My Reviews Get Reviews

[hrj]

I've fallen off the wagon of routinely (compulsively?) reviewing everything I consume. (My book reviews are way backed up at this point.) But every once in a while I'm reminded that people do actually read and appreciate my reviews. This week's reminder was an email from the star of the Cal Shakes 2016 performance of Othello to tell me that the cast had recently stumbled across my review of the show and shared it around because of how much they liked my insights on it.

I think I tend to be inspired to deep thinking on live performances in particular (when I make the time to review them) and this is not the first time that I've gotten a touch-back from someone involved in the show to appreciate my reviews. It's definitely encouragement to keep writing them. Want to check out all my live performance reviews? Here's the tag on Dreamwidth. And there are a couple of newer ones on my Alpennia blog since I set up the RSS feed here and stopped echoing everything on my personal account. (Eventually I plan to retroactively echo all my substantive DW posts at the Alpennia site, but I need to set up a way to do that in an automated fashion that filters out the LHMP stuff that's already been duplicated.)

Comments

[vittoriosa]

i always enjoy reading your reviews! they are so insightful and beautifully written. a good critique is a pleasure to read; it can also be a boost to artists, and with journalistic criticism seeming like a dying art, ANY thoughtful commentary feels like a gift. i always enjoy yours.

i didn't see that Othello production at Cal Shakes but i heard a lot about it from colleagues & acquaintances who worked on it. i got the impression there was a lot of resistance and confusion, both within the production and among audiences & critics, regarding the framing devices and what the play was trying to achieve. i can understand why the cast would be so appreciative of your review, which, upon re-reading today, strikes me as much more perceptive than some of the published ones i read at the time.

[hrj]

It was clearly intended to be a "difficult" production but it hit so many solid punches that way. I'm so glad that I was able to give the cast the kind of review experience I live for in my own work. And I really need to get back in the habit of reviewing the Cal Shakes shows!