Theatre Criticism - Changing Landscapes

The dominance of the internet has led to a growing trend of selfappointed theatre critics and bloggers who are changing the focus and purpose of the discussion around live performance

Even though the blogosphere has garnered suspicion and hostility from some mainstream newspaper critics, it has also provided significant intellectual and ideological challenges to the increasingly conservative profile of the professional critic

This book features 16 commissioned contributions from scholars, arts journalists and bloggers, as well as a small selection of innovative critical practice

Authors from Australia, Canada, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Russia, the UK and the US share their perspectives on relevant historical, theoretical and political contexts influencing the development of the discipline, as well as specific aspects of the contemporary practices and genres of theatre criticism

The book also features an introductory essay by its editor, Duka Radosavljevic

CONTENTS

Duka Radosavljevic - Theatre Criticism: Changing Landscapes

I Contexts and Histories of Theatre Criticism

George Hunka - Style Versus Substance: American Theatre Criticism Since 1945

Valda Cakare - The Problem of Reliability: Theatre Criticism in Latvia

Savas Patsalidis - From the Uncritical Certainties of Modernism to the Critical Uncertainties of Postmodernism: Reviewing Theatre in Greece

Kristina Matvienko - Russian Theatre Criticism: In Search of Contemporary Relevance

Margherita Laera - How to Get Your Hands Dirty: Old and New Models of 'Militant' Theatre Criticism in Italy

Vasco Boenisch - What German Theatre Critics Think and What Their Readers Expect: An Empirical Analysis of Misunderstandings

Andrew Haydon - A Brief History of Online Theatre Criticism in England

II Critics' Voices

Mark Fisher - Do They Mean Me? A Survey of Fictional Theatre Critics

Mark Brown - Between Journalism and Art: The Location of Criticism in the Twenty-First Century

Jill Dolan - Code-Switching and Constellations: On Feminist Theatre Criticism

Maddy Costa - The Critic as Insider: Shifting UK Critical Practice Towards 'Embedded' Relationships and the Routes This Opens Up Towards Dialogue and Dramaturgy

III Changing Forms and Functions of Criticism

Diana Damian Martin - Criticism as a Political Event

Matthew Reason - Conversation and Criticism: Audiences and Unfinished Critical Thinking

Michelle MacArthur - Crowdsourcing the Review and the Record: A Collaborative Approach to Theatre Criticism and Archiving in the Digital Age

Nataa Govedic - Articism (Art + Criticism) and the Live Birds of Passionate Response

William McEvoy - Performative Criticism and Creative Critical Writing

IV Samples of Critical Practice

Alison Croggon - How to Think Like a Theatre Critic

Open Dialogues - NOTA

Alice Saville - Huff

Megan Vaughan - Teh Internet is a Serious Business