Things HAVE to Change Around Here! (clickbait title)

I hate to use the i word, but I am feeling pretty bloody inspired right now.

I have just finished reading the first half of Theatre Blogging: The Emergence of a Critical Culture by Megan Vaughan, a overview of online theatre discourse from the early 2000s to 2020.

This post isn't really about her book, but it is excellent and I would recommend it very highly to you. It features contributions from heaps of writers on theatre, including local heavyweights Alison Croggon & Anne-Marie Peard, and—truly—it feels like my mind has been set on fire. Vaughan's book charts the emergence of theatre blogs, key moments in the blogosphere, and the challenges the practice faces today.

It is always stupidly exciting to hear people talk about the thoughts you've been having but decades before you. It's comforting to exist in a lineage of thinkers and makers and movers and shakers.

I've not finished this excellent book—ahead of me lies the second half: a selection of historical blog posts from 40 different writers. I have raced through the first half, basically finishing it entirely today. (Hello to the lovely Cathy Hunt with whom I had a lovely chat today at Balam Balam—the book you caught me reading was this one lol.)

This book has spurred a lot of thoughts about how to approach this online writing thing, and because eighty of you (what the heck) have said you want to get emails from me, I thought I would tell you the things I want to change and do differently.

Consider this a blueprint for the future of In the Round.

A LIST OF THINGS THAT'LL CHANGE AROUND HERE LOOSELY INSPIRED BY THOUGHTS I HAD WHILE READING THEATRE BLOGGING

1. F*ck 'weekly' emails. It was draining to work to a schedule. You'll hear from me when I have something to say.
2. Smaller word counts.
3. More sleep.
4. I think my writing has heretofore lacked depth, in an absurd attempt at breadth. The completionist urge led me to catalogue A Thought™ on every show I see, but sometimes there's just not much to say.
5. Less structure.
6. More meta-textuality. I started this year thinking of Instagram and TikTok as jumping off points to this blog, but that does a disservice to the exciting potential of criticism on the closest thing we still have to a town square.
7. Criticism isn't objective, and I will stop trying to perform objectivity. I will remain a substantiated hater of Samuel Beckett and an endless fangirl of participatory work.
8. More saying No to invitations to review. Sometimes I know it'll be boring, sometimes I know I won't have anything to say, sometimes I'll be flat out—I need to remind myself that the value of seeing theatre is not in being able to brag about watching 238 shows in a year.
9. Form should be fun. It's the goddamn internet. I will commit to experimenting with how I write about performance.
10. The distinction between my theatremaking practice and the work of others that I talk about isn't there. My practice exists because of the work I witness, so I will talk about myself when I talk about you. If you want a blank wall to review your art, you can go and ask one.
11. On that note, I need to write critically and deeply about myself more.
12. Sometimes I will be invited to review work, and sometimes I will not talk about it. This is A-OK (telling myself this over and over and over).
    1. Anne-Marie Peard says that sometimes silence is kinder (Theatre Blogging, p51)
    2. Martha Latham says that sometimes you just won't have anything to say
    3. My calendar tells me sometimes I have overcommitted myself and need to rest
13. Deadlines can go f*ck themselves.
14. I want to make a page with links to everyone writing and thinking about theatre in Melbourne so we can find each other. I will do this later, unless I get a stroke of motivation at midnight.
15. I think In the Round is a fantastic name for a blog about theatre and will be putting it in more place on this website rather than just in the email headers.
16. (intentionally left blank for future thoughts)

That'll do for now.

I'm very much looking forward to writing about theatre with these shifts in my approach. I hope you'll bear with me, and let me what you think of it all.