Fringe|Famous

More on Reviewing

Just in case you’ve missed it in the comments, Johnny and I are engaging in a discussion of reviews – why do we write them, why do we read them, should there or is there a standard by which we evaluate Fringe festival shows (with the implied question of whether that standard is different from the standard we’d use to evaluate Non-Fringe Shows)?

 I want to directly address Johnny’s most recent comment, because I think he brings up some awesome points, and I don’t want to forget to talk about any of them.

Thank you for the response.  I read the linked reviews.  What I saw was one daily newspaper give it a negative review while the other gave it a middling-to-negative review.  Both are writers who’s byline I’ve seen in previous years, which answers this question of yours: “But have these reviewers ever been to the Fringe Festival before? Like, even once?”
The third review is a rave review, but it’s not from a general-interest daily newspaper, but a specialized industry website that says it exists to provide “information and inspiration for Minnesota’s performing arts”  It is also a long-form, first-person essay, which is not like the brief capsule reviews the newspapers run.
I just went and read audience reviews for the show and they seem to fall roughly into the same three categories as the reviews you cited: negative, middling-to-negative and rave.  
To me, this example doesn’t really fit the issues you raised in your second point of the original post.  Where does “on crack” fit in here?

Both of those newspaper reviews were written by actual arts writers, although Ross Raihala is, I believe, usually more of a music critic than theater, so less practiced at viewing and writing about theater. So that only halfway proves my point about random journalists reviewing shows. But it does illustrate the wide range of responses in the media to Fringe Festival shows – Playlist is more of a personal essay, as you said, with the focus on the writer’s personal connection to the piece. The newspaper reviews are perhaps more focused on what the readership of each newspaper would or would not enjoy. Which brings me to a question:

• Are we reviewing shows for a specific group of people, and who are those people? How will they use our reviews?

Tenet #1 of my Fringe-Reviewing Philosophy: As a Fringe fanatic, writing for FringeFamous, I am writing for medium to heavy Fringe users. I’m writing for ultra-passers, artists, people who see a ton of shows. The reason I say this is that I think FringeFamous is, itself, Fringe famous. I.e. if you don’t spend a lot of time at the MN Fringe, you’ve never heard of us.

That’s not universally true, and that’s not to say that sometimes-Fringers can’t use our site to help decide what to see, but I think our target audience is the hard-core Fringer.
Presumably, then, the bigger publications are writing for a wider group of people, a fatter slice of the demographic pie. They’re reviewing Fringe shows for people who aren’t as familiar with the Festival. In my opinion, if you are writing about Fringe for a publication with a decent sized circulation, it is your responsibility to do your homework. Get to know the Fringe. Be the expert, so that your readers don’t have to.
A better example of “have these reviewers ever been to the Fringe Festival before?” and “Are you on crack?” would be this review of …a Murder.

Nancy Ngo seems to be a writer for the paper who doesn’t otherwise specialize in theater or arts coverage. Which is maybe why she would recommend a show to her readers which includes “excessive dialogue [which] made it difficult for the audience to follow - as well as for the actors to memorize their lines”.  She’s recommending a show in which the actors weren’t memorized? That does not sound “Worth Considering” to me. She seems to have a super low standard for what a “good” Fringe show is. Which brings us to…

• What do we expect from Fringe shows, and is it different from what we expect of professional theater productions during the regular theatrical season?

Tenet #2 of my Fringe-Reviewing Philosophy: I am willing to meet the show where it’s at. If you are doing an experimental dance show with no music, I’ll show up expecting experimental dance with no music. If you are a Normal Guy doing your first ever play, I will arrive with the understanding that you aren’t a professional. If you are an established performer or theater company, I will expect something good. Even if it’s more of an experiment, something that doesn’t fit in with the rest of your professional theater season, something raw or new or in-progress, great. I’m not expecting perfection. But if I know you are good at what you do the rest of the year, I will be less likely to forgive a totally half-assed piece of shit.

I have no beef with you or this web site, I’m just trying to understand where you are coming from. 

Right on. It’s mutual.

Personally, I enjoy reading reviews from numerous sources (audience members, newspapers, blogs like this one), and I use them to help me decide my own Fringe schedule.

Yeah – in my mind FringeFamous (and the Strib, and the PiPress, and Playlist, and Daily Planet, and audience reviews, and, and, and) is one of many different resources that Fringe-goers will use to determine which shows they want to see. I personally read everything I can get my hands on, and ask everyone I know what they’ve seen,  and through the mess of information shows start to emerge that appeal to me.
But there are a lot of people in the Twin Cities who are not Fringe fanatics like me, who maybe have heard of the festival but don’t even know where to start in terms of picking a show, and these people turn to the Pioneer Press, or the Star Tribune to help them choose. (See above re: doing your homework and being an expert.)

I still wonder about your use of “free for all.”  Fringe itself is unjuried, so to me, it truly is a free for all.  Maybe I am seeing things differently.

Yes, the Fringe is itself a free-for-all. I love that anyone can put on a show, that there isn’t some committee of people to judge whether your work is “good enough” to be in the Festival. I think that creates a really vibrant, diverse, exciting Festival. But I don’t think reviewing the Fringe, or viewing Fringe shows, should  be a free-for-all. This goes back to Tenet #2 – take each show for what it is, but don’t condescend to the festival. If something is lazy, it’s boring. If something is engaging and daring and smart, even if it’s rough around the edges, or half-finished, it can be electrifying. I’m saying, the Fringe has its own standards. Those standards are different from the standards we use to decide whether we liked something we saw at Mixed Blood, at Park Square, at Open Eye. But they are standards. I’m saying hooray for first-time play-makers, and experimental performances, and naturalistic drawing room dramas, but don’t tell me something is worth seeing because the actors tried hard, and don’t tell me something isn’t worth seeing because it’s not Guthrie-ready. That’s over-simplifying the Fringe experience, which is condescending to everyone involved, and I will not have it!

-SWF-