publically there than they ever did on blogs.
Another possibility is that the theatre blog is not at all dead and the blog is actually the correct form in which internet criticism takes place. Briefly:
One of the beautiful things about blogging is that, like the theatre, it’s kind of archaic. Who has time to write a lengthy analysis any more? Who has time to read it? (Who has time to sit in a dark room for 2 hours?) It’s some kind of bizarre cyber-citizen act.
But it’s been this way since day #1, hasn’t it? The form of blogs has stayed largely the same. The only novelty-factor of blogs was that initially at least they were a different way of ‘mining the personal’ – an element which was quickly overtaken by other more thirsty and corporate-interest forms.
To me it proves that there is something inherent in theatre that is about application, or depth, which is mirrored in the blog. Twitter/facebook are not suited to theatre because it’s so fleeting – the proper way to meet a work of theatre is through long-form criticism because there the critic’s application mirrors that of the viewing experience (and the creative act). It is a match between the duration and energy of the event, and communicates embedded information to the reader about what the show is. When at its best, reading a good piece of criticism, you feel like you are actually watching the show. Can’t say the same about Twitter, not matter how accurate the comment. Too brief.
For this reason, one might argue the blog is the correct form for theatre criticism on the internet, and will remain so.
I know no-one is really suggesting Twitter is a replacement for criticism of length, but perhaps useful to speculate (remember?) why that is.
As Isaac mentioned, I do not blog about theatre any longer, for one, my career has changed and I’m not really (save for plays of mine done here and there around the country for a royalty) a playwright any longer, technically, but a screenwriter, so as my career has changed, so has, too, my interests and what I write about. So I write about film and screenwriting, since that’s my focus.
A lot has happened, I had two kids, things shifted, as it goes, life evolves and changes, it’s inevitable… I once was an actor, after all, but that wasn’t fulfilling enough, and became a playwright, so on and so forth to where I am now… nothing in life is constant but change, so who knows what I’ll be doing ten years from now?
But I would echo Mark’s point that the blogosphere has changed… not just theatre blogs, either, I was avidly involved in a lot of screenwriting blogs before making the switch myself, and the same can be said there, many a screenwriting blog has bit the dust, and those that survived have also transformed into something different (for example, John August’s wildly popular site merged with Craig Mazin’s Artful Writer to do a regular podcast that covers a lot of what used to be blogged about, and he no longer allows comments simply because dealing with trolls became a full time job, and not worth the time allowed)… the screenwriting world can be said to be a lot bigger than the theatre blogging world, with thousands and thousands of participants, so that is something to consider.
But actually, trolls do matter, in the end, and while the conflict they often start can draw attention, in the end they hurt more than they help, I believe.
I actually stopped reading certain blogs simply because of the blog’s author would refuse to act in that regard, police the trolls or refuse to take sides in an easily resolvable dispute over facts… it would infuriate me to no end… that’s a personal choice, of course, and nowadays I wish I had all those hours I spent fuming because someone said something obviously contradictatory (is that a word? it should be, or maybe I can’t spell on my own) and was not called out for it, and fights are less about the ideas, in the end, then the winning… too often a lot of those blog wars were less about real ideas of theatre and just about winning an argument and scoring personal points…
Which made it wearying, and I don’t miss that part of it, not at all… I miss quite a bit about theatre, but that mostly has to do with the work, doing the shows, the actors and friends… and while I have a lot of friends I met thru blogging about theatre (Matt Freeman, James Comtois, David Cote, the lovely Laura Axelrod, all of whom have great blogs) I have to say, I honestly don’t miss writing about it, anymore, or any of the drama that ensued from a lot of the conflicts that followed (someone did once challenge me to a fistfight, after all, which is amusing to all who actually know me in person)… it was distracting, negative and draining… and unnecessary, too… again, this could be simply my personal preference…
I have a lot of substantial conversations on arts, crafts and politics, but nearly all of them take place on facebook (I actually saw the link to this post on FB), which has the added plus that no one is anonymous, you know who you’re talking to, and you have a choice if you don’t want to talk to them any longer (by blocking or removing them)… I have a lot of spirited debates with many people of differing views and experiences, it’s not an echo chamber, far from it, but it is one that’s less about attention and more about specific ideas… because in the facebook groups I belong to, most of which are private, the posts and comments are not about getting attention or page hits, but more about making a compelling argument in support of that idea.
Of course, that’s not to suggest that there weren’t any theatre blogs that did the same, of course there were (and I listed some I liked)… but just that too often, it seemed to me, that for some it was less about that and more about the attention… which beget more attention, and more attention, etc…
So in my view, the trolls do matter in the end, for many of not most of us… quite a bit, but also life evolves and changes… and that’s a good thing, too…
Looking over these replies, I am struck by how often they say the same thing: the blogosphere wound up being an inefficient form of self-promotion, so I moved on to something else. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) As for a “discussion” going on via Twitter – I don’t think so; Twitter is, literally, twittering not discussion. Occasionally I see something of intellectual interest on HowlRound, I admit, but it is, as Art points out, an industry forum – an education industry forum – dedicated to carving out a supported performance space for graduates of college programs that, rather obviously, need to be able to advertise performance opportunities for their graduates in order to stay in business. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that, either. But I do wonder if most of the blogosphere ever amounted to anything more than those “elevated” commercial concerns. Perhaps it’s gone because that function has been taken over. The critical issues that George seems to be concerned about were probably never much in play to begin with. You still see the blogosphere gear up every now and then over race, or comic books, but that seems to be about it.
Since he is here, I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize to Joshua James for behaving like an ass.
I haven’t the time presently to address all your thoughtful comments (the kids need their new shoes, and their feet are growing all the time), but thanks to all of you for your insights.
Apology accepted and appreciated, Scott.
And I, in turn, humbly apologize for any remarks I may have made to or about you in days past that were personally insulting, unkind and / or unprofessional.
Apology accepted and appreciated. Life’s too short to have that kind of nastiness.
I definitely quit because of the fights. I never thought blogging was an effective form of self-promotion in the first place, so it had nothing to do with that. It’s possible (even probable) that I’m a wimp, but the fights made me so unhappy that it was a real weight in my life. The theater blogosphere stopped feeling like it existed in the same invigorating world in which I attend and make theater, with the exception of James Comtois’s wonderful series about producing Off-Off. I sometimes think I could resume blogging with a new mission and new personal guidelines, but it’s probably not likely. I enjoy occasional guest-blogging at other people’s places. If I did resume, I’d probably focus on what I’ve done and how it’s either worked or not worked, and what I’ve learned. The important thing for me is defining and implementing my mission as a theater artist; lavishing energy on “winning” a comment thread, I’ve found, is energy squandered.
I certainly don’t consider you a wimp, Mac, and would take umbrage with anyone who thought differently… it takes balls to write and put words out in front of an audience, be it online or onstage, and even greater courage to face the truth about ourselves through the work. Putting out work takes courage, you have that.
And I think you were a lot more sensible about internet fights than I was.
A website is, in a sense, a self promotion, but so is a book, a play, or a movie in that it’s intended for an audience… I never thought the majority of the blogs I read, save one or two, were about self promotion but rather writing… writing is something writers do, and it’s not always about self promotion but about sharing ideas, having a conversation or understanding one’s self…
In the beginning that, for me, was a lot of what I loved about the theatre blogosphere, hanging out and sharing different ways of doing something we all loved. It evolved from there into something different, or I did, or both…
The fights eventually wore on me, greatly, and I obviously had more than my fair share of them, as anyone here could attest… not just on theatre blogs, either, but on screenwriting blogs, political blogs, and I honestly regret some of those fights… and while I’ll still engage in debate on FB, I do so with a very different intent and mindset (one that’s as civil as I can possibly be) and pick and choose what I share and who I engage with… spirited debate can be a positive thing, but it’s also easy to slide into the dark side, too… and trolls, man, they are the Sith Lords of the internet, I think.
One thing I’ve since learned is that I don’t have to fight anyone and that just because someone is wrong about something, it’s not my mission in life to show them the error of their ways… I know some of you are probably going, “duh” but yeah, I had to learn that (I did start blogging in ’04, so it was awhile ago) and in this I can honestly say that I grew up (and becoming a parent has had no small affect in that regard)… but I definitely regret a many of the hot emotions of those days, even if they were justified at times. Especially in light of the news as of late, I’m embarrassed that I got so angry over someone’s differing view on the function of theatre in civilization, or where it was produced, etc.
I think about that and I am embarrassed… not that our work isn’t (or in my case, wasn’t) important and something to be passionate about, sure it is… but it is just one part of a complex thread of life, all our lives, for all of us, and it’s not worth the energy or negativity to fight like that (or like I was)…
Then again, I wonder about some of the fights other people in the arts have had (and I’m now thinking about Tim Robbin’s underrated film THE CRADLE WILL ROCK, among other things) so perhaps we’re not that different than artists past, we just have internet.
Perhaps this is a struggle that has always gone on, I don’t know.
I know I was responsible for many of the fights — I and Don Hall brought a pretty combative approach to the whole thing. My motivation was less about self-promotion (I didn’t really have a career that benefited from blogging, as blogging was, and still is, looked at with little respect in academia) as much as bringing attention to an aspect of theatre I felt was being ignored or dismissed. Which can make one self-righteous. Like many who consider themselves marginalized, I felt, perhaps wrongly, that I had to be extreme in order to be heard. Seven years later, things have changed somewhat — there is more awareness of non-urban theatre, and while recognition continues to be somewhat token, it is less of a struggle. I’d like to think I played some small part in that, but I suspect the role could have been played just as effectively with more grace.
As Joshua said, aging has helped lead to some moderation. Like Mac, I don’t have the emotional energy or the time to devote to things that aren’t central to my focus. When I read articles and blog posts about some recent controversy or sensation, I find that I just don’t care much anymore. I’m interested in creating an educational program, publishing company, and online information hub for artists who want to “bring the arts back home,” especially to small towns. I don’t need to address the regional theatre values or Broadway to do that, except as a way to illustrate the difference in orientation and approach.
Blogging was very, very helpful in developing my ideas. Without all the criticism of my thoughts, those thoughts would have remained half-formed and weak. The intensity of the battles forced me to try to be clearer in my expression and more persuasive in my evidence, But at some point, I didn’t need that burnishing anymore.
I still feel my role as keeping some of these issues before the public, but at age 54 I am planning the last decade of my career and it is time to build something. I suspect blogging will play some role in that, but not so much the combat.
Soctt, Mac, Joshua… if I can coax your nostalgia a little, and this might be the wrong thing to say, but I’d be really curious to read some of these fights you’re discussing above if someone would post a couple…
Sorry if it’s reopening old wounds!
Oh gosh. Well, here: http://theatreideas.blogspot.com/2007/08/to-joshua-james-hatchet-for-burial.html
Well, here: http://bit.ly/SVHb0s