I’ve loved reading the passionate, varied, intelligent comments made on last week’s post. If you haven’t read the thread of comments yet, you should. I hope that like me you’ll find yourself nodding and exclaiming and that you’ll come away feeling better informed about some of the issues facing Brisbane theatre. Please note that the post is still open and comments continue to be added.
For today’s post, I thought I’d tackle another potentially inflammatory subject … anonymity. Most of the people who posted comments on the acting thread, chose to do so under their own names. That’s how we know that Michael Gow took part in the conversation, along with Kathryn Fray, Adam Couper and Matthew Ryan and many other highly respected theatre professionals. But there were also people who chose to post their comments anonymously. And I could understand why. They were actors and they were posting comments that might impact on their careers. Although Michael Gow reassured the community that Queensland Theatre Company has no “black list”, the truth is that casting will always be subjective and the last thing actors want to do is to give a director a reason to dislike them.
Posting anonymous comments or using pseudonyms is fine in my book if you are coming from a position of no power and your comments aren’t abusive. But there’s one place where I cannot abide anonymity. And that’s in reviewing.
Brisbane currently has more than one theatre reviewer hiding behind a pseudonym. How can you critique someone’s work honestly if you are sheltering behind a fake name? How can you expect readers to respect your opinions if you don’t have the courage to own them?
I can understand the desire for anonymity. I have been a theatre reviewer for many years and I’ve lost friends over less than glowing reviews. More to the point, I’m now in the market as a playwright, trying to pitch my plays to directors and companies whose work I have reviewed in the past. This can be very awkward. I hold onto the hope that they will recognise that reviewing is a job. I try to be fair and unbiased but I will always be subjective because that’s what reviewing is about. Telling it the way you saw it and acknowledging any biases or history that have informed the way you see the production.
If I am going to be critical, then the least I can do for all the people involved in the show who have believed in it passionately and worked so hard on it (and I do include all the admin staff alongside the creatives in this statement!), is to offer my opinions as my opinions. And that means owning them and standing behind what I’ve written.
As a professional reviewer/critic, your history and background is part of what you are bringing to your review. If you have studied theatre and been a practitioner then that adds a certain gravitas to your review. If you are reviewing as a passionate theatre-goer who knows what they like but who has no background in theatre then come clean and admit that’s your position. While I believe that we need informed and educated critics, there is also a place for reviewers who’ll give a general thumbs up or down review, especially if they can write well and be engaging.
In my mind, it all comes down to this: If you’re too frightened to put your name to your review then you shouldn’t be reviewing.
Feel free to add your comments – I’d love to know whether you feel there’s a place for anonymous theatre reviewers. And, while you’re at it, why not tell me what you think of reviewers who are also theatre practitioners?
Hi again Katherine. Hope you're enjoying the steamy Brisbane soup.
In addressing your extremely well-made points about the use of pseudonyms, I must reluctantly touch upon an issue that came to light in mid-2008. I stress that the sole reason for briefly exhuming this side issue is to provide a measure of context for the attendant ‘nom de plume’ matter.
A number of your readers and contributors will already be familiar with an incidence last year in which a theatre website published a batch of reviews that contained content clearly reproduced from other sources, without crediting the authors of the original work.
In the course of making these findings known to many of my friends, peers, colleagues and the people who administer the website, it was brought to my attention that a number of reviews on the site were written under assumed names, including one of the reviews containing reproduced content.
I raised this, briefly, during my correspondence with one of the people responsible for the running of the website, asking if they 1) were, or 2) knew the identity of, the person operating under one of the false names (the one responsible for the plagiarised review). The first question was denied, the second ignored. The person operating under this false name (or someone acting on their behalf) had apparently relished the idea of writing under a fake name so much they created a Facebook page for this ‘character’, complete with an avatar of a person with a long nose, à la Pinocchio.
As I was engaged in investigating the other matter, I did not dwell too long on the on the pseudonym issue, except to say the following in a response to an email from the website:
“In your initial apology online, you stated that the contributor found to have plagiarised reviews would no longer write for the website. If your attitude towards pseudonyms is such that you believe it is acceptable in these circumstances, does this mean that [the reviewer] will no longer write for the website, but might be allowed to write under a nom-de-plume? If the disciplinary action accorded [the reviewer] was to have her dismissed as a contributor, will the same action apply to the person using the [pseudonym]?
“There are a number of people in our theatrical community who actively pursue the dual roles of artist and critic. Whatever their views, they are to be admired for having the gumption to stand by their words and face the possibility of opprobrium from those they review. This should, in my view (and I hasten to add, the view of an increasing number of supporters) be the standard position of anyone who finds themselves with a potential conflict of interests on their hands.”
With no prompting, another member of the website’s team, presumably having read the above, felt compelled to contact me via email to admit and defend their use of a pseudonym, despite no allegation being made against them.
Their defence? 1) “Personal sustainability” and 2) “I know of numerous other arts contributors in Brisbane and Australia who do the same for various reasons”.
Throughout all correspondence with the people concerned, their stance seemed to be that I was in the wrong for daring to make my findings public. They were of the opinion that I should have shared the information with them, and only them. My response was along the lines of ‘how does that ensure accountability on your part’? They even went so far as to accuse me of “making slanderous allegations” and suggesting that “you don't want to make enemies”.
I probably wouldn’t find the whole pseudonym thing so abhorrent and ethically bankrupt if the people involved here weren’t locked in such brutally ignorant thought processes. They engaged in ‘fallacies of virtue’ (we believe we are coming from a place of ultimate right and good, therefore we must be right, no matter what our actions are). They engaged in the ‘lemming fallacy’ (‘other people do it, so it’s okay for me to do it’) and, most disturbingly, they engaged in the classic In Terrorem or ‘appeal to fear’ (“you don't want to make enemies”).
If I may be allowed some candour, the simple fact is that anyone who is actively involved in an industry and then hides behind a fake name to comment about that industry is ethically shoddy. I don’t care if they claim to ‘make no secret’ of their identity or “book [their] tickets under [their] own name”. If you are so up-front about it, what’s the point of having a pseudonym?
Off the top of my head I can think of three people in Brisbane who either are or have been both artist and critic: Nigel Munro-Wallis, Dan Evans, and yes, Katherine Lyall-Watson. They’re all willing to tell their truth and stand squarely behind it, despite the potential vitriol coming from those who might feel slighted.
In discussing this topic with a colleague, it was suggested that I leave the plagiarism ‘thing’ alone (I honestly didn’t want to dredge it up at all). But having read this, I’m hoping you can see it was necessary in order to provide context, and perhaps more importantly, illustrate one of the ethical dangers inherent in the use of pseudonyms in this manner.
If you do it, you don’t deserve your bullypulpit. And…if you do it in a town with an industry like ours, some grumpy bigmouth will catch you, eventually.
(If anyone is interested in seeing more detail around any of the bits and pieces mentioned here, feel free to email me at mrdoyle [at] gmail [dot] com ).
Sorry for the longwindedness. Happy Straya Day.