当代美国戏剧批评（英文）

Theatrical Reviewing Today in the United States

十八世纪,第一批正式剧场在美国东部城市纷纷开张之时,美国各家日报上的定期戏剧批评专栏也随之诞生,其中领衔者当属《纽约时报》。直到二十世纪末期,报纸一直主导着美国的戏剧批评。这个情况随着电视的兴起,尤其是随着互联网的兴起,发生了明显的变化。当今,戏剧批评的功能已很大程度上被网络博客"接手"。与纸质批评相比,网络批评有时候更为专门化。因为互联网,戏剧批评能得到更为广泛的传播,戏剧作品因此能够更自由地寻找到各自最适合的受众群,对这门艺术的发展而言,这是一个福音。显然,新电子时代的戏剧批评将会是美国以及其他国家戏剧活动的重要组成部分,但是戏剧批评发挥作用的方式也会与往日不同,因为过去的戏剧批评是和占主导地位的纸质文化紧密地联系在一起的。

Regular theatrical reviewing in daily newspapers began in the United States in the Eighteenth Century when the first regular theatres opened in Eastern cities and until the late Twentieth Century newspaper, headed by The New York Times, still dominated theatre reviewing in that country. This situation has distinctly changed with the rise of television and even more importantly of the internet. Today the function of theatrical reviewing has been largely taken over by internet blogs, which can be far more specialized than print reviews. With reviewing spreading ever more widely over the internet, plays can be much freer to seek their best public, which promises to be a healthy development for the art. Theatre reviewing in the new electronic age will clearly continue to be an important part of the theatre＇s operations in the United States and elsewhere, but it will also clearly function in a very different way than it did when it was tied to a predominantly print culture.