For some time now I have been wrestling with what to do about outrageously rude comments on performances in some of my posted videos. I suppose it was naïve of me to think that people could remain civil in an age where most of our contact is impersonal and electronic.
I could disable all the comments, but I’m going to try again to appeal to people’s common sense and humanity in an effort to keep things adult and retain a forum where people can critique and comment about productions of stage musicals.
First of all, I have said it before and will say it again: this channel is mostly a learning channel where videos are posted to familiarize students of music, theater, and musical theater with shows and scenes they might be curious about. I use it for my own private students and as a way of connecting with other students and theatre junkies out there. Not everybody in these videos is a professional actor, although some of the performers are.
I have used other youtubers videos to prepare myself for auditions and for performances of productions, running lines and reviewing lyrics and the like. I have received emails from other users like myself who have been very kind and thanked me and indicated that they do the same, and that some of my videos have helped them rehearse and prepare.
I think that since this is a student channel, many commenters are a bit immature (I apologize if you are a serious theater student and not one of the trollers who come here to leave hurtful comments and remark how much better their own production of certain musicals was). I think also that as a result of less funding of arts and arts education, it is possible that students are no longer being taught to comment and critique thoughtfully.
And so, as a teacher, I am going to make one more effort to educate people. This is a lesson on the value and the etiquette of critiquing theater performances.
When you watch another actor work, you can learn many things about a piece or about the process of acting. You can familiarize yourself with scenes and monologues. If you are doing a monologue from a piece and someone has uploaded a surrounding scene, you can glean insights to what a character was doing just before that monologue. You can see how an actor or director approach certain scenes when you see master classes or videos of productions taken during rehearsals. You can see versions of shows in other languages and see how other cultures have interpreted different shows. You can learn how to piece together a demo reel or acting clip if another performer has uploaded their clip. You can see original performances that might otherwise have been lost if someone had not uploaded their clip to the internet.
If we leave hurtful comments about performances, sometimes performers make understandable requests to have their work removed from the internet. This hurts us ALL as performers.
At the risk of giving these trollers even more incentive to be hurtful by extending their fifteen minutes of fame, I would like to give a few examples of comments, and more constructive ways to say the same things in a thoughtful, inciteful manner.
"(Character A) and (Character B) are terrible. they didnt even speak their lines (correctly).
I'm (Character A) at my high school production and this is embarassing, you can tell that it's not (actually the written line). and when they sing their voices are Sub-Par and their … pronounciation is bad. Whoever choreographed this should also stop at any attempt of theater choreography forever. This scene isnt meant to be funny. and they looked like a joke. EMBARRASSING!"
This person has done everything they can to insult every performer and member of the production staff associated with this particular video clip. They have also taken the opportunity to tell us all how much better they are than the actors in the video (the performer is a 17 year old high school student).
Here are some better ways to make the same comments:
"I don’t understand the choices of the actors playing Character A and Character B. I believe from having done the show that their lines were paraphrased and I don’t understand why that was the case. It also seemed like they were using a character voice that made their diction difficult to understand. The choreography seemed too comical considering that I believe the nature of this song to be more dramatic."
This comment maybe borders on criticizing the direction of the piece, but doesn’t insult any of the performances, or even the director really, since it is meant to start a dialogue about why the performances were that way, as opposed to being meant to be narcissistic and hurtful.
Here’s another, from another tactful high school student:
"(Character X) is bad
choreography is poor
execution is as well
stage business is also poor
this is very obviously a poor high school production"
Here is how the person might have said it:
"I don’t like the performance of this actor in the role of Character X, or the choreography in this song. It seems to me as if it wasn’t together, perhaps because it was under-rehearsed, and the blocking seemed too basic."
The comparison to a high school play is not only catty and unnecessary, it also assumes high school productions to be uniformly of a lower standard than other theater. While I agree that this may be the case, I have to say I have seen some high school shows that have been better than many professional tours. I think that certain high school arts programs have higher budgets than most of the lower-production-value tours that go out. They certainly have more people to maintain the sets and costumes, since none of the actors get paid!!!
Here are some people who have the right idea:
"wow i wish they had more (Character Y) scenes up. i got casted as (this character) and i needa see what i should do and what i shouldn't do."
"a lot of vibrato...
a little too much :/
very good acting!"
"I like the movie more (than this), but she sings well. :)"
"About 2 (metronome) ticks too slow!!"
Notice that even though not all of these comments are flattering, all of them are phrased tactfully and open up a discussion about tempos, voice styles, preferences of different versions of shows, etc.
I am constantly amazed by the wealth of theater resources available for free on the internet. When I was a high school student, these performances were all but unattainable without a trip to certain very specific libraries and a long wait. The fact that students who live in countries all around the world now have access to videos of productions makes theater accessible to new actors and also improves the potential that our work will have an audience in the future.
Please keep the comments civil and allow everyone to benefit from this new global artistic community. Or grow up. Whichever.
