Reviewed by:

• Theatre Blogging: The Emergence of a Critical Culture by Megan Vaughan
• Kevin J. Wetmore Jr.

Hiya. I'm Kevin. Thanks for reading this review. I figured if I was gonna review a book on theatre blogging that reproduced a bunch of theatre blogposts, I might as well approach it as its own blog post. So there's gonna be some stream of consciousness, some digressions, and less-than-academic-butreal-as-shit spellings and language, so buckle up!

In sitting down to read the book for this review, I had in mind a recent TV commercial mocking older generations for "printing out the internet." Is that what this book would be? Just printing out the internet? (Spoiler alert: nope, it's not. I was wrong—it's so much more). In fact, some of the pieces in the book are no longer available online, so you kinda gotta read the book to see 'em.

Author/editor/curator Megan Vaughan argues that the pieces in the book are "'outsider' criticism" of theatre production, offering alternatives to the failing and fading "mainstream" media theatre criticism (9-10). (Point of order: I agree that mainstream media theatre criticism has dropped in quantity and quality—when I moved to Los Angeles over two decades ago, you could count on the Los Angeles Times and independent weeklies to review dozens of local productions every week. The weeklies are now gone, and we're lucky if the Times does three productions per week.) Vaughan is a blogger herself, having published a London theatre blog, Synonyms for Churlish (synonymsforchurlish.tumblr.com), from 2008 to 2016. Vaughan argues, "The theatre blogosphere has made a more significant and far-reaching contribution to theatre—its practices as well as its profile—than anything else in the twenty-first century" (3). Yes, a rather huge claim, one that says traditional theatre reviews in mainstream media are their own fossilized, gate-keeping institution set within very traditional (read: conservative) understandings and definitions of what theatre is and what good theatre is. Blogging is inclusive, community-based, and doesn't require a privileged, connected background to practice (although, as Vaughan admits [and points for honesty here], many bloggers do come from privileged racial and economic backgrounds). I'll leave it to the individual to decide if Vaughan is correct in asserting the primacy of blogging's significance (which, after all, is also what all theatre scholars do—"What I do is important and significant!" we cry), and like theatre scholarship, how much of it is a conversation within a small, self-selecting community. [End Page 413]

Theatre Blogging is divided into two parts. Part 1 offers a brief history and series of case studies of theatre blogging and its impact on audiences, artists, and the reception of production. Part 2 offers fifty-nine reprinted blog posts from a variety of bloggers arranged into six categories: "Theatremaking and Authorship," "Anger and Dissent," "Reviews and Reviewing," "Representation and Visibility," and two final categories that explore controversial productions, "On My Name Is Rachel Corrie" and "On Three Kingdoms."

Given Vaughan's own background and interests, the volume focuses primarily and predominantly on blogging in the United Kingdom, with some discussion of the United States context as well. Vaughan's history (and historiography) of theatre blogging is nuanced and credible. She faces the challenge of reflecting on the past fifteen years of blogging and attempting to contextualize controversies and discussions, discovering which were tempests-inteapots—over almost as soon as they began, but seemingly significant at the time—and which have had ongoing impacts. She's realistic as well about the early and initial promise of blogging as an alternative to mainstream criticism, but also about the actual practice and how much (or little) influence it had, not to mention how much blogging can reinforce as much as dismantle hierarchies of power. In the case of some major blogs, Vaughan argues that writers didn't seek to dismantle gatekeeping, but rather to assert themselves as the new gatekeepers.

The third chapter of part 1 stands out from the...

 校订者：

• 
  戏剧博客：Megan Vaughan 的批判文化的出现
•  小凯文·威特莫尔

嗨。我是 Kevin。感谢您阅读此评论。我想，如果我要评论一本关于戏剧博客的书，它复制了一堆戏剧博客文章，我不妨把它当作它自己的博客文章来对待。所以会有一些意识流，一些离题，以及不那么学术但真实如狗屎的拼写和语言，所以请系好安全带！

在坐下来阅读这篇评论的书时，我想到了最近的一则电视广告，嘲笑老一辈人“打印出互联网”。这本书会是这样的吗？只是打印出互联网？（剧透警告：不，不是。我错了——远不止于此）。事实上，这本书中的一些作品已经在网上不再可用，所以你得读一读这本书才能看到它们。

作家/编辑/策展人梅根·沃恩 （Megan Vaughan） 认为，书中的作品是对戏剧制作的“'局外人'批评”，为失败和衰落的“主流”媒体戏剧批评提供了替代方案 （9-10）。（顺序要点：我同意主流媒体戏剧评论的数量和质量都有所下降——当我二十多年前搬到洛杉矶时，你可以指望《洛杉矶时报》和独立周刊每周评论数十部本地作品。周刊现在已经不复存在，如果《纽约时报》每周出版三期，我们就很幸运了。Vaughan 本人也是一名博主，从 2008 年到 2016 年，她发布了一个伦敦戏剧博客 Synonyms for Churlish （synonymsforchurlish.tumblr.com）。沃恩认为，“戏剧博客圈对戏剧——它的实践和形象——比 21 世纪的任何其他事物都做出了更重要和深远的贡献”（3）。是的，这是一个相当巨大的主张，它说主流媒体中的传统戏剧评论是他们自己的化石，在非常传统（读作：保守的）对什么是戏剧和什么是好剧院的理解和定义中。博客是包容的、基于社区的，并且不需要特权、有联系的背景来实践（尽管，正如 Vaughan 承认的那样 [这里要诚实地指出]，许多博主确实来自特权的种族和经济背景）。我将让个人来决定 Vaughan 在断言博客的重要性的首要性方面是否正确（毕竟，这也是所有戏剧学者所做的——“我所做的是重要和有意义的！我们哭泣”），就像戏剧学术一样，它有多少是在一个小型的、自我选择的社区内的对话。[完第413页]

剧院博客分为两部分。第 1 部分提供了戏剧博客的简要历史和一系列案例研究，以及它对观众、艺术家和作品接受度的影响。第 2 部分提供了来自各种博主的 59 篇转载博客文章，分为六类：“戏剧制作和作者”、“愤怒和异议”、“评论和评论”、“代表性和可见性”，以及探索有争议作品的最后一个类别，“以我的名字是 Rachel Corrie”和“三个王国”。

鉴于 Vaughan 自己的背景和兴趣，本卷主要关注英国的博客，也讨论了美国的情况。Vaughan 的戏剧博客历史（和史学）是微妙而可信的。她面临的挑战是反思过去 15 年的博客，并试图将争议和讨论置于语境中，发现哪些是暴风雨——几乎在它们开始的时候就结束了，但在当时似乎很重要——以及哪些产生了持续的影响。她对博客作为主流批评的替代方案的早期和最初承诺也很现实，但也对实际做法以及它的影响有多大（或很小）持现实态度，更不用说博客可以加强多少权力等级制度和瓦解权力等级制度。在一些主要博客的案例中，沃恩认为，作家们并没有寻求拆除把关，而是维护自己作为新的把关人。

第 1 部分的第三章从...