theatreVOICE

Is it really four years ago, as Dominic Cavendish wrote in his opening blog here, since Theatrevoice was launched? I wasn’t there right at the beginning, but was early on conscripted as a regular panellist on the critical round-ups that the site was launched with, and then went on to regularly host as well as co-ordinate them – a function I continue to fulfil to this day, and only on Thursday I hosted the latest round-up that is already on the site but the site has since become much more than just a place where critics meet and can be heard, literally, in their own voices, away from the arts pages and web sites they already appear on.

Now there are also regular interviews with theatre artists, whether to promote current projects, like suddenly prolific producer David Pugh or defend themselves against the critics. And now the site has its very own blog, too.

Although I already write a daily blog on the Stage website and also contribute regularly to The Guardian’s theatre blog section, too, Theatrevoice occupies a special place in the busy clamour of everything else I do because it offers a moment to pause, reflect and most importantly share opinions, amidst the more solitary type of criticism most of us write or broadcast where it is typically a transaction between critic and computer screen, or with a presenter and radio mike.

As I wrote on my Stage blog on Friday about the Theatrevoice session that Charlie Spencer, Matt Wolf, David Benedict and I had recorded the day before, “We all of us seem to love doing these sessions; at their best, and yesterday’s felt a bit like it, it is like an animated conversation amongst friends – with passionate disagreements (David and Matt didn’t think Never So Good was much of a play, whereas Charlie adored it), and a lot of honest soul, or at least opinion, baring.”

The internet is full of the noisy, lively discourse that takes place in various chatrooms; but Theatrevoice is literally chat, live and in person. It also allows critics to do something we don’t typically do: to talk to each other about the plays we’ve seen. It’s not that we don’t talk to each other – critics are a remarkably convivial bunch, with an inevitable exception or two, and since our lives are a bit ‘Groundhog Day’ in the sense that we see each other most nights in pretty similar places and situations, we inevitably know and respect each other. But there’s a critical code that we don’t discuss the show amongst ourselves on the night itself – there’s no collusion to set a critical temperature on each show, and one of the strengths of there still being so many outlets in London for us to work in is that you can get wildly differing outcomes as a result. What’s one man (or woman’s) meat is another’s poison; as a friend of mine is often fond of remarking, “That’s why there’s chocolate and vanilla ice-cream – and why Baskin Robbins have 27 other flavours, too”.

And Theatrevoice, and now this blog, allows our listeners and readers to taste yet more of those critical favours and flavours.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 29th, 2008 at 1:05 pm, by Mark Shenton and is filed under Audio 2008. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.