Yawazzi Fish Tank

Is it ok to not like a show that you see?

And if that is okay, (and if that is in fact my right as an audience…) then is it okay for me to say that i do not like it?
to say that i hated it?

In the Cape Town theatre culture, there seems to be this notion that if you do not like a show, you talk about it in whispered, hushed tones (because the director/cast member/ designer/lighting technician/stage manager/usher… might be within earshot and you would need to work with these people in the future). This is if you talk about it at all. Sometimes you just say “Thank you” and head over to the free food, or even better, dash for the food and stuff yourself so when they ask you what you thought, you are way too busy trying to remove the chicken kebab stick that is sticking out your throat (ask them to help you or at least call an ambulance, call for a doctor, etc…)

On the few occasions where people have said or written strong criticism of a show, they have encountered a “How dare you criticize?” attitude or “What is wrong you?” or “What did you do?” or “How dare you?” from almost everyone else in the industry. Are we so precious about what we do and so united that an attack on one of us, is an attack on us all? Is there really an us?

Or are we all just scared and trying to apply the “you come see my show, i see yours” theory to our opinions?
The theory is of course the one where one feels obliged to go and see a show of someone who has come to see your show. Now in this case, do we feel that if it suddenly becomes allowed or even accepted (God forbid) to criticize a show, then the next time you work on something, the person from the show that you just watched will feel empowered or even obliged to give you a critique? Are we all just saying how great everything is because we guarantee the same will be said about our show? Is it fair to apply human decency to your opinions of other people’s work?

No that anyone has to be rude about it… I can go through all the shows that I have watched and thrown into the bin and tell you exactly why I did that…and I don’t think i would be too rude about any of them. But being decent should not be synonymous with liking the show. In fact, it should be the opposite, if i am a nice person I should be able to tell you that I did not like your show and here is why…

I think i could accept that…people coming up to me and telling me what they did not like in what I did…and i think I would like to hear it, and discuss with them, tell them what i tried to do, and they could tell me why they think i failed, or why it was a bad idea…we might even get some kind of discussion…this discussion could give me ideas for future work, we might value each other’s opinions, we might even decide to work together…it could make us better artists, it could make us better people…

but no, we will say it was great, and we will say thank you…some people do think that everything they see is great (and yes to a certain extent almost every show has something great within it) but really not everything is magic…we have to see the bin in order to see the magic… the number of times i have seen bin-worthy material has made me excited about life when I see the magic…and made me feel like i am doing what i was born to do…

but there has to come a time when all us theatre practitioners can say what we feel and lose the preciousness of our work…we are not each other’s crutch…
we should be each other’s spark.