When a communicator blames his audience

Dear Itamar Moses:

My hat is off to you. Not many playwrights have the guts to walk into this den of critics and declare, as you recently did, "What's at issue here is not how fragile or infantile playwrights are or should be. It's how fragile and infantile critics are about the slightest suggestion that they, like us, can do their work well or badly; that they, like us, can raise what they do to the level of art or turn out hackwork; and that they, in other words, should be held to the same standards that they, whether we ask them to or not and whether it is professionally appropriate or not, are constantly holding us to." (See March Letters.)

You are indeed a courageous (if a bit long-winded) fellow. If there's one thing we critics can't stand, it's criticism. So rather than speak truth to power, most theater people tolerate our pompous prattling because (as one politician put it back in the days when newspapers were more influential than TV or the Internet) "You should never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel." Surely you know that, with one click of my mouse, I could cut off the supply of wine and cheese for your readings and openings, thereby effectively destroying your career. But you boldly race in here like some latter-day Dorothy splashing water on all us wicked witches of the West.

I suspect most critics will emerge better people for your scolding. (In my case, two or three more years of therapy should do the trick.) But let me simply point out that you haven't merely shattered the delicate psyches of fragile and infantile critics. You've also violated one of the first laws of professional communicators, to wit: "Never blame your audience."

Gore, Kerry— and Steve Lopez, too

Anyone who communicates for a living understands this rule instinctively. If I can't persuade people to visit my website, or read my article, or subscribe to my newspaper, that's my fault— not theirs. If critics fail to recognize my latest book as (in my humble opinion) a monumental masterpiece of Western history, that's my fault, not theirs. If Al Gore and John Kerry, with all the ammunition available to them, couldn't convince voters that they'd maker a better president than George W. Bush, that's their fault— not the voters'. (The columnist Steve Lopez plummeted in my esteem when, having been asked why the Inquirer's circulation was dropping, he replied, "Because people are idiots.")

Of course many people in your audience will be fragile and infantile boobs who fail to recognize your genius. Worse, after the play is over these idiots may insist on discussing it with their friends. Worse still, some of them may be critics with large audiences of their own.

How would you rectify this injustice? Would you restrict your audience to Nobel Prize winners and Ph.D.'s? Would you require audience members to take a vow of silence?

The restaurateur who despised his customers

You could do it, you know. At the haute cuisine Chicago restaurant Le Perroquet in the '70s, the proprietor Jovan Trboyevic grew increasingly perturbed by his customers' uncultured and obnoxious character. Some diners were gourmets who gave Jovan the veneration he felt he deserved, but to others his dishes were merely fuel. "You might have a cultured college professor at one table and a rambunctious insurance man at the next table," he once complained to me.

Trboyevic's solution was to open a private dining club called Les Nomades, where he could select his guests and dictate his own idiosyncratic rules (no parties of more than four, no cigars, no table-hopping, etc.), which he vigorously enforced.

You might want to try something similar with your theater audiences. The food at Les Nomades was wonderful, and was widely recognized as such. But as one of my friends put it, "It was like being in school— you were constantly afraid that you might anger the teacher." Eventually, getting thrown out of Les Nomades became a mark of distinction among prominent Chicagoans.

The customer is always wrong?

More recently in Philadelphia, a Turkish bistro in Old City called Dardanelles got fed up with customers who complained about the food and service, or who refused to order the really interesting dishes on the menu. "People come in here with all their stress and their negative vibes, and they try to lay it on us," the co-owner told the Inquirer in 1996. "We don't have to take it…. so any attitude they give us, we give it right back." Their solution was to post a sign in their window that read: "We don't serve assholes." You could try that too. (Or maybe, "We don't admit fragile or infantile critics"?)

People (and critics) patronize restaurants and theaters for many different reasons— not always the reasons the owner or playwright or director had in mind. And people will talk. And some people who talk are uninformed. But so what? Critics failed to appreciate Stravinsky, Faulkner and Cézanne through most of their lives. Come to think of it, relatively few people in any walk of life are appreciated until they die. Maybe those who function in the public spotlight— like you and me— should count our blessings instead of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.



To read a reply from Itamar Moses, as well as other responses, click here.