Review Guidelines

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    Reviews will be issued for the plays below;

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• Rent - Honest Collective (TBD)

• A Double Dose of Murder - Workshop Theatre 

• Waiting for Godot, Black Radish Theatre

•  The Games of Love and Chance, Shakespeare Company (2025 TBD)

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1. I will expand this list on an iterative basis. I pay for all the tickets. No comps. Paying for tickets is the best way to support artists. 

2. The distinction between professional and Amateur Community Productions (ACT) will always be respected, but tough reviews will still be issued periodically for ACT. The 'pay to view and right to review' principle holds for any level of production. Final rating scores between community productions and professional productions should not be seen as comparable, they are rated across  a different set of different  factors and considerations. I will always have more expectations from professional productions, but will have more expectations than most for community theater productions. I do not see the latter as being unreasonable, a strong community theater ecosystem is the lifeblood of the entire theatrical landscape, ensuring a sustainable arts culture at all levels. This level of engagement is important for community and semi-professional theater because they too deserve critical attention—that is the least that should be given to hard working community theater folks, considering they put so much on the line for what they do.    

3. I am always open to feedback. If you have feedback, feel free to DM me. I am always open to the learning and wisdom of my peers and seniors. I will remove a post or take something down if needed, but the reason has to be truly compelling. Freedom of speech (within the realms of reason and respect) and freedom of conscience are important civic principles.

4. I am not incentivized by anyone to write reviews. I do not have favorites; a good play is a good play, and a bad play is a bad play - that is the basic logic that governs my impressions. Anything rated 7.5 for professional and 6.5 for amateur productions and higher are performances that I, both, enjoyed and was immersed in.

5. Everyone is loved and respected - Caste, color, creed, ethnicity, sex, gender, etc. No bias goes into any of this. If you ever see something that you think may reflect prejudice, message me, I would appreciate having my perspective widened and being course corrected.

6. If a term must be used to describe the approach on this blog, I suppose interpretive exploration could be used to describe it- engaging with art as an aesthetic and psychological event. Seeing art as a question of being, putting an accent on existential inquiry over ideological prescription, remaining open to thematic complexity and appreciating the artistic event on its own terms. Some theatre reviews may prioritize politics over aesthetics in interpreting art, I appreciate and respect that, but that will never be the purpose of this blog. I am not interested in doctrinaire explanations of cultural and social phenomenon (except as exploratory tools), but in how they are a collection of images, sensations and tropes that rise up off of the surface of human experience. Like any interpretive framework, that approach has its limitations, and those limitations are acknowledged. 

7. My opinion should not influence what anyone decides to see. It is one opinion amongst a million, and it will always remain fallible like other opinions. There are far too many variables that go into assessing a performance, the only way to develop an authentic impression is to go and see a production for yourself. Never take my word for it, like any other fringe reviewer I could be dead wrong. 

8. These are not professional reviews, because I am not paid for any content nor do I write for an institutional platform. They are independent reviews written by a member of the paying public.  

9. These reviews will at times be very tough but will never be driven by malicious intent. These reviews emanate from the fringes. There is nothing wrong with mainstream conversations, they are useful and necessary, but it is always good to have centrifugal discourse around the arts. I deeply respect artists, these reviews only question their artistic and performative choices, never the talent. I understand that questioning artistic and performative choices can be seen as personal attacks, but they are not, and this is a really important distinction to understand. It is equivalent to interpreting a literary work-theater is textual to me in many ways. The intent behind this blog is to interpret the living and ephemeral text of a theatrical performance. It is everyone's right to feel passionately about the craft, even if they are an outsider and even if they only represent a paying public.

10. The reviews are anonymous. 

11. What this page is not; gossip, personal vendettas and artistic cruelty. I welcome reflective push back if you ever see anything in the reviews that suggests that the content exhibits any of the above. I always operate under the assumption that the performers on stage deserve to be there, that they are always there for the right reasons. Bad productions are usually never the result of bad acting. In fact I do not think there is such a thing as 'bad acting', it is an overused and, quite frankly, conceptually empty phrase. There is just inauthentic acting- acting that is compelled to conform to production concepts that are grossly underdeveloped, ill-conceived, disorganized and disconnected from the ensemble's living presence. The tip of the critique will always be pointed towards the vision not the vessel. Critiquing performative choices is a reflection of this.  

12. Why be polemic? if the performance means anything then the language should too. Would be strange for someone who is part of the paying public & a fringe reviewer to exhort artists to take risks when the language is cloaked with safe and anodyne euphemisms.

13. My long-term ambition? For more reviewers to sprout up, for 'reviewing' to become a robust and diversified community, where people employ all sorts of interpretive perspectives and practices in engaging with the theater.