Theatre Critics. Lyn Gardner axed from Guardian.

Lyn Gardner, the second theatre critic at the Guardian, known for seeing off-mainstream work, is not having her contract renewed. Michael Billington remains. The Guardian claim it will be looking for fresh new voices.

Andy Field, an off-mainstream theatre maker, provides an impassioned defence of her role as a critic in the theatre eco-system - particularly the off-mainstream ecology.

I note that minority theatre makers such as black british practitioners, LGBQT and other off-mainstream artists discuss about the lack of a strong black critic (/other critic) that can engage with work on a sophisticated level but also with empathy and understanding. Similar arguments are made in the world of curating.

There is also a tradition of critics being writer themselves. Perhaps most famously Bernard Shaw, although modern critics have also written and been performed.

I'm not going to add further opinion but comment in remembrance.

In 2003,  Lyn Gardner gave one of my first performed plays, LOST IN PERU, 2 stars a poor review but with the parting hopeful words of "But, goodness, it is great to see a young writer reaching out beyond his own experience." I did meet my future wife at the play, so there's that (and why else write except to find life mates?)

In 2007, Lyn Gardner described my version of NAKAMITSU as "small but exquisitely formed" and 3 stars and a rather good review.

I'm sure she will continue reviewing somewhere and somehow (she does write still for the Stage). Perhaps, I will have a play on again and see if I can continue to increase my star count over 10 years later.

More thoughts: My Financial Times opinion article on long-term investing and how to engage with companies.

How to live a life, well lived. Thoughts from a dying man. On play and playing games.

If you'd like to feel inspired by commencement addresses and life lessons try:  Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; or Nassim Taleb's commencement address; or JK Rowling on the benefits of failure.  Or Charlie Munger on always inverting;  Sheryl Sandberg on grief, resilience and gratitude.

A provoking read on how to raise a feminist child.

Cross fertilise. Read about the autistic mind here.

Science Fiction Writing startling fresh ideas

"Genre" writers are often put into different buckets than their "literary" siblings. I'd like to think readers whether avid, casual, militant or connoisseur tend to put books into buckets of "good books" and "bad books" and mostly ignore the assertions of literary criticism.  

Ursula Le Guin - who I've blogged about a number of times - wrote mainly fantastical tales and I'd suggest her hooks fall into the good books category.  That connoisseur-reader Zadie Smith would agree, I believe. 

I recently came across Orson Scott Card (via Mark Lawrence) and I found what he has to say about science fiction writers paying homage to their idols not by copying but

 "In science fiction, however, the whole point is that the ideas are fresh and startling and intriguing; you imitate the great ones, not by rewriting their stories, but rather by creating stories that are just as startling and new." 

I like that notion. I copy your premise of inventing something fresh and startling.  A type of second order imitation.  

Below is an extract from his foreward to Ender's Game.  

"…I had just read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, which was (more or less) an extrapolation of the ideas in Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, applied to a galaxy-wide empire in some far future time. The novel set me not to dreaming, but to thinking, which is Asimov’s most extraordinary ability as a fiction writer.  

 

What would the future be like? How would things change? What would remain the same? The premise of Foundation seemed to be that even though you might change the props and the actors, the play of human history is always the same. And yet that fundamentally pessimistic premise (you mean we’ll never change?) was tempered by Asimov’s idea of a group of human beings who, not through genetic change, but through learned skills, are able to understand and heal the minds of other people.  

It was an idea that rang true with me, perhaps in part because of my Mormon upbringing and beliefs: human beings may be miserable specimens in the main, but we can learn and, through learning, become decent people. Those were some of the ideas that played through my mind as I read Foundation, curled on my bed –a thin mattress on a slab of plywood, a bed my father had made for me –in my basement bedroom in our little rambler on 650 East in Orem, Utah. And then, as so many science fiction readers have done over the years, I felt a strong desire to write stories that would do for others what Asimov’s story had done for me.  

 

In other genres, that desire is usually expressed by producing thinly veiled rewrites of the great work: Tolkien’s disciples far too often simply rewrite Tolkien, for example. In science fiction, however, the whole point is that the ideas are fresh and startling and intriguing; you imitate the great ones, not by rewriting their stories, but rather by creating stories that are just as startling and new.  

 

But new in what way? Asimov was a scientist, and approached every field of human knowledge in a scientific manner –assimilating data, combining it in new and startling ways, thinking through the implications of each new idea. I was no scientist, and unlikely ever to be one, at least not a real scientist –not a physicist, not a chemist, not a biologist, not even an engineer. I had no gift for mathematics and no great love for it either. Though I relished the study of logic and languages, and virtually inhaled histories and biographies, it never occurred to me at the time that these were just as valid sources of science fiction stories as astronomy or quantum mechanics.  

How, then, could I possibly come up with a science fiction idea? What did I actually know about anything? … " 

Kwame Kwei-Armah new season at Young Vic

I think – as I blogged about earlier – that bringing Kwame Kwei-Armah as the  Artistic Director of the Young vic is going to be important for London theatre and perhaps the wider arts.

(Behind a pay wall but) his recent interview in the FT is a good read on his vision for his first season:  

“I lived through the Brixton riots, the Southall riots, the Tottenham riots, the Wood Green riots. So I wasn’t spooked by it. What I knew through them, however, was that art can be made irrelevant during times of social upheaval, unless it engages with the pain that happens.”   

 And

“I think this season shows the direction of travel,” says Kwei-Armah. “With Danai and The Convert, the message is that young people of colour, women of colour, the main stage is going to be for you. Twelfth Night is about joy, the love of life. Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train is a signal that I’m going to be doing great revivals of modern classics. And I wanted to bring a little bit of what I’ve learnt from America to this first season: it’s in the middle of a renaissance of new writers for theatre.”

Power of silence. Gun control advocate.

 Emma González, a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, delivered the speech to the March For Our Lies rally on Saturday in Washington, USA. 

I cried.  The Power of silence.  Truncated sentences. Caesura.  Emma Gonzalez used the truncated “would never” and the gaps we had to fill in to lay a moving tribute to her friends.


Extending this further into over 4 minutes of silence, she held a powerful testimony.


The grief and anger is too much for words.

Imagine this time.  Place yourself there.

The timing of 6 minutes 20 seconds also the timing of the shooting. 

...in that it reminds me of Carly Churchill in the truncated loss of words (Here We Go, Blue Kettle, and a silence more complex, sad and defiant than what I’ve seen theatre with Pinter or Beckett. ... a crowd of hundreds of thousands would do that.... 

Michael Moore, Twitter

Michael Moore, Twitter


EMMA GONZALEZ: Six minutes and about 20 seconds. In a little over six minutes, 17 of our friends were taken from us. Fifteen were injured. And everyone - absolutely everyone - in the Douglas Community was forever altered. Everyone who was there understands. Everyone who has been touched by the cold grip of gun violence understands.

Six minutes and 20 seconds with an AR-15, and my friend Carmen would never complain to me about piano practice. Aaron Feis would never call Kyra, Miss Sunshine. Alex Schachter would never walk into school with his brother Ryan. Scott Beigel would never joke around with Cameron at camp. Helena Ramsay would never hang out after school with Max. Gina Montalto would never wave to her friend Liam at lunch. Joaquin Oliver would never play basketball with Sam or Dylan. Alaina Petty would never. Cara Loughran would never. Chris Hixon would never. Luke Hoyer would never. Martin Duque Anguiano would never. Peter Wang would never. Alyssa Alhadeff would never. Jamie Guttenberg would never. Meadow Pollack would never.

[Silence.  4 minutes]  

GONZALEZ: Since the time that I came out here, it has been six minutes and 20 seconds. The shooter has ceased shooting and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students as they escape and walk free for an hour before arrest. Fight for your lives before it's someone else's job.