The Three Critics

by Diana Miranda

I have some things to share with you, coming from three personas. They’re all inside my head, and they kind of feed on each other, take turns writing, overlapping a bit. Occasionally, one takes over more than the others. But I’d rather not tell you which one because she’d read it and gain some sense of power from it, and I prefer to maintain a horizontal thing going on to keep the mental harmony.
These three personas are the in-house critic, the journalistic critic and the creative critic.

The in-house critic

The in-house critic is the insider who sees the development process and whispers the thoughts I’d rather share with Jen and the team more privately. As a way to reflect their process back to them. Make connections. The theatre-maker in the soliloquy, if you will. (I wish I came up with such a beautiful expression myself, but Jen inspired it during an R&D meeting when she said that the role of “Everybody’s secret friend” in The Broad Cloth’s rehearsal would be to be the audience in the soliloquy). And perhaps these thoughts could start a conversation that extends beyond the soliloquy, too.

The journalistic critic

The journalistic critic is the one who worries more about being descriptive, accurate and coherent. She writes the things that I would like to share with the world and worries about the readers, whoever that may be. She really wants everybody to find something useful in her thoughts and tries to keep it detailed and rigorous. And friendly. She likes people to feel her through her writing.

The creative critic

The creative critic perhaps should be called the playful critic, as I like to think that there’s creativity in the practice of all three. So the playful critic does playful things inspired by the show. She responds through freestyle writing, sometimes unfinished, sometimes not quite writing. Like the journalistic one, she aims to give a glimpse of the craft for the people who are not in the room, but does it according to made-up rules unique to each work session, to each moment, to each show.
I will come (to this couch?) now and then to share some of these writings, then. So I thought I’d introduce them now.

Diana's Responses

Embedded Criticism
The Three Critics
The Echo Text
The Long Read
A Lurker's Diary

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