I was the first critic ever to win a Tony - for co-authoring 'Elaine Stritch at Liberty.' Criticism is a life without risk; the critic is risking his opinion, the maker is risking his life. It's a humbling thought but important for the critic to keep it in mind - a thought he can only know if he's made something himself.
Interpretation
Criticism holds risks, and true understanding requires personal experience in creation.
In this quote, John Lahr emphasizes the contrast between the roles of the critic and the creator. While critics engage in a form of risk by sharing their opinions, creators put their very selves on the line through the act of making art. This highlights the importance of empathy and humility in criticism, suggesting that only those who have created can fully comprehend the challenges and stakes involved in the artistic process.
In practice
This quote could be used in a lecture about the responsibilities of critics in the arts.
Theatre is a game of hide-and-seek. For both the hiders and the seekers, the thrill is in the discovery. When the rules of the game are too vague or too complicated, however, the audience can lose its urge to play; the prize no longer seems quite worth the hunt.
Writers don't always know what they mean - that's why they write. Their work stands in for them. On the page, the reader meets the authoritative, perfected self; in life, the writer is lumbered with the uncertain, imperfect one.
don't stop to think of the words when you do stop, just stop to think of the picture better-and let your mind off yourself in this work.
Now art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.
[The artist] is like a pump; he has inside him a great pipe that reaches down into the entrails of things, the deepest layers. He sucks up what was lying there below, dim and unnoticed, and brings it in great jets to the sunlight.
Poetry, above all is a series of intense moments its power is not in narrative. I'm not dealing with facts, I'm dealing_x000D_ with emotion.
It looks like the writer is telling you a story. What the writer is actually doing, however, is using words to evoke a series of micromemories from your own experience that inmix, join, and connect in your mind in an order the writer controls, so that, in effect, you have a sustained memory of something that never happened to you.
I don't know where my songs come from... If I knew, I'd know too much, more than we are allowed on this plane.
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