Everyone at Emerson is Talking About You
You talk shit. So do I. Let’s stop pretending we don’t.
It’s a Saturday night. You leave the Judee after a show. You hug your friend in the cast and tell them they were amazing. You congratulate the director. Maybe you repost the company’s Instagram story, prompting everyone you can to go see this show. You spend a solid 10 minutes walking around telling everyone involved that the production was “perfect”.
Then you get far enough away from the theatre.
“Okay. What did you actually think?” your friend asks.
And suddenly, you have a lot to say on all the ways the show wasn’t perfect after all.
Sound familiar?
To be fair, this is not an Emerson specific phenomenon. Actually, humans all around the world love to talk about each other. A 2019 UC Riverside study used portable recording devices to listen to snippets of over 400 people’s everyday conversations. They found that the average person spent about 52 minutes a day gossiping, and that nearly 14% of their conversations involved talking about someone who wasn’t there.
And the best part? Most of it wasn't even mean. Almost three-quarters of the gossip researchers recorded was neutral. Only about 15% was negative, and the remaining 9% was positive.
So, no, Emerson didn’t invent shit-talking.
But I do think we’ve perfected our own version of it.
Do you ever feel like everyone on campus is talking about you?
Well reader, you’re not alone.
I think most of us at Emerson have felt it. You walk into a room and wonder if the conversation changed when you got there. You hear that someone said something about a show you were in, but nobody will tell you exactly what. You wonder what people have said after your audition, your performance, your directing scene, your rehearsal…
And the worst part is that you know those conversations are happening because you’ve been part of them.
I have too.
That’s the weird thing about Emerson’s theatre culture. We are constantly critiquing each other. We just refuse to admit that we’re doing it.
The thing I’ve always found ironic with all of this is that we pay exuberant amounts of money to sit in classrooms learning how to examine theatre. We’re taught to look at an actor’s choices and ask whether they served the character. We analyze directing, design, text, movement and intention. We’re expected to develop artistic opinions and defend them.
But the minute someone we know walks on stage, our critical vocabulary disappears.
You were AMAZING!!!
Now, Emerson is brimming with talent, so maybe they were.
But what if they weren’t?
What if you didn’t understand the character they created? What if you couldn’t hear half their lines? What if a directing choice made absolutely no sense to you? What if the lighting cues we’re called 3 seconds late every time? What if you walked out of the theatre thinking, I really did not like that?
You probably have an answer, a comment, a simple suggestion to make it better for next time.
You just probably aren’t saying it there.
We’ve practically developed a ritual around this: the Liberal Arts 360.
You’re in the DH, sitting in the Paramount rehearsal studios, walking down Boylston, waiting for an elevator… wherever. Someone starts talking about someone else and, instinctively, everybody looks around.
Who’s nearby? Who knows them? Who might hear?
Emerson is tiny. Emerson theatre is even tinier. The person three feet away from you might have worked on the show. Their roommate might be friends with the actor you’re talking about. That actor might be the person casting you next semester.
Okay. Coast clear? Continue.
It’s funny until you think about what the Liberal Arts 360 actually means.
If you’re terrified of someone hearing what you’re saying about their work, why are you saying it?
Sometimes you have a legitimate criticism. Sometimes a performance just doesn’t work. Sometimes a director makes a choice you think actively hurts the production. Sometimes your friend does something onstage that you know they are capable of doing better.
And fun fact? Pretending that you loved it doesn’t make you kinder. It just makes the criticism private. And private criticism has a funny way of becoming gossip. You tell your roommate. Your roommate tells someone in their cast. Someone paraphrases what you said. Eventually, the person hears that “people are saying” something about them without ever knowing who said it, what was actually said, or why.
Now we’re not talking about theatre anymore.
We’re just talking about each other.
And there may be a reason that feels so awful. Research on negative gossip has found that being the subject of it can increase a person’s fear of negative evaluation. In one study, researchers found that people who believed they were being negatively gossiped about were more likely to seek feedback from others, with that fear of being negatively evaluated helping explain why.
In other words, hearing that people are talking about you can make you desperately want to know what people actually think.
Sound familiar?
Did they like me? Did I embarrass myself? What did they say? Who said it? Does everyone think that?
The secrecy doesn’t protect us from criticism. In some ways, it makes criticism scarier. Instead of knowing that one person didn’t like your performance and understanding why, you get the much more terrifying, completely undefined: People are talking about you.
And then you go sit in the Lions Den and talk about somebody else.
Liberal Arts 360 first. Coast clear?
Keep going.
There is, obviously, a difference between criticism and cruelty. Walking up to someone after closing night and giving them ten unsolicited acting notes would be insane. “Personally, I had a hard time understanding what you wanted in that scene” is different from “They fucking sucked.”
Nobody is entitled to give another person notes simply because they have an opinion.
But I think we’ve become so afraid of the second one that we’ve lost some ability to do the first.
Criticism isn’t inherently an insult.
If I take your performance seriously enough to ask why you made a choice, that means I engaged with your work. If I tell you something didn’t land for me, you’re allowed to tell me why you disagree. Maybe your explanation changes my mind. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe I’m wrong.
That’s the point.
A large analysis of 52 studies involving more than 14,000 people found that negative workplace gossip was associated with worse outcomes, particularly people's attitudes and feelings and their relationships with the people around them. Importantly, those negative associations weren't limited to the person being talked about. The people participating in the gossip could be affected, too.
Emerson obviously isn't a workplace in the traditional sense. But sometimes our theatre community operates an awful lot like one. We audition each other. Cast each other. Direct each other. Hire each other. Recommend each other. Work together again and again.
Our reputations matter, which makes it even more important that we figure out the difference between talking about a person and talking critically about their work.
We’re in school to become better artists. That requires making choices, taking risks, occasionally failing spectacularly and then figuring out why. It requires watching other people do the same thing.
And it requires being able to hear something other than you were amazing.
That’s why this blog exists.
There are plenty of places at Emerson to celebrate the theatre we make. And there should be! People here work ridiculously hard, often with very little time, money or sleep, to create something from nothing.
But I’m here to promote the idea that celebration and criticism can coexist.
I aim to celebrate the theatre that is done well, to honor and recognize the performers, designers, and directors who took a risk, and created something amazing from it. I aim to lift others up, not tear them down. I want to talk about what actually happens on our stages. What works. What doesn’t. What choices fascinate me. What choices confuse me. What performances stick with me on the walk home, and which ones don’t.
I’m going to say when I think something doesn’t work, and you’re allowed to disagree with me.
Actually, I hope you do.
Because if we’re going to spend four years learning how to make and examine theatre, we should probably be willing to actually examine the theatre we make.
We already critique each other, have opinions, and talk. So, maybe it’s time we stopped looking over our shoulders before we did.
I’m not asking you to give your friend acting notes in the Judee lobby. I’m not asking you to stop calling your roommate after a bad show and saying, Oh my God, I need to tell you what I just saw. And I’m definitely not claiming I’m going to stop doing it either.
I’m asking what happens after that. And I encourage you to do the same.
Because somewhere between I loved it! and they fucking sucked, there has to be room to actually talk about the theatre we see. There has to be room to say that a performance didn’t work for you, and explain why. To question a directing choice without questioning the director’s talent. To love someone and dislike their work. To make something unsuccessful without becoming an unsuccessful artist.
That’s the kind of criticism I want to make room for here.
Not because I think my opinion is the right one. It won’t always be. You might read something I write about a show you loved and think I completely missed the point.
And if that happens, I encourage you to reach out and tell me, disagree with me, and talk about it.
Because the goal shouldn’t be to get everyone at Emerson to agree about the theatre we make. Honestly, I hope we never do. The goal is simply to stop pretending we don’t have anything to say.
So reader, the next time you leave the Judee and turn to your friend, do the Liberal Arts 360 if you must, but maybe ask yourself just one question while you’re looking over your shoulder.
Why am I so afraid of being heard?
*Applause Pending is an independent student publication. It is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Emerson College. All reviews and articles are the sole opinion of the author.*
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