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Matthew, Do you seriously think that by having a first paragraph as a disclaimer of your ignorance in Chinese Opera, you could still have credit in your review? Weng Choy wrote an excellent essay talking about Vince Ong and Brian Tan's exhibition Hypersurface at Sculpture Square earlier this year and highlighted irresponsible consumption and production of art through deferral of ethics in selecting citations of a theory/writer/thinker/artist/artwork. Your review is an example of a deferral in writer's responsibility to the reading public in stating, on the outset, your inability to understand the underlying basics of the production - The Chinese Opera. After you were done with that, you thought you had the green light to go on and talk about the production? I suggest you would stop right after the 1st paragraph and ponder - or I should say read and understand more about The Chinese Opera- before going ahead with the superfluous text lining the review. Everything beyond the 1st paragraph loses meaning and credit.

I've been wanting to talk about this area for a while, so thanks for your comments, Richard - but I don't think the situation is as simple as you say.

First, it is undeniable that I was not the only person in the audience who didn't know much about Chinese opera. I know this because I heard several people mention that they didn’t know anything as they were talking before the show. Now, you might say that none of these people has a right to comment about a production - and if it had been the case that they were ignorant audience members who had accidentally wandered into a traditional Chinese opera performance, (for example one staged by Chinese Theatre Circle) then I would agree with you. I would certainly never dream of showing up at such a performance and forcing my two cents’ worth on them. But this was not the case: Toy Factory’s publicity was clearly designed to appeal to opera ignoramuses as well as opera fans; the programme for Spirits spent a lot of time explicating the art form to people unfamiliar with it; there were English surtitles. All these factors suggest to me that I and others like me who are largely unfamiliar with Chinese Opera were invited to see this show.

If, as I say, I was invited, then presumably my feedback is valuable. It would be rather unfair for Toy Factory to stage a production whose target audience was purely opera buffs, but then aim their publicity at the general public. I’m sure Toy Factory didn’t do this - I’m sure the company does care about what the average audience member thought about their production, and I’m sure they care about what the experienced theatregoer with no opera background thought about their production too. It is from the latter position that I write.

Also, let’s look at this from the other side. After the show, I overheard some comments from a couple of audience members who appeared to have no real experience with non-Chinese-opera theatre. Do these people have a right to comment on this show? After all, Spirits was by no means Chinese opera for purists - it was a fusion work, incorporating jazz, electronic music and modern staging techniques, about which the people I overheard seemed to know very little. I’m sure they would be well-equipped to discuss the Chinese opera elements of the show, but they would probably have difficulty finding a vocabulary to discuss its other elements. Does that invalidate their criticism?

If it does, then who exactly is qualified to criticise this production? How many people exist out there with a secure grasp of Chinese opera, jazz, electronic music and modern theatre? I grant you that such people would be the best candidates to write about this production - but good luck finding them and persuading them to review it. And again, if these are the only people with a right to criticise, then why did Toy Factory “invite” so many more to see the show.

(More broadly, very many shows are fusion shows. If you don’t have training in music, does that invalidate your opinions about a musical? Do you need a grounding in video art to discuss a play with multimedia elements? What if someone invents a new genre? A play you directed recently, Richard, called Jiving with Java used Chinese opera makeup. I happen to know that Kenneth, the reviewer, knows nothing about Chinese opera makeup. Does that make his review worthless?)

I accept that a reviewer/critic has a greater responsibility for care, knowledge and circumspection in his judgments than does a random member of the audience. But you can’t take away the fact that any reviewer/critic, no matter how knowledgeable, is a member of the audience. He sees what the audience sees, he hears what they hear. This means that a part of a reviewer/critic’s reaction to any given production will come not from his knowledge or training, but from his reaction as an audience member. This visceral, subjective response is, for my money, a vital part of criticism. Without it, reviews are dry, timid things that read like dusty encyclopaedia entries and say nothing that the theatre practitioner doesn’t already know. So while I admit that some of my review for Spirits is uninformed, I don’t think that makes it worthless: it is what I saw, heard and felt, and I expressed it with as much care and precision as I could. While criticism like this is similar to audience reaction, I believe it is qualitatively different – not many audience members think deeply about their reactions to a performance when they are writing on their feedback forms. And I think that theatre companies should be interested in precise, thoughtful criticism, even when the reviewer in question does not have a grounding in the art form in question (as long as, I repeat, the reviewer and other ungrounded audience members have been “invited” to that production).

But I don’t want to be all humility here. There were elements on Spirits that I believe I understood. Although one can’t fully separate Boon Teck’s direction from its Chinese opera influences in this production, one can see its continuity with various other shows he and other directors have staged. I feel, therefore, that I am able to discuss his direction confidently, along with various other non-Chinese-opera aspects of the production. (I’m sure many of you disagree, but what to do?)

On a different tack, I am assuming that Boon Teck and company were not short of feedback from people well-versed in Chinese opera (although I am not currently aware of any such reviews published in the press). It strikes me that if I were in his shoes, I would actively seek out the opinions of such people and push them to elaborate. What he might have less of is opinions like mine, the opinions of people who don’t know much about Chinese opera, because when you push such people to elaborate on their opinions, they tend to say, “I don’t want to say anything because I don’t know what I’m talking about.” Well, I admit that there are elements of this production that I have little experience with, but I am not going to take that excuse to avoid saying what I feel. As I keep saying, the show’s publicity made me feel that my opinions were being sought.

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe no one versed in Chinese opera gave Boon Teck their feedback, and, yes, quite probably there has been no such review published. If that is the case, then the best way to redress the situation (and also the best way to attack my review) would be for an opera buff to write a review of Spirits. This is what the Inkpot Forum is for, and it is one of the reasons why we at the Inkpot don’t feel the need to censor ourselves in the way that The Straits Times apparently does: we allow for immediate, uncensored rebuttals of our reviews. Richard, I’m guessing you know about Chinese opera - can you be tempted to post a review here?

(I should note that anyone posting at length on the Inkpot Forum would be well advised to write their post on Microsoft Word or similar first and then copy and paste it here, because if you just type into our posting box, there’s a good chance your work will get lost if your internet connection goes down.)

By the way, I must admit I’m not quite sure what all this has to do with the essay of Weng’s that you linked to. What I did notice in Weng's essay was the phrase, "It is imperative to vigilantly test one’s biases." I would argue that I was doing that in watching and reviewing Spirits, and indeed I found much in the production to confront and remove my biases. I would also add to Weng's sentiment my belief that it is imperative for a reviewer to confront his or her weak areas. And again, this is what I was trying to do. Weng, if you’re reading, perhaps you’d like to share your thoughts…

As a critic, I find this topic very interesting, and I’d love to hear other people’s views…

That was a very lengthy response.

My focus was not on the show, but the intention behind the creators. As a critic, Matthew, you are at the end of the creative line, through the review you have written. Or maybe, I am the one, depending on how far this discussion is going extend itself.

The opening paragraph of point 4 (on some abuses of theory) in Weng Choy's essay has relevance to my point.

"Every citation- of a theory, artist or artwork - is a weighty choice for the writer. Or, at least, it should be for every citation. Yet if there is always, at the fundamental level, an ethical gravity in acts of selection, then perhaps what is exemplary of the production and consumption of art and culture today is the systematic deferral of this responsibility. We live in times of endless sighting, citing and re-siting, and what could be easier, or more "natural" in the practice of contemporary art, than to play effortlessly, with varying degrees of cleverness and glibness, the game of quotation and appropriation."

If we were to change the context of the above text into a production of a piece of "culturally-appropriated" theatre, then both the creators of the actual piece of theatre, together with ones that help to propel the appropriation (ie reviewers and the like) should bear the ethical responsibility of cultural appropriation. not to defer themselves from it.

It is perfectly ok for anyone to respond to the theatre piece, purist or otherwise. It is the "siting" of the review in a theatre review portal- which functions to inform the public of its extra knowledge on theatre- that renders the review problematic, in its knowledge and insight into Chinese Opera from a reviewer who is not an informed public on the art form, unless the reviewer has extensively read about the art form before watching the show, not merely from the programme booklet issued on the actual day.

Richard, I think that your reference to Weng’s essay is misapplied.

Weng was arguing that it is wrong for an artist to use mass media images in his work willy-nilly, without considering their import. He was annoyed because the artists whose work he saw had not made choices – ethical choices, in the case of the 911 footage – about the content of their work: they had just let everything in. He was angry because, in doing this, they had “disavowed ownership” of their artwork and had denied the importance of context.

Essentially, his whole argument is about choosing what material to use when you create art (and, conceivably, criticism by extension).

No matter how you spin it, this is not relevant to what I did. I made deliberate choices about what to say and what not to say and I made the reasons for those choices clear. I did not play “the game of quotation and appropriation” glibly.

I was also aware of the ethics of the review – I didn’t want to present myself as an expert in a genre I know little about, so I explicitly stated I would be focusing on areas I did know about. This isn’t what Weng was talking about when he discussed ethics, but I think it bears mentioning.

What you are annoyed about is an entirely different thing. You seem to believe that a published reviewer should be au fait with every aspect of everything he or she reviews. This is a tall order and it has serious consequences. The main consequence is that the amount of criticism written would decrease because critics would have to stop writing about subjects they are not expert in. I would count this a problem in Singapore, where there isn’t much criticism to begin with. A secondary consequence is that it would kill off amateur criticism and raise the barriers of entry to professional criticism: if you have to know everything about everything before you even put pen to paper, then how can a newbie ever get started?

You link this argument with the argument that the Inkpot (along with, I suppose, other review sites) “functions to inform the public of its extra knowledge on theatre”. Well, no we don’t. But for the sake of argument let’s pretend that what you said is true and that it is also true of all similar review websites, blogs, etc. on the internet. If we accept your argument - that critics should know everything and that review websites exist to advertise their expertise - then suddenly the internet doesn’t look like the democratic new medium it is supposed to be; it looks more like print media where there is only one authoritative voice (the writer) and no right of reply (from readers).

In my opinion, the main problem with criticism in Singapore is that there is not enough of it. The Inkpot attempts to address this problem with our own writers, with our Student Writer programme, and by hosting a forum which encourages people to respond to our reviews and, indeed, to post their own. We at The Inkpot explicitly do not wish to have the final say or be considered the ultimate authority.

Moreover, the nature of the internet means that pretty much anyone can start a review site if they want to. Our running costs at The Inkpot are insignificant and there is no industry regulation like there is with print media, so the barriers to entry are extremely low. If I were you, instead of worrying that The Inkpot, with its supposed “extra knowledge on theatre” isn’t doing its job properly, I would set up a rival website or blog to do the job better. The Inkpot has no unassailable monopoly, nor do we want one, and we’ll happily link to your site if you start one.

And I believe that, in a context of multiple critiques and right of reply for the reader, the most important attribute for a reviewer is not knowledge, it is honesty. A reviewer should be honest about his or her opinions, judgments, impressions, prejudices and inadequacies. Then the reader-responder - and even the artist being critiqued - can help fill in whatever gaps may exist. Knowledge is important too, and a committed reviewer should always attempt to gain it, but the arts scene can’t afford to wait until every reviewer knows everything before reviews are published.

And perhaps we also disagree about what constitutes knowledge of a performance art form. You imply that a reviewer has sufficient knowledge if he or she has “extensively read about the art form before watching the show”. I disagree – I don’t think you can read performances. I admit that reading can be useful and informative (and in fact, I had read a little about Chinese opera before I saw Spirits, as well as speaking to my opera-buff friend), but reading only goes so far, and in order to be an expert in a performance genre you must, in my opinion, have seen lots and lots of performances of that type. That’s not always possible. Instead, I think a reviewer should learn on the job (and I certainly learnt a lot from Spirits), and in the meantime be honest about what knowledge he or she lacks.

Seeing lots and lots of performances is especially difficult when there is a language barrier, as there is for me when it comes to Chinese opera. The two opera performances I saw prior to Spirits were not subtitled, so I had to rely on a running commentary from my friend. I don’t want sympathy, but I do want to raise the question: if Toy Factory tours Spirits to non-Chinese-speaking countries, then do foreign reviewers, who are unlikely to have much grounding in Chinese opera and are usually under tight deadlines which preclude extensive research... do foreign reviewers have a right to publish their reviews of Spirits? Is Chinese opera only for the Chinese?

On a similar tack, you admit that it’s fine for non-experts to respond to a theatre piece only if they don’t publish a review. I don’t think that works. In my earlier post, I pointed out that: (a) audience members are unlikely to respond in depth unless they are writing a review for publication, and (b) the opinions of the uninformed are valid and useful to the theatre company whenever the theatre company invites uninformed people to be part of its audience. This means that the only way a theatre company is going to get full, useful feedback from a segment of its intended audience is through published reviews. You seem to have sidestepped these points. Do you have a response?

Thank you for your comments, Matthew. Yes, it is honesty that both of us value in creation, be it a work of art or a written review. I do not expect everyone to be an expert in what they write about. That request is totally unreasonable.