Friday, August 19, 2016

Rating your own play, publicly and without shame

I saw a play at the Fringe Festival last week and I thought the production was OK, but the play itself was really bad - the plot was barely coherent, poorly organized and the tone was all over the place from wacky to dead-serious earnest. And at one point the bad guy of the play is killed and this is completely forgotten by the next scene.

I was amused to find the playwright himself contributing his evaluation of his play on the web site Show Score.
Clever, Epic, Intelligent, Relevant, Romantic
See it if Disclosure: I am the playwright. I think you will like it if you like ideas theatricalized so you can envision the world in different way.
Don't see it if You don't like theatre that is trying to explore new ideas in a witty, romantic way, which asks you to think outside the box of ordinary.
This is a playwright who has a problem with metaphor, since he doesn't seem to be aware that "think outside of the box of ordinary" is redundant. "Outside the box" doesn't need "of ordinary." The box is the ordinary.
It's true that there was mention of love and various clinches in this play, so I guess that's why he thinks his play is romantic. Sorry to tell him that people suddenly randomly declaring their love for each other with almost no preamble is not romantic, it's just goofy. 
Although you do have to give him some credit for self-awareness. He thinks you shouldn't see his play if you don't like theater that "is trying" to explore new ideas, etc. Unfortunately for him, it tried and failed.
Now it's one thing for this playwright to brag about his play online - and at least he admits he is the playwright. (His name is displayed in his rating.) But part of the deal with Show Score is that you give your show a rating number. So basically he's helping to keep his average rating up high by giving his show a 90 (out of 100 - and I'm surprised he didn't give it that score - but maybe he wasn't pleased with a non-script aspect of the show.) And you don't see the reviews of a scored show unless you click on the details page. So what he did is still unethical, even if he admits he's the playwright in the details page.