TREISTE - After the debate organized by the Circolo della Cultura e delle Arti di Trieste at the end of January entitled La critica teatrale e musicale al tempo dei social network e del web 2.0: dalla stampa a..., last week we returned to talk about theatrical criticism from the microphones of a private television station in Trieste. Umberto Bosazzi, journalist of Telequattro invited Erica Culiat, theatre critic for Messaggero Veneto and Musical! and author of a page fabcebook, Non cancelliamo la critica teatrale, to resume the rows of the debate.
The situation in national and local newspapers has not changed. Theatrical criticism and the great absenteeism. From time to time some stamp reviews appear. What are the criteria that determine the interest in reviewing a show rather than another, because some yes and most, no, remains a mystery. The new trend is the interviews and, if anything, the presentations.
Agree that the theatrical criticism is in crisis of identity and has lost its role for some time - Roberto De Monticelli was the first to question this already in 1969! - highlighted the Culiat.
It is agreed that there is no longer the figure of the critical priest, holder of knowledge, today there is such a cultural democracy that everyone communicates their opinion and the reader wants to become an active part, but it is also true that this lacks the authority of a judgment of reliable value. We are at its total weakening. And this is not good for anyone. To readers, to the public in general, but also to theatres that navigate on sight in their programming. It has been repeated again that the cancellation of the theatrical criticism, and therefore of the reviews, and therefore of the press reviews, risks to leave no more trace in the collective memory, but only in the personal one. Indeed. The historical memory of the shows risks disappearing. Those who do research often use reviews to reconstruct the career of an actor, a director, to understand the historical, cultural and social context of a certain period.
Bosazzi added that in this way you do not even give news about new companies, new authors, new theater texts. If we don't talk about it, they don't exist.
The point is, added Culiat, that some of the journalists themselves no longer believe in the theatrical review, declared dead, obsolete. And to substantiate this from time to time have been given various excuses. The tabloid format of newspapers - but, as it happens, Anglo-Saxon newspapers with the same format write to iosa of culture -; the televisions and radios that review before the paper one - also here one could disagree for a long time because more than reviews, most of the times the press releases are read - and dulcis in fundo, the notorious web. In the current mentality, the web replaces paper. Not true. One does not exclude the other. The web will surely beat the paper on time, but newspapers can publish some meditated pieces. Some insights. Once it was reviewed immediately after the show. Today it costs to keep a newspaper open until one in the morning and then necessarily the review comes out two days later. These new publishers are only interested in making a profit. What finally comes out could also be a can of tuna. It doesn't matter. Cutting. Making profits. At the expense of quality. Knowledge.
In reality, then, there is a certain ferment at the national level on the subject of theatrical criticism. In February, for example, a conference on film criticism was organized in Bologna and the Piccolo Teatro di Milano and La Lettura organized a forum on critics and audiences with Luca Ronconi and Franco Cordelli.
We hope that after many words there will be action. Culiat's fb page has just 367 "I like it", but as he pointed out, "for the moment I'm happy to open a window on this topic. The objective of x thousand "likes" that justifies the opening of a web page where you ask for the restoration of theatrical criticism to be presented to the directors of national and local newspapers I see it far away, but I do not give up. What struck me, however, was the total absence of debate. And it's easier to click "like" than to comment. If there is no exchange of views, everything remains a dead letter.
Elisabetta Ceron