WORZALA'S WEDNESDAY WORD 9-13-06
This week's word is "review" as in "My review has come in and it looks good."
"3 Stories from Middleville" the play I've technically been writing for about 3 years opened last weekend to decent crowds, a ton of support and a really good review. As I may have mentioned here before, our entire town, 100,000 people not counting "suburbs" has one theatre reviewer and people have conditioned themselves to wait for his opinion on a show before going to see it. Well he came to my opening night and the review was in the paper on Monday (Happy 9/11, here's a comedy you should go see!), so hopefully we'll see the results of this the next five weeks.
The last play I did he didn't come to review until the 4th week, so the review didn't run until there were only 4 shows left. He gave us four stars out of four and said the play was good enough to be performed elsewhere because "it's legit." However, he also spent the great majority of the review not talking about the play or the performances but instead about how great the programs were. Now, I understand one of the nice things about the theatre that trumps both television and movies is the immersion but still, the programs were what you choose to focus on in an almost two hour comedy? I didn't exactly take 100+ full force slaps to the face and memorize paragraph long family tree explanations to be trumped by the programs. Not that the programs aren't nice Tony, but you understand what I'm saying.
So our review came out and it's good. It's better than good, it's great. It's not fantastic, but I knew that going in. "3 Stories From Middleville" earned 3 1/2 out of 4 stars. People ask me what I think of the review, I think it's great. That's what 3 1/2 stars means. There's very little that beats 3 1/2 stars. 4 stars, that's it. 4 stars is perfection, it's top of the line. Now, my play is great. It's funny, it's creative, it's well paced, and each story has a deeper meaning if you're willing to look. There's no reason it shouldn't have rated as highly as it did. I never had doubts about the show. But my play is not perfection. And that's no slam on the actors or the director, it came out of my hands as less than perfection. I don't think my next full play will be perfect either. In fact I know it won't be, I'm still stuck trying to figure out how the protagonist gets the other briefcase in the first place. Oh well, I've got till the 2008 season to figure it out. Hopefully Warren comes to see that one early in the run as well, I sweat the crowd size more than I do the review itself.
"3 Stories from Middleville" the play I've technically been writing for about 3 years opened last weekend to decent crowds, a ton of support and a really good review. As I may have mentioned here before, our entire town, 100,000 people not counting "suburbs" has one theatre reviewer and people have conditioned themselves to wait for his opinion on a show before going to see it. Well he came to my opening night and the review was in the paper on Monday (Happy 9/11, here's a comedy you should go see!), so hopefully we'll see the results of this the next five weeks.
The last play I did he didn't come to review until the 4th week, so the review didn't run until there were only 4 shows left. He gave us four stars out of four and said the play was good enough to be performed elsewhere because "it's legit." However, he also spent the great majority of the review not talking about the play or the performances but instead about how great the programs were. Now, I understand one of the nice things about the theatre that trumps both television and movies is the immersion but still, the programs were what you choose to focus on in an almost two hour comedy? I didn't exactly take 100+ full force slaps to the face and memorize paragraph long family tree explanations to be trumped by the programs. Not that the programs aren't nice Tony, but you understand what I'm saying.
So our review came out and it's good. It's better than good, it's great. It's not fantastic, but I knew that going in. "3 Stories From Middleville" earned 3 1/2 out of 4 stars. People ask me what I think of the review, I think it's great. That's what 3 1/2 stars means. There's very little that beats 3 1/2 stars. 4 stars, that's it. 4 stars is perfection, it's top of the line. Now, my play is great. It's funny, it's creative, it's well paced, and each story has a deeper meaning if you're willing to look. There's no reason it shouldn't have rated as highly as it did. I never had doubts about the show. But my play is not perfection. And that's no slam on the actors or the director, it came out of my hands as less than perfection. I don't think my next full play will be perfect either. In fact I know it won't be, I'm still stuck trying to figure out how the protagonist gets the other briefcase in the first place. Oh well, I've got till the 2008 season to figure it out. Hopefully Warren comes to see that one early in the run as well, I sweat the crowd size more than I do the review itself.
Labels: Worzala's Wednesday Word
posted by Matt Worzala at
2:51 PM
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