Reviews, anyone?

Theatre appreciation courses can help budding critics understand the basics and find more space to write.

Once upon a time there were critics — theatre critics! Every time you did a play you waited with anxiety and anticipation as to what the critics would say about your play. Would they demolish it totally or would they have some words of encouragement and praise? Invariably in the case of the former, however much you pretended that the criticism was being accepted gracefully, you cursed them privately and naturally felt that they were biased or that they knew nothing.

After all, they hardly understood anything about theatre practice so how were they authorised to write about your work! While, if they praised you, they were merely recognising your talent. The same critic became intelligent and knowledgeable in your eyes. So the knowledge quotient of the critic kept changing according to his opinion of your work. You sometimes also made a clever selection of critics to be invited for your performance, based on their past record of praise for your work.

All this was an essential part of the preparation for the performance. In fact, critics loomed so large in your consciousness that they invariably featured as comic characters in plays where you could derive vicarious pleasure from making fun of them. In any case, innumerable plays had jokes about critics.

Where have they disappeared? They are not an essential part of our invitee list any longer. In fact, apart from a few from the old guard, one can’t even think up the names. All that one has by way of mention of one’s work in theatre is, at best, some reporter making a mention of your play on some pretext or the other or writing a synopsis of your play which passed for a review. Yes, one big reason is that the magazines and papers have all but wiped out any mention of the performing arts.

They have culture pages that talk about films or food or fashion shows. They do not have space for the arts, barring the fine arts, which are riding high these days. But it is also true that not many knowledgeable people are interested in writing about the performing arts on a regular basis. And the others who do write or report have no idea of even the basic grammar of these performing arts, let alone any in-depth knowledge.

It was therefore a welcome step taken by the NSD, where two senior critics, writing in Hindi and English, apprenticed three or four young budding critics through the entire theatre festival, where they were made to watch plays and then write reviews. These were then discussed in detail, keeping different aspects of the performance in mind.

In addition, some informal sessions were arranged where experts in acting, direction, design, et cetera were brought in to provide a basic background on these aspects for the benefit of these young critics. One hopes that their understanding of theatre has been enriched substantially in this process and that they will write more informed reports/reviews whenever they do get space to do so.

But this is just a very small beginning. What is required is a full-fledged theatre appreciation course for anyone who is interested. This can use both live performances and recordings to explain the basics of theatre and drama. These will gradually create a more enlightened spectator for theatre as also more knowledgeable critics and reviewers for an art that is definitely growing in popularity, though gradually.