Theatre Criticism
Theatre criticism is the practice and study of interpreting, evaluating, and reviewing theatrical performance, ranging from journalistic reviews to scholarly analysis of staging, acting, and reception.
Definition
The practice and study of interpreting, evaluating, and reviewing dramatic works and theatrical performances.
Scope
This topic covers the history and methods of theatre criticism: the tradition of the reviewer from the eighteenth century onward, the distinction between dramatic criticism of plays and performance criticism of productions, the problem of describing the ephemeral live event, phenomenological and reception-based approaches to spectatorship, and the role of criticism in shaping theatrical taste and reputation. It treats criticism both as an applied practice and as an object of scholarly reflection.
Core questions
- How can the ephemeral live performance be described and evaluated?
- What distinguishes criticism of the play from criticism of the production?
- How do audiences receive and make meaning from performance?
- What roles has criticism played in theatrical culture?
Key concepts
- review and reviewer
- performance criticism
- spectatorship
- reception
- the ephemeral event
- phenomenology of performance
Key theories
- Reception theory of theatre audiences
- Susan Bennett's framework treating the audience as an active producer of meaning, shaped by cultural frames and conventions, and central to how performance signifies.
- Phenomenology of theatre
- Bert States's phenomenological criticism, attending to the lived perceptual experience of performance and the way real objects and bodies on stage resist pure semiotic decoding.
History
Theatre criticism developed alongside the periodical press in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, producing influential reviewer-critics; in the twentieth century it broadened from judgment of plays toward analysis of performance and spectatorship, informed by semiotics, reception theory, and phenomenology, while professional reviewing continued to shape public reputation in the theatre.
Debates
- Documenting the ephemeral
- Critics debate whether and how the transient live performance can be adequately captured in writing, given that the object of criticism disappears as it is experienced.
Key figures
- Susan Bennett
- Bert O. States
- Kenneth Tynan
- Marvin Carlson
Related topics
Seminal works
- bennett1997
- states1985
- carlson1993
Frequently asked questions
- How does a theatre review differ from scholarly criticism?
- A review is typically a timely, evaluative response to a production for a general readership, while scholarly criticism offers sustained interpretation and analysis, often drawing on theory and situating the work in broader contexts.
- Why is performance hard to criticize?
- Because a live performance is unique and transient, the critic must reconstruct and judge an event that no longer exists and that each spectator experiences differently.