Saturday, January 27, 2007

feedback & criticism

A young artist I don't know well recently sent out a mass email asking for people to offer "criticism" & feedback on his new play. Below is my feedback and it goes for any of you who are developing new creations. Please be good to yourselves.
--ML

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You may not believe that this is the kind of feedback you want but, in my opinion, it is.

I am neither going to read your script just now nor give you "criticism" on it. Harsh answer, right? I believe it's a just answer.

Here's why: first of all, I don't feel like I have the appropriate relationship with you to really offer you the kind of constructive "criticism" a new play deserves. Secondly, I don't have the time right now to invest in your project as it deserves. Thirdly, I don't believe that new plays should be indiscriminately read and judged because great damage can be done to the project, the playwright and your process.

So, my advice is thus: you will get plenty of criticism. Draw a sacred circle around your project and invite only those people into it you utterly trust to help you develop YOUR VISION FOR YOUR PROJECT not offer opinions on what they would do differently, how it would work better, how to deconstruct to reconstruct. I'll say it another way: find advisors WHO ARE EXPERTS who know about developing a vision into a tangible creation and only trust those people. Find a couple of trusted friends who will not tell you how to write your play to whom you can rant about how fucked up everyone's feedback is and how horrible they're being to your baby.

I've had too many of my own projects killed by "helpful" friends and seen too many colleagues have their joy robbed from them by "helpful" colleagues. Somewhere in my soul I have a hole for those creations because they never got staged.

Read Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way to find out how damaging or helpful people can be and her advice about how to protect, nurture and develop your creations in helpful not hurtful ways.

That is my feedback. If it is disappointing, I'm sorry, but I still believe it is some of the wisest feedback you will get.

Come to class or the retreat sometime. Then, you'll really see what I mean.

Wishing you a healthy process in your creation!

3 comments:

Murph said...

Hey Molly,

Thanks for the sage advice. I will definitely try and track down Julia Cameron's book. Maybe I'll see if Craig has a copy.

And thanks once again for letting me sit in on the Shakespeare workout portion of the auditions. I really want to try some of those techniques for myself.

All the best,
Michael Murphy

Molly Lyons said...

Hey Michael, I was just logging onto clean up the mess of photos I hurriedly uploaded a bit ago.

You're very welcome and I'm glad you were at the auditions. I'll have to tell you about the angry comments we got but not online.

I doubt Craig has that book!! Wink wink. Not Professor Pedantic's style.

Let me know how your work goes this summer.

Best, ML

Molly Lyons said...

Micheal, if you check in here again, I'll be in Kingston in early April & will do another workshop at Queen's. We should lunch or something & chat about other audition techinques that will make actors blossom. It's so worth the little time it takes to enable them to shine that I try & tell every good director these things. ML