Hello, and welcome to LA Theatre Review. Back in February, a good friend approached me, lamenting the downsizing and/or closing of the review departments in several of the print newspapers in Los Angeles. Because of this, small theatre was being left, metaphorically, in the dust. After a good meal and conversation, it was decided we’d create a site on the Internet to fill some of the void. We created a simple site with WordPress blogging software and a week later our first review was up.

With the launching of this new site, we are now officially an online newspaper rather than a blog. It may be a simple site, but we have grand plans. We will be taking advertising. We will have classified ads, a calender and yellow pages. We will list casting notices and do articles about the theatres themselves and the amenities around the theatres. We will have articles reported by good journalists about Los Angeles small theatre. And, of course, we will have reviews.

Initially, we will be a monthly publication, but hope to be able to become weekly some time in the future. Reviews will be posted as they’re written.

I have a philosophy about reviews. I know we have not always lived up to it in our short existence, and will probably fall short in the future. I started writing the following as a comment on a blog post by Emilie Beck called Critiquing the Critics – www.lastageblog.com/2009/02/19/critiquing-the-critics/ – and decided to expand it here as an explanation of that philosophy:

I have often bemoaned “criticism as consumer advocacy”, the sort of “go see this, it’s good” and “don’t go see this, it’s bad” type of review that Siskel and Ebert represented. Often a well written but negative review will make me more want to see a production (or read a book, or see a painting up close) than a good one. As both an artist and reviewer, however, I disagree that a critic should not pass judgment. Any analysis of a work of art is simply, by definition, a judgment and without judgment, intelligent conversation is impossible.

The critic’s job is not necessarily to run alongside the artist. Critique and analysis live in a totally different domain than the art they examine, and have a distinct purpose. Art’s purpose, if I can be pretentious enough to try to define it, is to open up the possibilities of experience, positive or negative, for the artist and audience and by extension, the society at large. Critique and analysis is more right brained, if you will, and is indeed the conversation about the experience. One is ethereal, the other, practical and intellectual.

And it is, I think, a good thing when a reviewer or critic refers to himself. We must know his or her prejudices and predilections in order to put their analysis into a useful context.

Welcome to LA Theatre Review. We welcome your thoughts. Editor@LATheatreReview.com

Geoff Hoff