Lies, Damned Lies and Theatre Criticism

I almost never comment publicly on another reviewer’s criticism. Yes, I’ve sent the occasional snarky note to a critic about a negative review, but having been a critic myself for five years, I know that it’s all just opinion. And arguing with someone about their opinion rarely accomplishes much.

(“I like Earl Gray!”

“Earl Gray sucks! I like Lapsang Souchong!”

“Well clearly, we both can’t be right!”)

But while I dislike arguments about opinion, I was always happy to get factual corrections. Misspelled names, misattributed quotes, wrong dates and places—while a theatre review is an aesthetic reaction to a work, and therefore personal opinion, it still has the fundamental journalistic requirement of getting its facts right.

This Saturday I was finally able to make it over to The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, the most recent of Mike Daisey’s monologues, now playing at The Seattle Rep. I’ve been fortunate enough to see most of Mike’s pieces over the years; in fact, I was in the opening night crowd at Wasting Your Breath, his first-ever monologue, back in the old Open Circle Space on Boren. (Fun fact: as part of the show he gave me a lap dance. I still gave him a great review.)

Agony combines a hilarious overview of the career of Steve Jobs, Mike’s own tech-geek fascination for all things Apple, and the story of his trip to the Chinese factory city of Shenzen, where all things Apple are made. This portion includes details gathered from multiple interviews that he did with workers at the factories, many of whom are as young as 12 or 13, and all of whom work in conditions that are frankly appalling and inhuman. I loved the show, and not just because of the content. In the last decade Mike’s abilities as a performer have grown exponentially. To see him hold 900 people as skillfully in his hand as he once did a dozen or so in a black box theatre is personally inspiring.

After the show, I saw him and his wife and director Jean-Michele briefly. I congratulated him, and he thanked me, then said it’d been a tough week. Though I asked what he meant, I knew straightaway: Brendan Kiley’s review in The Stranger.

Now, Brendan says a lot of nice things about Mike in this review. He calls him a “master storyteller” with “a comic precision and conversational eloquence that should be universally envied.” But in the midst of all this, he also essentially calls out Mike for being a liar.

Here’s the passage.

“…Daisey alone knows this truth; Daisey alone has emerged from the heart of darkness of Asian industrialization to bring us the horror. In Shenzhen, he says several times, "there's no journalism." The "BBC fixer" who was supposed to help him out? Useless. The New York Times? It merely reprints press releases from Shenzhen boardrooms. Thank god Mike Daisey has crawled from the maw of capitalism to tell us the truth.

“Except that he's not telling us the truth. After getting home from the show, opening up my MacBook, and wiping the blood off the keyboard, I did a little Googling. In under a minute, I learned some things: The New York Times that Daisey derides as being nothing more than a mouthpiece for Shenzhen corporate interests? It's been writing about labor abuses in the city—child labor, days-long shifts, etc.—for at least five years. The BBC has written several stories about Shenzhen, including the suicides that Daisey talks about. Looks like there's journalism about Shenzhen after all.

“That wouldn't be damning—every good storyteller builds on the foundation of forebears—except that Daisey is extremely disingenuous about the story, his relationship to it, and what his forebears have said about it. And if he's disingenuous with the most basic, verifiable facts, why should we trust him with the complicated, unverifiable facts—like those of his trip to Shenzhen, for instance?”

(a link to the whole piece is here.)

Now, Brendan is entirely welcome to his opinion—in fact, as a critic his opinion is requested. But he’s not welcome to his own facts.

I saw the show on Saturday night. Having read his review, I was listening for the section that Brendan refers to. It doesn’t, in the form that he criticizes, exist. When Mike says there’s “no journalism” in China, he’s referring specifically to a crackdown on Chinese-run media regarding the suicides in Shenzen, not a complete absence whatsoever of journalism. He does have harsh words about a Wired article, written by a “blogger journalist” who conducted some PR-assisted tours of the Foxconn factories and did absolutely no interviews with any of the workers. But to say that Daisey ever gives the impression that he “alone knows this truth” is a grievous and frankly slanderous misinterpretation of what he says.

As Mike said to me in an interview for my Seattle Weekly profile, he assumes that the basic facts about Chinese sweatshops aren’t a complete surprise to anybody. “I don’t think anyone leaves the show saying ‘and here I thought that China was a Worker’s Paradise!’” he said. “Everyone knows this on some level. But we’ve all kept ourselves from thinking about the details.”

While it is true that Mike does extemporize his text each evening, and therefore there may have been slight textual changes between the show Kiley saw and the one I did a week later, according to Daisey himself the script that I heard was the exact same one, regarding this issue anyway, that Kiley refers to. (It's also telling that not one of the commentators on The Stranger website agrees with Kiley's version of events.)

It’s tempting to speculate on Brendan’s motivations. Certainly it’s common for The Stranger to attack an artist that they themselves have helped turn into a star, particularly once they’ve achieved some measure of fame. Daisey’s been a darling of The Stranger for years; hell, they actually supported his recent show How Theatre Failed America by publishing an article by him on the same topic! Or perhaps Kiley’s own recent forays into investigative journalism have made him suspicious of the “professional blundering” that characterizes Daisey’s own work—showing up at the gates of the factory complex with an interpreter and wearing a Hawaiian shirt smacks of a Michael Moore stunt, even if he (as Moore routinely does) mined serious journalistic dirt in doing so. Or maybe he’s jealous. Or a closet Apple fanboy. I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. The only thing that does matter is that in the middle of a review he makes a serious allegation about a performer’s veracity, and as near as I can determine, he’s 100% factually wrong.

But why does this matter? Again, let me pull a quote from my interview with Daisey, which didn’t make it into the Weekly article—but at least I can guarantee that it’s an accurate quote. Mike at this point was drawing a distinction between the people who’ve come to the show, and those who’ve just read about it in media. “To be clear, this is theatre. If they actually come to the show and I get them into the room, then almost invariably what I hear from them is positive. There’s the war in the room, and the war in the media that speaks about what’s in the room. The war in the room is largely lost or won based on my ability to create and who’s there. The war outside is about how I’m perceived and in sound bites.”

Kiley, knowingly or not, has just provided ammunition to the war outside the room. Not only is he helping the wrong side, but he’s doing so with a review that is factually incorrect. As a result, the person who should be concerned about their professional career here isn’t Mike Daisey. It’s Brendan Kiley.

Lady's Night

It's opening night for My Time with the Lady, the show that I've directed (and gave a bit of assistance in writing) based on the stories of the writer/performer Ron Richardson.

When Ron and I first started to work with these stories almost a year and a half ago, the Lusty Lady was still in business. We actually made a couple of "field trips" down to the place so he could talk me through what had changed and what had stayed the same since his days as a janitor/cashier/bouncer in the late '80s and early '90s. Actually seeing the narrow hallways and tiny booths that were the setting for Ron's reminiscences was a bit like walking through an archaeological site and trying to reconcile the history you've read about with the actual fact that living people had been involved in creating it.

At that time we were still lacking two vital elements: an ending to the show (which, alas! we got when the Lady closed that summer), and a company to create it. I suggested to Ron that what we really needed was a female perspective. When you're doing a play about a peep show that's narrated by a guy, you've got a pretty good chance at alienating approximately half your potential audience if you're not careful. So when we were still doing table work I asked my friend and past collaborator Mary Cutler to come on board. I've worked with Mary several times in the past, including as a co-director, and I have always appreciated how she's both completely non-judgmental about subject matter (even when certain details make her squirm) and has an acute eye for what makes a script work.

The next person to join the company was our dancer/choreographer Kirsten Lauzon. I say "dancer" because her shadow work will be what most people remember from this show, and yes, Kirsten's an amazing performer. She not only dances but creates 20 different characters during the course of the play, ranging from staff (men and women) to customers. But Kirsten's also been our graphic and web designer, script consultant, and enthusiastic collaborator since joining the project. I can't imagine what the show would look like without her.

The first techie we brought onto the team was Laura Ulmer, our sound designer. I'd heard her work at an "Erotic Shorts," and was impressed by both the nuance and the complexity of her creations. When I approached her she made the reasonable request for a copy of the script. I sent it to her with some concerns--after all, the stories that Ron tells aren't for everybody. But her response was enthusiastic, and she leaped into the creative process immediately, including creating complex atmospheric beds of sounds that perfectly evoke the muffled world of private passion of The Lady.

Also returning from our first production is Jayme Markham as our light operator, a woman who, as Ron recently said, you'd want next to you in a bar fight. There's something bewilderingly tough about Jayme, who combines a personal sweetness with a techie's no-nonsense attitude. And joining the crew this time round is our Stage Manager Eleanor Pawley, who's proven to be an absolute dream of organization, good humor and practical knowledge. She also knows how to drink.

I highlight all of these women because while we also have men supporting this run (virtuoso producer John Ullman, the unfazeable and unstoppably imaginative set/light designer David Baldwin, the dedicated and resolutely cheerful sound op Dave Lydon), it was always the women that I felt were key to the success of this show. Neither Ron nor I are equipped to tell the story of the Lusty Lady from the perspective of the women. And we weren't trying to; that's already been done to critical success, in books like Erika Langley's "The Lusty Lady" and Elizabeth Eaves' "Bare." What we've put up on stage is the story of a young man who fell in love not with a woman but with an entire business, a peep show where the dancers were fairly paid and well-treated, where the Show Managers were women and the attitudes were enlightened. It's the story of a community of powerful women. And as we open the show on this tempestuous April evening, I want to thank all of the smart, critical, beautiful and strong women who helped us bring these stories to the stage.

Family in Mourning

On Sunday night I had a friend in from out of town and we caught a preview at the Rep of "Of Mice and Men." It was grand seeing so many friends up on the stage tearing the hell through one of the undisputed masterworks of American theatre, and it was even more fun catching up with them at drinks afterward at Solo, which has become one of Seattle's Actor Bars. (I hope they know what they're in for!)

My old friend Charles Leggett, who as Lenny had spent the evening politely tugging the entire production away from his fellow actors, had some choice comments on the process of creating his role and I'm looking forward to seeing how audiences respond to the show.

Actors and artists in Seattle are given to the occasional rant about their status in the local theatre ecosystem, and this evening it was the turn of Mr. Basil Harris to take the floor. Basil, who I chiefly know from his days in sketch comedy troupe Bald Face Lie, was fresh from closing his own show "Go Dog, Go!" at the Seattle Children's Theatre, and I suspect a combination of closing night euphoria and whatever he was drinking were what led to his passionate rant about the necessity of local artists to actively pursue their own destinies. He enumerated the well-known reasons for why NOT to be an actor, and then said "really, the only reason to continue doing this is to be part of this community. The only 'career' you end up with in theatre is entirely based on working with your peers and colleagues. It's not about getting larger and larger roles until you're suddenly a star. It doesn't work like that in this town. The pay-off, the success, is the opportunity to do the work, and to do it with people who you respect."

Basil's comments have been going through my head today as I read the many tributes to actor Mark Chamberlin, who died unexpectedly this morning after a bike accident on the weekend. I knew Mark only slightly off the stage but had been watching his performances for years. I always carried a small amount of guilt that the first show I'd seen him in, Hospitality at the old ACT, was frankly atrocious and my review said so. (He played a crack-smoking corrupt Immigration officer. I doubt it was his favorite role either.) Whatever; when we last talked, at the opening night of "The Odyssey" at Taproot, it was again clear that he wasn't carrying any ill-feeling about my unkind words of 15 years ago.

Regardless of how little we actually knew each other, Mark and I were both members of an artistic community that's still small enough to consider itself family--albeit the sort of loud, cantankerous and argumentative extended family that spends as much time feuding as celebrating. I feel honored to have seen so many of his performances over the years. He brought a quality of substance to his work that's rare. The eye was naturally drawn to his slightly craggy good looks, the ear to a voice--what a voice!--that he used like a musician his instrument or a carpenter his toolbox.

Thanks for your work, Mr. Chamberlin. I'm sorry we never had a chance to work together, because you were the sort of artist I aspire to collaborate with. We were distant relations but family nonetheless, and I join the rest of Seattle's artists in mourning your loss.

"A Highly Developed Set of Ethics"

I was once fired from a job—long ago, I might add. During our exit interview, I asked the reasons for my dismissal. After waffling around about this and that (the truth was a higher-up just didn’t like me), my new boss said, in a frustrated tone, “let’s just say you have a highly developed set of ethics.”

I will always treasure that comment.

I was a theatre critic for The Seattle Weekly and Backstage Magazine from 1995-2000. I really don’t miss it all that much. Poorly paid, flattered by some artists and hated by others, a punch-line to half the theatre jokes out there, being a critic had few positive aspects aside from the free tickets. But I do actually miss working in a profession with some ethics. Aside from don’t punch your co-workers and don’t steal from the petty cash, a lot of jobs out there really don’t have a professional code of conduct. Theatre criticism has a whole host of rules, formal and informal, that a critic is supposed to follow—particularly if, like me, you’re also simultaneously a theatre artist.

While some of these rules came from my editors, others I developed on my own. Here’s a few of them:

• If you receive cash or a production from a company, you don’t review their shows. (I set this as a one-year ban and wonder if it should have been longer.)

• You try to get your facts right. If you get them wrong, you print a correction.

• You don’t puff your friends, and you don’t disparage your enemies—you write about the work. If you can’t do that, you don’t review the show.

• You don’t nominate your own work for awards. (Yes, I actually knew a critic who did this.)

• You don’t “get back” at companies that don’t produce you or artists who publicly criticize you. (I remember the discomfort of being evoked by name from the stage of the Re-bar during Dan Savage’s production of The Misanthrope. Being insulted in rhyming verse in public was an unwelcome novelty—but the show was undeniably good. After I gave the show a positive review, I got a call from the company letting me know that after they’d read it, they’d subbed in another critic’s name instead.)

• When you have lunch with the artistic director at The Rep to discuss the new season, you don’t turn the conversation into a pitch meeting for a play you’ve just written. (The boon and curse of being a critic: access to everyone, artistic respect from no one.)

• You don’t leave halfway through a show and not acknowledge it in your review, if you write one. (While I never took the same relish in doing this as Brendan Kiley over at The Stranger clearly does, I’ll admit that when I was a critic I did do this a couple of times. And I would do it again: those shows were horrible.)

But the greatest ethical requirement of a critic is that she or he gives a truthful reaction to what they’ve just seen. If you love it, even if you personally dislike the playwright, you praise it. And if you hate it, even if the company is a wonderful group of artists who’ve flattered you and bought you drinks, you say so.

One of the phone calls I treasure most during my time as a critic was from Kevin Joyce, who at the time was still with UMO Ensemble. Despite this being one of my favorite theatre companies ever, I’d just given their latest show a lacerating review. He told me that he’d just read the review, completely agreed with it, and thanked me.

Theatre artists give critics a lot of stick, mostly because we fear their opinion of our work and the effect that might have. But while theatre criticism might not necessarily be an art, it is an ethical profession. So to every critic out there who takes ethics seriously: thank you. Even if I disagree with your opinion, particularly of my work, I respect you working a job that asks you to behave in a morally responsible way. It’s not always easy hanging onto a set of ethics in the modern world.

Seattle Theatre Round-Up--From a Safe Distance

Greetings, snow-bound Seattle, from sunny (though chilly) Santa Fe! I'm at a writer's retreat organized, operated and funded by me, though props to my Mother for providing the cozy condo where I sit and think and write.

Mostly what I've been reading are mysteries to give me some insight into a new play. And mostly what I've been thinking about is how ridiculously blessed, and maybe cursed, we are in Seattle to have so much theatre going on.

Santa Fe's reputation as an arts community is certainly justified. If you're in the mood for visual art, opera and lots and lots of tango (why tango?), this is the place to come. It's also got a theatre scene that seems...well, I'd call it proportionate. There's a good-sized venue for visiting companies (The Lensic), a couple of mid-sized companies with an interest in new work (Santa Fe Playhouse, TheatreWorks), some companies connected to local colleges and universities, and a scattering of fringe companies. That's pretty good for a town this size, and from what I read in the local media, audiences considered themselves pretty fortunate.

But Seattle has SO much theatre going on ALL the time. In the past couple of weeks I went to no less than half a dozen shows at venues ranging from the gargantuan (The Paramount, Rock of Ages) to the very large indeed (Seattle Rep, The Brothers Size) to the mid-sized professional (Taproot, The Odyssey; Seattle Shakespeare, Cymbeline, Second Story Repertory, Much Ado About Nothing) to the fringe (Theater Schmeater, Crooked; Man Alone, Three Screams). I had invites to three or four other shows that I simply couldn't make it to, despite my best intentions.

During my years as a critic, it was routine for me to see three or four shows a week, and still receive complaints from companies that I was ignoring them. While there's not as many productions going on now as in those glory years of the late '90s, there's still more theatre going on than any sane person could expect to see--though I appreciate the bloggers out there who, following in the footsteps of the legendary Seattle theatre collector Joe Boling, post gargantuan lists of all the shows they've seen in a month or in a year.

Every time I get out of town for a few days, it becomes clear to me that the story we all too easily forget is that Seattle is one of the most theatre-rich communities in the country. Even after the multi-species extinctions of the past 10 years (most notably the Seattle Fringe Festival and The Empty Space), the variety of live performance offered in venues across the city is astonishing, and I'm a fortunate man to get a chance to see so much of it. As an audience member it's exhilarating, and as a theatre artist it's the best continuing education in how to write, produce and direct that I could ask for.

But since I'm no longer a critic, what do I say about these shows? The way that I experience theatre these days is so much more about particular moments that fascinate me, not a whole production. What I look for and often find are ways of engaging an audience that are different and unexpected. Sometimes this lasts an entire production--from the moment the lights go up on that big stack of tires and that slab of concrete in The Brothers Size, I was aware that I was watching something performed in a wholly original theatrical language. Tarell Alvin McCraney has a confidence and fluency in not only his dialogue but his themes that is little short of gorgeous, and raises what seems a small story of the conflicts between two brothers into the realms of dream and myth. At other times it's a fleeting observation in a well-known script--why, I kept asking myself in watching Second Story's Much Ado, did Shakespeare create a clever and witty character like Mary, Hero's serving girl, but then make her silent when she surely realizes she's been tricked into the machinations of the evil Don Juan against her mistress?

At other times my delight and exasperation with a work continue their argument long after the show's over. How can an author create characters so real and with such subtle insight as Catherine Trieschmann does in the Schmee's Crooked, whose mother and daughter spar in ways that are as authentic as a transcript, yet seemingly lose interest in these same characters three quarters of the way through her own script? Or what was it about Three Screams that seemed so even-handed on the page, where three different monologues fit together with the detailed intent of a triptych, yet felt so oddly lopsided in performance? (Although hats off to all three actors in the show, particularly my past comrades-in-arms Brandon Ryan and Erin Ison, and big smooches for presenting a World Premiere by a gifted Seattle playwright.)

And can a man who owned every Styx album truly give an unbiased report on the merits and demerits of Rock of Ages? (Oh lord the book was a mess, oh my the performances were uneven, and oh yes I had a smile on my face through practically the entire three hours.)

I was a theatre critic once--a paid professional, and according to people I trust, I was good at my job. But these days I feel like that mechanism is broken. Maybe I've seen too many shows, or written, directed and produced too many of them. All I know is that while I know what I like and usually even why I like it, I no longer believe I know what you will like or why. My objectivity is out the window. And really, is that a bad thing? In the blogger age, not only is everyone a critic, but everyone now has the means of publishing. What I hope for a theatre-stuffed town like Seattle is that we could actually receive coverage of everything that's out there. It won't be as easy to sort through the blogs, postings and reviews as it was when there were four papers in town and maybe five critics. But the effort might sharpen up the reader's own critical opinions a bit. And when you become a critic of criticism, you're on the way to a deeper understanding of the art itself.

Intiman and Its Critics--Which For Once, Ain't Me

Seattle brews its schadenfreude potent.

For a city that has a reputation of being overly nice, I'm often taken aback by how mean the dialogue can get here. Take for example the current blogging frenzy over the report from Intiman Theatre that they're a million bucks in the hole and need to raise some cash fast or they're going under.

Here's Misha's take over in the Times:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/entertainment/2014200013_intiman12.html

Now, I'm not a true blue fan of Intiman. In truth I was never all that crazy about Bart Sher's work (which generally struck me as intellectually slick but empty), and I haven't seen enough of Ms. Whoriskey's productions to really give an opinion, though it sort of seems as an administrator she's probably in over her head. Since I've been in town they've had the worst track record of any of the mainstages when it comes to local hire, and as for their present woes it's clear that there has been financial mismanagement, even if it's not at all clear as to who mismanaged what--though I'm guessing there's plenty of blame to go around.

But.

Every day seems to add yet another blogger exuberantly cavorting around to their own version of the "I told you so!" dance. Comparisons to police shootings, banking bailouts, and practically every other contemporary villain are evoked, usually with a few potshots reserved for poor programming choices or the age of Intiman's audiences. Occasionally there's also a gruff line of social Dawinism included to the effect of "I'm glad they're dying. Now there will be space/audiences/funding for a real Seattle theatre."

What's really tiresome about all of this is that it's the same ridiculous line that was being voiced when the Seattle Fringe Festival went down in 2003 and the Empty Space in 2007. And neither of these valuable institutions have in any way, shape or form found a replacement.

The reason's simple: artistically, financially, and in all other ways, it's a LOT harder to start a theatre or a theatre festival than it is to maintain one.

When a theatre dies, in this town anyway, there's not some sort of magical opportunity to "recreate Seattle theatre." The goods are sold off, the staff are laid off and a good number leave town, the Equity contracts evaporate, the audiences head elsewhere (and not always to other theatres), and what was, for all its flaws and faults, an actual operating non-profit theatre company becomes another unnecessary rental.

So if you don't want to support Intiman's attempts to pull itself back from the brink, fine. No one is demanding that you do so. But really, is it too much to ask for an end to this unseemly gloating? This isn't good news, friends, no matter how bitter you might be that you didn't get asked to audition for Bart or that they never got around to reading your play. And your kicks at an institution that's already on its knees don't reflect well on you.

The Hit, and the Review

So two things happened this week with "Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Christmas Carol:"

We just sold out every show for the rest of the run, and it runs till December 30.

--and--

We received several more reviews, including one from Misha at the Seattle Times.

As to point one: having a show sell out with four weeks left in its run is frankly amazing. On Wednesday night, Nikki over at Taproot sent me a note that they had 900+ tickets left for the run of the show. Thursday around noon, I got another note: there were less than 250 tickets left. By the time I went to the show Thursday night, they were completely sold out.

This is the textbook definition of a Hit.

As to the review: I'm grateful for Misha giving this show a full-length review in The Times. One of my concerns has been that since this is a Christmas show, we weren't going to get a thoughtful, full review of this show from a paper.

Theatre artists like to say that reviews are good for selling tickets, but that's it. I respectfully disagree. Good reviews can help you sell a play to other producers, so that your work can be performed with other companies across the country. They can reflect to your peers that you know what you're doing, and help build your local reputation. (If it's a bad review--let's not go there.)

And every once in a while, there's something that the reviewer says that can actually help you improve your show.

My rule with reviews is that I read them once, take a pull quote if it's useful, and then do my best to forget about them. Good or bad, reviews are one person's opinion, and if you start to believe your press, you're in trouble.

Misha's review is here:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/thearts/2013580063_sherlock03.html

It's not a rave, but I'd say she gives the show a B, B+.

There are several things I disagreed with when I read it. But again, it IS one person's opinion--even though in this case, you have to respect that she's done this for years and makes a living at it. I often disagree with Misha, but there's no question that when it comes to theatre critics, she's the most influential in Seattle.

If you're interested in what she has to say, I say read it.

Then come see the show and see what you think.

(If you can get tickets. There may be additional performances added. Stay tuned.)