My problems with one act judging
I have some problems with the way one act plays are judged, in general, and also with the specific judging I experienced/witnessed today. We performed our one act play today along with five other plays in our subsection contest. We placed third; the top two schools advance to the section contest next Saturday. After watching all six plays, and being as objective as humanly possible in my situation, I thought we should have placed first, or maybe second. (Do I always think we're the best? No. Last year we ranked a deserved fourth out of five. And the fifth place play was really bad, or we could've been last.) Of the three judges, one ranked us second and wrote some very good comments, both positive and constructive criticism -- i.e., ways we could improve. Another judge, who happens to be a good friend of mine, ranked us third. The last judge ranked us fifth. One of the plays she ranked above us (third place, actually) was truly awful. After watching it, I was 100% sure they wouldn't be in contention. It was an interesting idea and script, but poorly acted by three-fifths of the cast, and the blocking was horrible -- characters wandering aimlessly, and occasionally standing in front of others who were speaking. The other two judges ranked that particular play fifth. The play that came in second place today had a script that covered a lot of the same types of issues our play did, but I felt our script was much stronger. The actors in their play also didn't do as good a job of characterization as ours did. (Maybe that's subjective.) However, there were at least two places in the play where characters very obviously flubbed their lines. Also, the play ended rather abruptly. I know the director was concerned about not going over time and being disqualified, but when the lights came up at the end, the actors on stage looked out in the audience at their director (and a couple others started to enter the stage), and she told them to strike their set. It was very obvious that this wasn't the ending that they had planned for their production, and it seemed to leave some of the characters/storyline hanging. The winning play today -- and every judge ranked them higher than us -- was a crowd-pleasing comedy, and for the most part, pretty well done. I had some issues with some of the blocking, but the cast for the most part performed well. However, the second character to enter (everyone stayed on stage once they entered until the end of the play), when there were only two people on staged, botched a line. He didn't just flub it, he stumbled over the words (obviously having forgotten what he was supposed to say), then said, "Oh, shoot. Um..." and started the line over. And they got first place? Really? Characterization, anyone?
On a more general level, I really don't like the current evaluation form. Years ago, there was a pretty decent form that had about eight or nine different categories for judges to comment on. These ranged from blocking to vocalization, from characterization to costumes/make-up. It was an adequate system. The judges could comment on each area, without giving any kind of score to any particular one. This form was scrapped in favor of a blank sheet, which asked the judges simply to comment on various aspects of the production. Last year, a new rubric was added to that form, containing boxes for "characterization," "vocal quality," "technical aspects," and "overall effectiveness." Not as complete or as good as the old form, and the judges are then instructed to make written comments to "support" those ratings. It's not a good system, and I'm not sure why the old one was ever scrapped.
Part of the problem is that we (as directors/coaches and the cast and crew) don't get to see any of the judges' comments on the other plays. This may be inappropriate, but it might give us a better idea of why we were given a certain ranking in comparison to other plays. The judge who ranked us fifth today wrote a full page, front and back, of comments, but nothing on it gave any indication for the ranking we got. Most of the comments were positive or fairly general. I should get some kind of idea from the comments why she didn't think we were as good as other plays of the day.
A big problem I have with the idea of judging is that it is completely subjective. I don't have any ideas for improving that, but I think a more detailed form would at least give us an idea of the reasons for the judge's subjective opinion. As an example of the subjectivity, there were a couple of comments/suggestions from the judges on today's critiques. One of these dealt with pacing and one dealt with a particular costuming issue. (These two were from two separate judges.) It's not like I'm slapping my forehead, saying, "Oh, yeah, why didn't I think of that?" These were issues that I, my student director, and my cast had considered quite seriously, but we consciously decided to take a different approach than the one this particular judge would have liked. Anything that can be done about that? I doubt it. Maybe I'm just venting now.
But...I'm frustrated and disappointed that we received the ranking we did today. My kids worked extremely hard on this production (not to suggest that the other schools didn't) -- as the judge who ranked us highest wrote, "it's obvious you put many hours work into this" -- and they deserved better. I'm personally discouraged. In my eight years of directing high school one acts, this was the best show I ever put together (and a lot of that credit goes to my cast). Four of the previous seven years, "my" show made it to sections. We should be there this year, but we're not.
On a more general level, I really don't like the current evaluation form. Years ago, there was a pretty decent form that had about eight or nine different categories for judges to comment on. These ranged from blocking to vocalization, from characterization to costumes/make-up. It was an adequate system. The judges could comment on each area, without giving any kind of score to any particular one. This form was scrapped in favor of a blank sheet, which asked the judges simply to comment on various aspects of the production. Last year, a new rubric was added to that form, containing boxes for "characterization," "vocal quality," "technical aspects," and "overall effectiveness." Not as complete or as good as the old form, and the judges are then instructed to make written comments to "support" those ratings. It's not a good system, and I'm not sure why the old one was ever scrapped.
Part of the problem is that we (as directors/coaches and the cast and crew) don't get to see any of the judges' comments on the other plays. This may be inappropriate, but it might give us a better idea of why we were given a certain ranking in comparison to other plays. The judge who ranked us fifth today wrote a full page, front and back, of comments, but nothing on it gave any indication for the ranking we got. Most of the comments were positive or fairly general. I should get some kind of idea from the comments why she didn't think we were as good as other plays of the day.
A big problem I have with the idea of judging is that it is completely subjective. I don't have any ideas for improving that, but I think a more detailed form would at least give us an idea of the reasons for the judge's subjective opinion. As an example of the subjectivity, there were a couple of comments/suggestions from the judges on today's critiques. One of these dealt with pacing and one dealt with a particular costuming issue. (These two were from two separate judges.) It's not like I'm slapping my forehead, saying, "Oh, yeah, why didn't I think of that?" These were issues that I, my student director, and my cast had considered quite seriously, but we consciously decided to take a different approach than the one this particular judge would have liked. Anything that can be done about that? I doubt it. Maybe I'm just venting now.
But...I'm frustrated and disappointed that we received the ranking we did today. My kids worked extremely hard on this production (not to suggest that the other schools didn't) -- as the judge who ranked us highest wrote, "it's obvious you put many hours work into this" -- and they deserved better. I'm personally discouraged. In my eight years of directing high school one acts, this was the best show I ever put together (and a lot of that credit goes to my cast). Four of the previous seven years, "my" show made it to sections. We should be there this year, but we're not.
posted by Kootch | 5:50 PM
2 Comments:
Don't even get me started...!
My kids were fortunate (yes, fortunate) to make it past sub-section this year. They were justifiably very proud and wore their medals all day the next school day. At our rehearsal that afternoon they were saying that other kids were giving them a hard time about wearing their medals all day and that none of the sports teams did that. I said to my kids, "If they ever say that again, tell them that if they played ONLY ONE football game, and that was the game that decided whether or not they moved on, they'd be wearing their medals all day."
I was thinking about that, and I realized that even the other subjective arts "sport," speech team, isn't as singularly focused as one act play. Even if a speech team member went to only one meet during the year (and there are usually a few opportunities for meets), at one meet, even if a person did really awful, they'd have two more opportunities to get their score back up. One act is one shot.
I still feel that a "festival" atmosphere would be better. Get a bunch of schools with their shows, in a variety of spaces in an area or city, and schedule them for three or four performances each, at varying times. Let the audiences decide which shows they want to see. Word of mouth will get around so that the "best" show is seen by many, but all schools have equal opportunities to perform. Consider it like the Fringe Festivals for high school arts.
Well said.
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