An Open Letter to Seattle’s Theater Community

This week we have a guest writer, the playwright, critic and radical firestorm George Bernard Shaw.

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Greetings. Upon being resurrected for the somewhat dubious purpose of narrating a play written by two undistinguished ne’er-do-wells (Fatal Footlights, now playing at Theater Schmeater until April 30) the second question on my newly-animated lips after ‘where am I?’ was ‘and what is the theater like here?’ For while in my lifetime I did indeed visit America, finding its citizens cheerfully less inclined to treat me to the lynchings and riots that as a life-long socialist and freethinker I expected, I never made it so far as your quaint frontier borough.

In answer to my second query, I was assured by my resurrectionists that Seattle had a fine and active theatrical scene, a diverse ecosystem of companies and audiences who enjoy a wide selection of theatrical entertainments, some of which I might even enjoy. I laughed at this assertion, and asked if they understood that the foundation of my extraordinary reputation as a Man of the Theater had been as the first Theater Critic who brought the ragtag and disreputable employment of puffery into something approaching a reputable, if not noble, profession. Furthermore, that I did so by gleefully demolishing hundreds of awful and inadequate productions. For the sad truth is that I was a Critic during a period in which the stage was filled with the absolutely worst sentimental melodrama, mawkish comedy, empty-headed spectacle and cotton-headed ‘social drama’ it had ever suffered in the three hundred years since it had moved from the innyard to the playhouse. My primary task was, like that merry old monarch Richard III, to lay waste to the corruption about me in the hopes that after the devastation some land might be clear for women and men of genius to stake their claim to the stage. (Principally, of course, this was to create space for my own genius.)

I was assured that not only were there critics in Seattle, there was now something called ‘bloggers,’ people who for no pay but their own amusement (and we can assume free tickets) intersperse their thoughts on theater between pictures they have published of meals they have eaten. After laughing at this assertion so heartily that I risked disrupting my newly apparated form with a hernia, I shrugged and agreed to walk forth into this brave new world and see just what theater, and critics, it has spawned.

I have had little opportunity to see much theater, in large part because of my employment Thursday through Saturday evenings narrating Fatal Footlights, the aforementioned play now in its third week at the at least amusingly appelated Theater Schmeater. But to my surprise I have had no opportunity at all to see any theater critics. (‘Bloggers,’ I have observed, are apparently not critics at all, seeing as they seem incapable of opening a program or looking up from their knitting during the course of a production.)

‘Where are the critics?’ I thundered at my producer on the final night of our first weekend. He apologetically explained that it’s remarkably hard to get critics to attend shows at smaller venues–or currently any venues in this city save four or five venerable and monied houses of culture. ‘Why? Where are they? What are they doing with their time if they’re not out watching shows? Is your community so awash in theatrical brilliance that published critics are incapable of keeping up with the overflow? Leaving aside revivals of work that may have been adequately addressed in earlier reviews, what possible justification can there be to not write about new works receiving their premieres? How can they assume the title of ‘Theater Critic’ yet not make it their primary task to actually attend and then criticize the plays produced in their community?’

And this is when I learned the bitter, awful truth that they had kept from me: there are no professional theater critics remaining in your city.

In a bustling metropolis that prides itself upon an active and diverse artistic community, no one is paid to cover theater. Oh, there are a series of ‘Arts and Culture Editors’ who include theater in a bailiwick with such venerable and important cultural touchstones as ice capades, circuses and (I assume) fairy pantomimes. But none of them seem particularly interested in attending plays.

There are constants in life and after-life, I have discovered. Spring smells wonderful, dogs chase cats, and theater artists are perpetually asking ‘is the theater really dead?’ Returning to the world 60 years after my own death, theater appears to still be ailing, but at least in a jocular and defiant sort of way. But alas! It appears that theater criticism may very well be dead.

In my day many artists would have welcomed such news with delight, particularly those who had suffered beneath my articulate scourge. But oh! What would they think of a world so truly denuded of criticism? The death of the theater critic, though one may never have guessed it, signifies an existential crisis for the art to which I gave the labor of my life. If a tree falls in a forest without an auditor, does it make a sound? And if a play is produced with no record of it having existed save the small audiences who have risked attendance, has it actually even occurred?

Seattle, your natural setting is undeniably lovely, your citizens at least superficially pleasant, and your civic atmosphere hums with the energy of active minds reshaping the world for personal profit. But I regret to tell you that while you may be gaining the world, the particular aspect of the human soul signified by theater is dying. Like a castaway contemplating self-slaughter from isolation, theater is wasting away from lack of good conversation–which is at its heart what theater criticism must be.

In the absence of such criticism–and now with two weeks left of our production, I am forced to admit it is likely we shall receive none–I shall return to my task of narrating this play, which for all of its empty-headed narrative of heroes, villains, melodrama and mystery is that most intriguing of all artistic achievements: a novelty. Then I shall return to my well-earned oblivion, but my sleep shall be troubled. For all the wonders of your new century, I find myself sentimental for a life in which theater mattered enough for critics to be hated, disparaged, contradicted and paid.