10 years later

 

"If I've made a fool of myself, I have at least made of myself the kind of fool I want to be. That is the Virtue and Power of Pretentiousness" - Tony Kushner, opening quote from "The World only spins Forward", an oral history of the creation of "Angels in America".

So, a decade ago today, or nearly 300 posts ago, I started up this exercise of logging my experiences in theatres around the region and beyond (with reviews in here from London, New York, Chicago, Seattle, Sydney, and Melbourne). It's been an interesting ride, starting out anonymous and getting less and less so to the point where, in late 2018 after certain interactions, I put my name in my bio and decided to live with this being my public shingle. I've attempted to be fair to productions and to meet them at their level of production and talk about what I saw and whether I enjoyed it. 

It's not always been easy - there's been one point where a particular e-mail had me talking to two lawyers - but I've tried to be fair and honest in my opinion, and only harsh where I felt the target was big enough to take it. There's been missteps, and reviews I probably wouldn't write today (in particular, one preview I was unduly harsh on for a show that was clearly on its first rehearsal in the venue), and there's been cases where I've got to express my love for a particular production when it has captured my heart. 

There are things I wish this blog could have been which it hasn't really had a chance to do. I'd kinda hoped the comments section would be more active than it has been - these entries are not meant to be holy writ, they're meant to indicate my thoughts on the production and open up the floor to further discussion. But apart from the occasional private message telling me I've been too easy on something or too harsh, it's been pretty quiet. 

So this will continue to be a personal record of local theatre history, one inevitably affected by the biases and preconceptions of its writer, only covering stuff where I've either been comped (rarely) or where I've decided I'm interested enough to pay for my own ticket. There are some shows where I feel I've seen them enough and don't need to give them another run (so the next few revivals of "JC Superstar", "Les Mis" and "Twelfth Night" are probably not getting a review), and there are genres where I don't feel I'm particularly knowledgable to give a useful review (which is why I've not reviewed Canberra's very active modern dance scene at all). But hopefully, a couple of you will continue to find it interesting and worth the read.