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Welcome to the inaugural edition of the Anonymous Review Squad, in which artists review their peers' work. This experiment (which we hope to repeat in other sections of the paper) was inspired by artists who complain that critics are unqualified to hand down judgment because they have never made art.
That complaint is pure bunk, of course, for three reasons: (1) It's a provincial and solipsistic argument that assumes one needs to be a member of a group to say anything intelligent about that group. Which, to pick three random examples, would mean that Alexis de Tocqueville had nothing intelligent to say about Americans, Dan Savage has nothing intelligent to say about hetero sex, and all historians are wasting their time. (2) Many critics first become interested in art by making art and, for whatever reason, later switch to writing about it. (In my case, I learned in college that making newspapers was more exciting and rewarding than making plays.) (3) All good critics are students of the arts: They watch closely, ask questions, research finances, read art history, and are on familiar terms with artists and administrators, big fish and little fish. Good critics, by not being stuck in one little weed patch of an arts ecosystem, have a bird's-eye view of the whole. They have perspective.
Stranger Personals
However! That artists-know-more-than-critics complaint is stubborn—so why not run an experiment to see if it's even partly true? Why not give the people what they want?
And here we are.
The inaugural ARS is: Jerry Manning (director and producing artistic director of the Seattle Rep), Allison Narver (director and former artistic director of the Empty Space Theatre), Kirk Anderson (actor and drummer for the theater-garage-art-band "Awesome"), Jennifer Zeyl (designer, director, founding member of the Washington Ensemble Theatre, and Stranger Genius Award winner), Mandie O'Connell (actor, writer, codirector of Implied Violence, Stranger Genius Award winner). Any one of those five could have written any one of the three reviews running this week.
Anonymity carries liabilities: A critique is less credible when it isn't attached to a name. But theater is a tiny town, and we wanted to give these artists a critical voice without the attendant fear of professional reprisals. Reporters grant their sources anonymity when what they say might jeopardize their physical or professional well-being. Artists who criticize artists have a reasonable fear of jeopardizing both.
What will happen? Will artists be all empathetic to and soft on their fellow artists (at the expense of the audience)? Will they go at each other with hatchets? Will they show up our paper's critics as know-nothing blowhards?
Read the first-ever Anonymous Review Squad and find out. 
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none of this has to do with the real work of the artist.
Joe Chaikin, The Presence of the Actor, 1972
The part of the "'boo-hoo' the critics are to blame" tirades that I dislike most: the apparent lack of responsibility for producing stronger work that, for example, connects storytelling to its society (i.e. Make good work that critics will be forced to notice). Instead the same energy and space is filled by an equal mass of entitlement and scape-goatage. And these whiner readers add a garrulous din that smothers the quiet contentment some of us have with the current newspaper-theatre relationship.
In my mind, theatre criticism (or any newspaper critiques or advice) is an entertainment of its own, an art as separate from theatre as poetry or sculpting, connected to theatre by a mere thread, an indirect and single thread; that some audience members might also be readers. Theatre-goers go to theatre, weekly rag readers read fun articles. The readers can become theatre-goers, and vice versa. But to demand the critic kowtow to theatre makes no reasonable sense: the critic is on the wrong end of the food chain - they aren't making or breaking shows, the shows are. Critics are often reactive to what theatre artists send downstream. Sometimes it's sewer. Sometimes it's gold.
Arguably, one critic, or at least identified critics, makes more sense: once the critic establishes their voice (Brendan values intrepid work & interpersonal subtext onstage, Misha has a calm, nuturing cultural view, Longenbaugh likes to see/hear good writing & hearing himself talk...) then the readers can pick and choose which one best matches THEIR tastes, and can occasionally rely upon that critic (if they actually fear taking a chance so much as to require reading reviews first before going out to theatre).
While I appreciate the top-notch panel that the Stranger has assembled, I personally can't wait for this little round of 'fan service' to be over so we can get *gasp* back to journalism.
Also by Brendan Kiley
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