| re: I disagree with a lot of this | |
| Posted by: ryhog 02:01 am EDT 05/08/24 | |
| In reply to: I disagree with a lot of this - oddone 06:56 pm EDT 05/07/24 | |
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| Thanks for responding as well as your response. I suspect we may not disagree as much as you think, partly because I am not sure we were focused on the same question. My intent was to take a stab at answering the question that was asked. As you may or may not know from reading this board, I am not much of a fan of all of these awards and the obsessive interest in them. In many years I ignore awards threads; this year I stuck my toes in the polluted water. :-) I do confess that I was (and still am) a fan of the Obies back when there was a real VV, but that's mostly because they did almost everything close to opposite the other awards. But I digress. Regarding "esteem," your answer, as I would paraphrase it (hopefully not incorrectly), is that they are best at PR. My paraphrase of my answer is not that far off. I think they have the best story to tell. Where we part company is in the use of the word "best." I don't think it can be applied here because it is subjective as well as reductive. As you say, it's a taste thing. I think esteem is built from a structural analysis, not from a result one happens to like. As an example, I loved Primary Trust, but you just liked it. I was not trying to suggest any sort of equation between the Pulitzers (or the drama award) and any theatre award. My point was just to say that some things about the structure is more likely to create respect. The Tonys, of course, are a conflicted mess, and the League is obviously the elephant in the room. The "votes" are based on a combination of self-interest and horse trading. The nominations are made by a ridiculously clumsy construct that is at once the largest non-deliberative body in the world and one in which many have its anonymity as their self interest. (An additional problem is that everyone is going nominations in categories they don't know much about. (e.g., a lighting designer judging choreography.) That was the purpose of the poetry comment. A few other observations, because you discussed. 1. Booker is, IIRC, just UK, which would mean that your reliance on it is excluding any other countries where English is spoken, including this one. 2. I very much disagree about the NYDCC. That esteemed panel is made up of whomever the employers of critics at the "fancy" publications place in that position (and also allow to participate). (plus some emeritus folks that I have never understood.) 3.The criticisms of other awards in the theatre (DD, OCC, Drama League, Audience Choice, etc) are well documented on this board so I won't go through them now. 4. I agree there are a lot of very qualified critics but if you look at who is nominating for these awards, most of those folks are not nominators or voters. In fact, a lot of the people nominating (at least for DD/OCC) are not critics at all, notwithstanding their names. 5. Regarding the Pulitzer Board, this is consistent with decisional dynamics in tons of organizations. You work really hard getting a show up on its feet, the buck stops with the director, but then the producer swoops in at tech and says you can't do x or you must do y. Or, if you want a journalism example, your team works hard writing a great article, everyone is on board, but then the editor in chief or maybe the publisher) shows up and says "I am not running that story." Anyway, I think it is good to talk about these things and I am glad you did. Maybe others will chime in. |
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