"Do what you feel in your heart to be right. You'll be criticized anyway." - Eleanor Roosevelt

Day 5

I love doing theatre more than anything in the world. I think about it all the time and can't imagine myself doing anything else. While there are so many good things that come with it, there's one aspect that has plighted me ever since I got serious with the whole theatre thing. I equate it to the law of diminishing returns in economics. It basically refers to how the marginal production of a factor of production starts to progressively decrease as the factor is increased...according the wikipedia. In human terms, it basically means if you are starving and get a slice of pizza, that first bite will be the best, the second bite will be good, but not as good...and so on and so forth with each step diminishing in value.

I apply it to theatre in this sense: When I first watched plays, I could thoroughly enjoy it from start to finish without a second thought. As I got more involved with theatre and started learning more about the art, my enjoyment has diminished with each play I see. Now, this is not the case with every show I see, but I find it to fit in a general sense. I can't go to a show and thoroughly enjoy it anymore. I always sit there and critique a show, no matter how good it is. I just find little nit-picky things that random people would never see but I focus in on. I don't like it most of the time. I would give anything to have that innocence again and be able to just sit back and enjoy a show. I don't do it as much with professional shows, but I've mainly just seen professionally done musicals, so I'm not sure how I would react to a straight play on Broadway.

The funny thing is that this fault/gift of mine has drifted over into my family as well. After we see a show together, we'll all wait until we get into the minivan and then rip the show apart. I'm usually the worst one, but my mom has grown to be the little critic herself. And I give her props because she's seen every show I've been in plus a lot of shows she's seen on her own since I've been gone. It's funny to hear her Peggy Hill voice say "Well I thought his performance was ok, but his diction was terrible and I didn't feel his connection to the character." I'm proud of her for being able to form an actual opinion about it compared to the normal reaction of most audience members in our area which is "Oh, that was nice."

I will try to slowly grow out of this phase. I don't think I'll ever be able to turn off the critic inside me, but I should be able to hide it enough to enjoy a show or two.