The Craft of Critique

“I was on the way home from an audition in Marin, when I suddenly blurted out ‘I want to be a theater critic’” recalls Lily Janiak. “I had tried almost every aspect of theater - acting, directing, playwriting - and they just weren’t working for me. I always knew I wanted to do something in theater, because the thought of doing something else ... I would have felt like I was missing out.”

While such a blatant calling to become a theater critic would seem to evoke imminent success, the drastic decrease in print journalism recently left her to find a job in one of the most competitive lines of work. Before landing her first paid gig as a freelancer at SF Weekly, Janiak admits that she wrote for free for almost two years.

“I had to love theater to do this job. The good news is I got to see free theater all over Bay Area, I got in the habit of organizing life around my deadlines, made contacts, and developed a great body of work to show editors once a job opportunity opened up.”

Now, at 28-years old, Janiak has been become an eminent name in the Bay Area Theater community. While she holds a full-time position a listings editor for Theater Bay Area - the largest regional theatre service organization in North America - she is also an ongoing freelance theater critic for SF Weekly and other bay area new sources. In addition, she is also a freelance film critic at the New York based newspaper, The Village Voice, and keeps close rank on her blog (lilyjaniak.blogspot.com).

Janiak graduated Yale in 2008 with a degree in theater and went on to do her Master’s at San Francisco State University, where she wrote her thesis on Young Jean Lee,who Janiak considers one of the most gifted and experimental playwrights of our time. She graduated in 2012 and returned the same year as a guest lecturer for SFSU’s Theater GWAR (Graduation Writing Assessment Requirement) class, Writing About Theater.

While Janiak is aware that “critic” is one of the most formidable words in an artist’s vocabulary, she believes that good critique is not intended to hurt, but rather to aid a production.

“It’s true that people may feel hurt by a review, but it can start a conversation that needs to be had.”

According to Janiak, as a critic, one needs to feel comfortable not being friends with everyone. She says that while she isn’t afraid to throw in a zinger or a witty remark (especially at a well-established theater company or famous actor), being that Bay Area Theater community is a tight one, there are times where she must critique an individual with whom she is acquainted after a less than great performance.

“I handle this situation by writing a very straight forward argument, and I just back it up every statement with heellllaaaa evidence.”

Overall, Janiak feels that her job as a critic is actually quite rewarding. While critics are often stereotyped as the enemy of a production, that couldn’t be any further from the truth. In the past, Janiak’s articles have attracted massive amounts of publicity before the show had even opened. Her reviews have also been submitted in grant proposals that have helped developing theater startups earn thousands of dollars.

“What a lot of people don’t understand is that criticism is my art. I completely understand the antagonism that artists have for critics, but criticism is my art and theater is my medium. I love the feeling of making a watertight argument with surprising language.”