The O'Neill Critics Institute
As most of you are aware, each year the regional competition of the American College Theatre Festival holds an O'Neill Critics Institute (OCI). OCI was established to assist in elevating the level of arts criticism and to provide writers the opportunity to grow at the same pace as the artists, whose work they review and interpret. To accomplish this, the American College Theatre Festival sponsors workshops at each regional festival where students write daily critiques of plays in round-table discussion sessions.
In the past, the school hosting the festival has provided the majority of the student critics who have participated in the institute, but in the last eight years, we have encouraged each of the participating schools to publicize the Institute more enthusiastically. The process is simple and the rewards are many. Choose the best writers in your theatre program—and outside of it—who have an interest in criticism. The students selected will meet in workshops to look at professional and unprofessional theatre critiques with critics with diverse backgrounds in theatre, journalism, criticism, and writing. During the course of the festival, the student critics will see all of the performances, and write about four of them. The critiques will then be posted outside of the theatre several hours after each performance, and will be evaluated by each member of the Institute.
After the Institute is concluded, the writer who wins each region will advance to the Kennedy Center . From the eight critics selected (one to three from each region), one writer will be chosen by OCI director Dan Sullivan to attend the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center during its national playwriting conference (usually June-July), where he or she will work with leading professional newspaper and magazine critics from across the United States. All expenses will be paid. But all eight will be in Washington studying with critics such as Michael Feingold from The Village Voice and Bob Mondello from NPR .
We would like to encourage you to select as many promising writers as you can find at your institution to compete for this prestigious award—even from related departments such as English or philosophy, especially graduate programs. If you think other departments have students who would be interested, please reproduce this notice and send it to these departments. We changed the format successfully in the past few years in Region IV, giving promising critics more opportunity to examine and evaluate professional critiques, and positively to respond to the shows that have advanced to the regional festival. And our region has attracted a record number of 33 critics who seemed extremely pleased with the workshops and the community established in four days.
The emphasis in the past few years has been more on critiquing efforts and intentions behind each production, and even involved brief interviews with directors and actors. This prevented some of the hurt feelings that have been associated with the O'Neill Critics Institute, and made the reviews a more positive learning experience for both writers and performers.
Rather than implement a system where students send us samples of their writing, we would prefer that you look within and without of your theatre programs for promising writers. Since 1997, we have visited random state festivals and conducted Critics Institutes there, where we had the opportunity to recruit and encourage student writers on the state as well as the regional level, but at the moment, this is not established at every state competition. Several states, as you know, offer no festival, so if you could look to student newspapers, newsletters, expository and creative writing classes, and even rhetoric classes, you may find students who are interested in critiquing, even if they have no first hand knowledge of theatre.
Please feel free to write me at Clemson University, Department of English, Strode Tower, Clemson SC 29634-0523 or email me at cmark@clemson.edu if you have any questions or suggestions. I will be glad to help you in any way possible. Thanks. We look forward to working with you and sharing the works of your best undergraduate and graduate writers.
Mark Charney
