As a follow up to the recent Showcase, Distil has been looking at an initiative called Critical Response Process, a method of giving feedback to artists developed in the US by the choreographer and dancer Liz Lerman. It has being picked up here in the UK by the theatre community in Scotland, through the Federation of Scottish Theatres, and also by new music producers, the London Sinfonietta.
Critical Response was developed by Liz Lerman after she became increasingly dissatisfied with the quality of the feedback she was getting for her work. It was either superficial, or amounted to people saying ‘well I wouldn’t have done it like that…’ (not very helpful to the person who has actually made the work!), or was unnecessarily destructive. So she developed a way of putting the artist in the driving seat to try and ensure that the feedback was genuinely useful. There’s a very brief summary of the process here: http://unlockingtheclassroom.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/liz-lermans-critical-response-process.html and you can read more about Liz herself here: http://www.rwkotulski.org/lizlerman.html
Distil took its first steps in May of 2013 when we organised a session inviting the composers from the most recent Showcase to use the process. Mhairi Hall and Jen Austin were first out of the hat with their pieces ‘Act of Union’ and ‘Airings’. Along with facilitator Jaine Lumsden, the two composers and some interested participants convened at the Music Department at Glasgow University to listen to the pieces.
It is a structured process, led by a facilitator, of which we now have a few in Scotland thanks to the workshops which Liz Lerman did here late last year with FST. The elements of a CRP session are these:
- recordings of the pieces from the Showcase
- the facilitator
- the audience (in this case fellow composers and members of the Concerto Caledonia ensemble)
- a facilitated dialogue between composer and listeners
We listened to ‘Act of Union’ first, after which we were invited to say how the piece affected us, how we felt what details we picked up on. (The trick is to do this without saying ‘I liked’ or ‘I didn’t like’ all the time). Next Mhairi was given the opportunity to ask questions of the audience about specific points where she was looking for guidance. So for example ‘were there points where it could have moved along a bit quicker?’
The third stage gave the audience the opportunity to ask Mhairi questions. This is tricky both for the audience and the facilitator because the questions have to be framed as neutrally as possible, without embedding an opinion in the question itself. So ‘why was that passage so loud?’ is not acceptable, whereas ‘what were you looking to achieve with the dynamics of that passage?’ would be.
The final part is the part where the audience can offer an opinion, but it has to be a ‘permissioned’ opinion, for example ‘I have an opinion about the backing track and the strings’. The composer is at liberty to say they don’t want to hear the opinion. (That didn’t happen on this occasion.)
After we’d been through the process with Mhairi we listened to her piece again, which was interesting in the light of the discussion we’d had. It opened up all sorts of new ways of hearing it and made for a more satisfying experience than simply listening to it once and then offering feedback willy-nilly. The whole process was then repeated with Jen’s piece.
I feel that Critical Response Process has a lot to offer Distil participants. Because it’s a guided process it can offer a depth and detail of response, ensuring that the feedback is of genuine value to the artist. We plan to fix up another session in the not too distant future. It’s a great learning experience for composers and listeners alike.
DF