I was on the way home from an early visit to the auto shop when I heard Grant Mudge on WCVE doing his first "Bard Bites" piece -- a great spotlight on theater in general and on Richmond Shakespeare specifically. Congrats, Grant, and I hope your "Bites" get posted to the WCVE site so I can hear ones that I'm surely going to miss on days I don't have to take my car in.
Speaking of WCVE, check out Mr. Porter's reviews of "Pulp" and "Normal" online if you haven't already.
And speaking of Grant, he recently posted a Facebook link to this article about the lack of opportunities for young theater critics. While I find the article and the comments very interesting, there is a subtext that I don't see addressed but is very much alive in my experience. My sense is that many people don't see the need for or appreciate the value of the critic in the whole artistic process. I need only refer to a comment (that I've mentioned before) of a local thespian who said what a critic did was fart after a meal prepared by others. There are those I know who would prefer that critics just disappear back into the woodwork that we crawled out of. Given that, it is kind of amazing to read a piece like the one in the Guardian that just kind of takes it for granted that a critic is an important part of the process, that maybe there should be some focus given to nurturing new insightful young critics. Sounds good to me, but then my perspective on the issue is a bit skewed. What do you -- theater professional or theater fan -- think about it? Would nurturing critics only encourage them, when you'd really just wish they'd go away?
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