Star ratings for fringe shows are simply subjective

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/07/2016 (3375 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For 11 days every July, the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival transforms this city into a hub of kinetic, creative energy. In darkened rooms all over the Exchange District, we can encounter everything from fearless, ground-breaking experimental theatre and harrowing monologues that will make you sob in your seat, to uproarious satire and poignant storytelling.

This year’s fringe, which wraps Sunday, boasted 169 shows. That’s obviously more than any one person can see in 10 days, so every year, the Free Press assembles a team of reviewers who see and review everything by the first Sunday of the festival. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s also a lot of work, and the pace is breathless.

With so many shows to see, festival-goers have come to rely on reviews to steer them in the right direction, whether it’s toward the good or away from the bad. Some performers have taken issue with the way we do it, and there are a few dependable arguments that come up every year: 1) we’re trying to see too many shows in too little time, and 2) our reviewers are not all professional theatre reviewers and therefore have no idea what they’re talking about. (Funny how argument No. 2 only seems to apply to negative reviews.)

1) Tell me about it, but in order to see them all and write reviews that are useful to both performers and festival-goers, that’s the way it has to be done.

2) What regional newspaper employs over a dozen theatre critics?

For our part, our fringe team is composed of all manner of writers, journalists and columnists who are familiar with reporting and opinions. As well, most of them have reviewed fringe plays before. But I’m going to share two trade secrets:

• You don’t necessarily need to be an expert in whatever you’re reviewing to review something well.

• Star ratings are basically meaningless.

With advent of the Internet, the adage “everyone is a critic” has never rung more true. People can — and do! — review everything on the Internet. On the Free Press website, readers can supply their own rating for a fringe show alongside the Free Press review.

On their face, the elements that make for a useful Yelp review are not that different from what makes for a useful newspaper review. Does the review display a basic familiarity — acquired through knowledge, experience, or research — with what it’s reviewing? Does it take a clear position? Can it tell me exactly why it’s good or bad rather than merely asserting that it is good or bad? Is it thoughtful, cogent and fair?

See? That all takes a fair amount of work, dedication and, perhaps most importantly, curiosity. So while everyone can review something, but not everyone can do it well, which is why professional critics still have jobs. Many of them could be called experts, sure. The good ones are the ones willing to do that work.

People like star ratings because they save one from actually having to think about what was said in the review, and also, they are easy to put on handbills. But other than five stars being obviously excellent and one star being obviously poor, what can the average reader tell me about two stars? Three stars? There is no official, boilerplate Free Press star rubric by which all reviewers must go by. Our star system is more like a snowflake system — everyone’s is unique. Some reviewers are stingier with stars than others. 

Reviews can make or break a fringe show, it’s true, but it is not a reviewer’s job to ensure a Fringe show makes money. That’s the performer’s job. If someone is doing quality work, their audience will find them. I’ve seen a few fringe performers use social media to react to a bad review. And I get it. I’ve been there; my work gets reviewed all the time, in my inbox or in the comments section of our website. Sometimes it stings, especially if it feels more like an attack than a review. But it’s a bad look, and it’s always going to be more off-putting than the one-star review.

That’s why I was so inspired last week by local playwright Kai Chochinov and his response to criticism. I gave his play, Praised Be The Playwright, two stars. He commented on my review. He disagreed with that star rating, but he said that I was kind and reasoned in my review (hey, I try).

But here’s the part that struck me:

“Thank you Jen Zoratti for my first review. I will print it out and put it up on my wall as I do with all things showing my artistic journey (successes and failures). And while Jen may think the show is only worth 2 stars, I happen to disagree with her. And while I may be biased, the random stranger who stopped me in the Exchange to tell me that he loved the show wasn’t!”

Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter

Jen Zoratti | Next

Wednesdays

What's next in arts, life and pop culture.

Sign up for Jen Zoratti | Next

Sign Up

I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

That’s just it. There are bad reviews and good reviews, just as there are bad plays and good plays. It’s all subjective. What might make something “good” to me might be radically different from what someone else thinks is “good.” Happily, mine isn’t the only voice on the subject, which is my favourite thing about the fringe.

The only thing to do is to “keep making art and keep working to improve,” to quote Chochinov. That goes for performers and reviewers alike.

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @JenZoratti

Jen Zoratti
Columnist

Jen Zoratti is a columnist and feature writer working in the Arts & Life department, as well as the author of the weekly newsletter NEXT. A National Newspaper Award finalist for arts and entertainment writing, Jen is a graduate of the Creative Communications program at RRC Polytech and was a music writer before joining the Free Press in 2013. Read more about Jen.

Every piece of reporting Jen produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print – part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.