Exam 2: The Background and Expectations of the Audience

What are the advantages of reading reviews and criticisms before going to a performance? What are the advantages of waiting until after a performance to read or hear criticism?

Read professional critics' reviews of three current Broadway plays. Find three different reviews for each play-one that is positive, one that is negative, and one that is mixed. Identify quotes from each review that prompted you to feel this way. (Broadwayworld.com provides links to professional reviews as does Playbill.com. This is an excellent way to examine students' critical reading skills and gives you an idea about their basic writing skills as well. Use the assignment fairly early in the semester.)

A question that is NOT one of the criteria by which to judge a play and a production is

Until the early 1950s, most new plays written in the United States originated in regional theatres.

The two essential elements of theatre are a performance and an audience. Since the critic is not one of the essential elements, do we really need a critic at all?

As the text indicates, many theatres are devoted to the experiences and interests of specific groups of people. Discuss why such theatres might be valuable to members of those groups. What might be the effect on people if the stories and images they encounter did not include people and experiences that reflected their own? If the representation of these experiences is separated from the experiences of other groups, does this weaken the connections between groups of people? If you are not a member of a particular group, would you be inclined to go to such a theatre? Why or why not?

Which of the following attempts to go into greater detail in describing or analyzing a theatre event?

Discuss a work of art that has had a particularly strong effect on you because of a personal experience that was reflected in it. How did your experience influence your response? Have other students had similar experiences?

Because the reviewer should represent the tastes of the general public, it is not important that he or she have a thorough background in theatre.

Off-Broadway theatre began in the 1950s as an alternative to Broadway and is located in smaller theatres outside the Times Square district.

In the English theatre of the seventeenth century, spectators at plays were allowed to watch the first act of a production without paying for a ticket. After the first act was over, they had to either buy a ticket or leave the theatre. What effect might this have on the role of the reviewer? Of the critic?

Off-Broadway shows are usually produced wherever inexpensive space is available-churches, lofts, warehouses, large basements-and are characterized by low-priced productions and a wide variety of offerings.

Art may question society's views or reaffirm them, but it cannot escape them; the two are indissolubly linked.

If a reviewer dislikes a particular production, it is probably best to avoid it.