Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

36 Chapter 2 What Is a Play?
late-night discussions and debates at a restaurant or
bar, probing conversations on the morning after, and in
the coming days’ published and online reviews, actor
appearances on television talk shows, letters to the editors
of local newspapers, and scholarly articles and
books seen weeks, months, or years later. Indeed, in a
theatre devoted to community interaction, such as Los
Angeles’s Cornerstone (see the chapter titled “Global
Theatre Today”), the end of the play is the beginning
of a hoped-for new life of political change. The theatre
is a place of intellectual and emotional public
stimulation; it should be expected that a provocative
production would generate both animated discussion
and illuminating commentary.
Both the post-show chat and the formally published
analysis are examples of what we may call dramatic criticism,
which is the audience’s contribution to the theatre.
Criticism is as ancient as Aristotle and as contemporary
as the essays and lectures that are presented daily in
newspapers, journals, books, and academies all over the
world. But criticism is not solely an expert enterprise;
criticism—which combines analysis and evaluation—is
everybody’s job. We look further at this key aspect of the
theatre’s art in the chapter titled “The Critic.”