I saw 14/48 and I don't agree with Constant's examples of plays that were "inferior products". In fact, I'd say the soccer and cliff diving ones were the strongest plays. It wasn’t the best 14/48 I’ve been to, but it was pretty good and we enjoyed ourselves.

But which plays are stronger than others is a matter of opinion.

He makes a factual error in his conclusion, though, that needs to be corrected. Constant says the most important ingredient is good actors, and without them 14/48 fell apart. As the MC for the night said: **every actor in 14/48 that night had acted before (and I think he said they all had acted in a 14/48 festival before).** Constant should not blame any disappointment he felt on writers or directors who were forced to act. There were no newbies on that stage. Perhaps Constant is reading too much into why he personally did not fall in love with the plays. Or perhaps the scripts and directing (which were done by a lot of newbies) are pretty damn important after all.

It's unfortunate that Constant didn't see the Saturday night performance as well; by then, the band had taken impressive leaps forward, and the writing was substantially stronger. The whole weekend was a powerful argument for the Kamikaze format as a skill-building as well as a community-building exercise. Frankly, I was impressed that non-writers crafted that Saturday script line-up.

Okay; then don't go. No one's forcing you to pay $20. It's a gamble; sometimes things click and the results are exhilarating and sometimes...not. The gamble is part of it. And the results have been enjoyable, even delightful and dazzling, more often than not for me, personally.

But don't bitch about the potential failure when that potential failure is the *whole point*.

I saw the show on Friday night, and found it precisely as hit-or-miss as any other 14/48 I've seen, and less so than some. Yeah, there were struggles, but . . . It seems to me that you're always paying to see an exercise with this event. If you're not interested in paying to see an exercise, don't go to 14/48. As for reviewing an exercise, the point kind of eludes me; it's not as though it tells anyone what to expect about the next time this exercise is undertaken, because it is, by nature and/or definition, never going to be the same again.

Oh, and like @1, my experience was the inverse of Paul's--the strongest piece, in his view, struck me as the most arduous (and the least audible, that is to say, most whispered/mumbled), while the soccer piece struck me as the most fully realized. To each his own; criticism--which I support in principle--is always the attempt to make objective-sounding arguments for subjective reactions, hopefully with the intent to connect art and artists with other members of the community. I'm not sure this is particularly useful in this kind of venture, where scripts, with few exceptions, aren't really meant to go on to become anything other than what they were when you saw them opening night.