York is tiny. No matter where you’re from, you’ve probably noticed – you can’t shop, eat, sleep or breathe without bumping into people you know (and no, I don’t just mean your housemates). It’s impossible to pop into town anonymously or buzz through campus without at least seeing someone you recognise, even if you try to avoid them.
The same goes for societies. Be they media, faith, academic, sporting or special interest, you probably have found some crossover. This is no more relevant than in the various performing arts societies – it makes perfect sense that somebody is a member of two or more out of the ten or so performing arts societies at York. The interests shared between them are largely similar, and it would be unusual if nobody crossed over. As a result, you often find that it is those people who are most interested in commenting on performing arts – because for many involved in them, they’re the only societies that they have time for, or are passionate about in the first place.
Reviewing can be quite a responsibility at the best of times – you try your hardest to fairly depict what happened onstage, but are restricted by whether or not you like the play or style, and what it is that you remember about a piece. At university this is an even greater challenge, because quite simply, reviewers often know people in the drama. It means that all personal ties – positive or negative – need to be left at the door. There is no space in the Drama Barn, in Central Hall, or in L/N/028 for friendships or rivalries to get in the way of a performance.
Performing in the knowledge that you have a friend or even acquaintance of yours reviewing is by no means an easy task. It doesn’t make anything less daunting – you want your friends to like your show. For the reviewer, it can be absolutely horrible – and giving friends a positive review with no criticism is an absolute no-no. Last year, many reviewers were accused of being “too nice” by some societies, for simply not giving enough criticism. Admittedly, for one review, I received a comment claiming that it sounded more like a “sickly sweet love note to someone’s friends in Drama Soc.” As it happens, I knew neither of the actors in the piece at the time. The converse effect is easy, however, it’s so easy to accidentally make a throwaway remark that is taken personally when it isn’t meant so, or that seems to attack an individual that the reviewer isn’t intending to, in such an intimate setting as a university campus.
It is so important that reviewer and performer maintain a professional distance in the matter of reviews. For all the media outlets on campus that review – Vision, Nouse, The Yorker and Haus – it is so important that any personal ties are left at the front page, and that sincere reviews are written. Reviewers need to have the ability to write whatever it is they feel upon leaving a production without fearing consequences, and performers deserve an honest and constructive opinion of their work, not a rose-tinted one. There is a desperate need to be objective in reviewing, a job that many reviewers and performers do handle with dignity – but one that still occasionally needs clarifying.
The writer refers to a review he wrote that was said to “read like a sickly sweet love note to someone’s friends in Drama Soc”. This article reads like the passive-aggressive letter he left on the fridge for them after a row.
Not so much a Comment, in my opinion, as a slightly undignified piece of apologetics.
As someone who sometimes writes ComedySoc reviews for The Yorker, I do find it pretty hard whenever my friend is performing. He always asks to see the piece before I send it off, but weirdly so that he can check I’m not being too soft on him. He seems to be constantly demanding “scathe”. I can certainly empathise with the difficulty in writing unbiased reviews of something you have a vested interest in…