On Giving Up: The Reviews Are In

My interview for this week happened over the phone shortly after I posted about the last production I worked on—Lizzie Borden, Lizzie Borden--and the impact it’s had on my struggle with continuing to do theater.

The person I’m interviewing only recently decided to give theater a break, so we talk a little about that, but they also wanted to talk about my post, so there’s way more of me than usual in this one.  Consider that your heads up.

Here’s the interview:

Me:  Thank you for finding the time to do this.

Them:  You’re welcome.  I just read your post about Lizzie.

Me:  Hopefully it came across the way I wanted it to.

Them:  I was really interested in the part about you writing other plays for reasons that you felt weren’t, like, good reasons.

Me:  Like attention and—

Them:  Yeah.  I was surprised by that.

Me:  I still like those plays, but when I look at them, they don’t really feel like, um, mine—you know?

Them:  Like which ones?

Me:  Uh, all the ones we did at Mixed Magic.  The Diner and Mr. Stone, Rose’s Money, all of those.

Them:  Really?

Me:  Yeah.  Rose’s Money was very personal, but at the same time, the writing style feels like—to me, it feels like I’m copying someone else and instead of writing with my own voice.

Them:  But I think you have a very versatile voice, and that’s what I like about your writing.

Me:  Thank you.  For me, Lizzie was just—it felt like, Okay, this is what I want to be doing.

Them:  So then was it hard to—oh, I don’t know if I should—

Me:  (Laughs.)  We didn’t get a great response.

Them:  There were a lot of people the night I went.

Me:  Attendance was good.  It was just, you know, once people finished watching the play, I would say most people just kind of left feeling…perplexed?

Them:  Which I don’t understand.

Me:  Did it make sense to you?

Them:  I just don’t need theater to make sense to me.  I don’t like plotholes.  That’s not what I’m saying.  But the play was weird.  It wasn’t—I think one of the reviews said convoluted or something, and I thought—That’s not what convoluted means.  Even by their own—the way they were using it—

Me:  I don’t want to bash the critics.

Them:  But they’re not using proper language, and uh—I felt the same way when I saw Black Odyssey at Trinity and then read some of the reviews.  I thought—These critics—and, let’s be honest—a big chunk of the audience—do not have the language to describe what they’re seeing and they take that failure on their part—that they don’t have the language—and they say that the play is the failure—and it’s not.  Your play was weird, but it was not convoluted just because it wasn’t easy to digest in the moment.  By that logic, you’d have to say everything Beckett ever wrote is convoluted.

Me:  Thank you.  I appreciate that.

Them:  Do—oh now I’m interviewing you.

Me:  That’s been happening more and more.

Them:  Just one more question—

Me:  I was teasing.  Go ahead.

Them:  It always seems like you get really positive feedback and press—

Me:  You think?

Them:  You don’t think so?

Me:  Uh—I think I’ve been very lucky because people, including critics, have been very nice to me most of the time, but I’ve definitely gotten dinged.

Them:  Do the dings bother you?

Me:  Oh yeah.  I’m not a robot—most of the time.

Them:  Have you thought about avoiding reviews?

Me:  But I think reviews can make you better—even really nasty ones.  And I think a certain amount of toughness is really important when you’re in the arts, and that’s a great way to toughen yourself up.  You read the review, you take the hit, you recover, and maybe you don’t take the next one as hard.

Them:  I used to crawl into bed for a week when I got a bad review.

Me:  (Laughs.)  Some people take it really hard.

Them:  I just—I tried avoiding reading them, like I suggested to you, but no matter what, I always broke down and looked, and sometimes, even when they were positive, it just ****ed me up.

Me:  What was the worst thing a critic ever said about you?

Them:  It was—hmmm---okay.  It was about my body.  They made a comment about how I looked.

Me:  You’re kidding me.

Them:  No, I am not.

Me:  I don’t remember that.

Them:  Thank god.

Me:  And did any of that play into you deciding to take a break?

Them:  Yeah, I—it just felt like this, uh, cycle of abuse, honestly.  Everybody puts a lot of stock into that—into reviews—even when they say they don’t.  And they complain and complain, but when the review is good, everybody posts it.

Me:  I always talk about that.  The hypocrisy of it.

Them:  And people still saying it sells tickets.

Me:  It doesn’t.  This isn’t bragging, but—like you said—we did very well on Lizzie.  Very, very well.  If it had been produced at our normal venue, we would have had to extend, and that wasn’t off the strength of any review, so yeah, I really don’t buy that.  Never have.

Them:  I think for me, doing this in Rhode Island, where—Well, we talked about this before we figured out a time for you to call me—

Me:  Oh, the New York thing, yeah—

Them:  Yeah, it’s—you want me to talk about it?

Me:  Sure.

Them:  So, like, I go see stuff at your theater, and a few other places—

Me:  Out Loud.

Them:  Out Loud, absolutely, where I go see their stuff and I go—Wow, this is the kind of stuff that’s being done off-Broadway.  It’s being done in Chicago.  It’s being done—and I know what I’m talking about.  I grew up in the Chicago theater scene.  I’m in New York all the time.  I see what’s being done there.  And I see theater being done here, and uh, same with Black Odyssey or some of the stuff being done at Wilbury and Burbage, uh—work that you would see at what’s considered the, uh, best theaters.  The theaters doing really exciting work.  And then, uh, you see the response to it here, and a lot of the time, it’s either negative or you can tell people just don’t know what to make of it.  But, at the same time, we all revere the places outside of Rhode Island that are doing exactly the same thing.  And so—uh, there was this critic who called a—a production of something here—of a Shakespeare—let’s just say—it was a Shakespeare play—and the critic said ‘innovative.’  Now, I saw that production, and I said to myself, ‘You can like that, but you can’t call it innovative.  That’s not what innovative is.  Innovative isn’t setting Shakespeare in another time period.  That’s been done for a hundred years.  It’s not innovative.’  These people just don’t have the language, and, uh, I’m not sure how to get it to them.  But I feel—it’s disappointing having done work here that I knew would be praised elsewhere but here it was met with very little reaction or—or—like I said, a negative reaction.  It’s a mindf***.  For sure.  And I don’t want to bash the critics, but—Do you remember the, uh, the Bill Gale review of Sons of the Prophet?

Me:  Ohhhh yes, I do.

Them:  Saying, uh, saying ‘This show was so well-received in New York.  So what’s the big deal about?  What’s the fuss about?’  It wasn’t just well-received in New York, it was well-received everywhere.

Me:  We did Tribes which is universally acclaimed, and the, uh, reviewer, went after the script.

Them:  It’s, uh, do they think they’re somehow smarter than—than—

Me:  Ben Brantley?

Them:  Brantley isn’t perfect, but what I’d like to say to some of these people is—You are not smarter than Ben Brantley and if Ben Brantley can write fourteen columns talking about how great something is and you see it and can only come up with one column about why it isn’t then I think you need to do some soul searching and not assume that you’re just a smarter person than he is.

Me:  Did you ever, like I did, make decisions about what your next step or project was going to be based on how you thought that would be received?  Putting the result first?

Them:  All the time.

Me:  Did you know you were doing that?

Them:  I—it never ends, right?  Big time actors do that.  Actors pick roles to win Oscars.  That’s why, I think, some people do s****y work after they win Oscars, because you got the ultimate result, so what do you do then?

Me:  Is it a relief not to have to think about all that stuff anymore?

Them:  It got to be…very unhealthy for me—to keep doing it.  Now that I don’t have to—I know you ask everybody if they miss it?

Me:  Yeah.

Them:  I do, but—it wasn’t right for me.  For what I was—able to handle.  You mentioned being tough, and, uh, I don’t think I was tough enough to do it.

Me:  I’m sorry if how I said that—

Them:  No, look, uh, you need to be a warrior.  Right now, in this business, you need to be a warrior and so it’s a weird thing of being creative and artistic and also being a soldier, who can, uh, really separate parts of your life so that you can get personal, and get deep, and put yourself out there, but then shut down so you don’t lose your s*** when somebody makes fun of how you look and your Dad opens up the newspaper and has to read about it.

Me:  I just wonder if it’s unfair to put the responsibility of change on us as individuals—to change ourselves, I mean—instead of on the field or on the industry or whatever you want to call it.

Them:  But, like, why would the industry change when the people at the top would have to want to change it, and obviously they’re not going to, because they’re at the top.

Me:  And it shifts—

Them:  Yeah, nobody’s at the top for every long, but when you’re there—thinking that you’re up there for, for, for reasons that aren’t ‘I earned this’—nobody wants to think that.  So nobody wants to change anything.

Me:  So it’s on us.

Them:  For now, it’s on us.

Me:  You know, the worst thing a critic ever said about me was actually something positive.

Them:  Explain that.

Me:  (Laughs.)  I wasn’t good in the role.  In the show.  It was a bad show and I was bad in it and the show—the script—itself was bad, but, like you talked about, it was one of those older plays that people just love—very easy to follow, not offensive—and so we got these great reviews.

Them:  Okay.

Me:  And it really messed me up, because—I was like, I count on you people to tell me the truth, even if it’s bad, and I know this is bad, and you’re saying it’s good, so like—

Them:  I can’t trust you now.

Me:  Exactly, like, if you think this is good, then I don’t trust you to know what’s good.  And if you think something’s bad, I’m going to be like—Well how do you know what’s bad or good?  It just really threw me.  And it made me wonder if I could trust myself or my own taste.  And that’s something that’s really important for me.

Them:  So what are you doing to do now?

Me:  What are you going to do now?

Them:  (Laughs.)  Oh yeah, it’s my interview, right?

Me:  (Laughs.)  Yup.

Them:  Um, I’ve been on a little break, not very long, shorter than a lot of the people you said you’ve been talking to—

Me:  Less than a year.

Them:  Less than a year.  But—I got to tell you—I’m really enjoying it so far.

Me:  Yeah?

Them:  Yeah.  I’m—it was needed.  It was very needed.

Me:  Do you think it’ll be forever?

Them:  Uh—I don’t know, but—right now, it feels like—if it was?  If it was forever?  Um.  I had a good run.

Me:  Wow.

Them:  Yeah.

Me:  Well—whatever happens—congratulations on your run.

Them:  Thank you.  Let’s get a drink sometime and not talk over the phone.

Me:  I can’t.  I’m busy.  One of us is still doing theater, remember?

Them:  (Laughs.)  Okay, well, if you quit, I’ll see you on the other side.

Me:  Maybe.  Maybe you will.

Them:  It’s nice here, Kev.

Me:  And no reviews?

Them:  And no reviews.

Them stopped doing theater less than a year ago, and so far, they’re really happy about it.