Am I Right or am I Wrong...
OK, I have a rant coming on. Feel free to skip this if you'd like. First, some background.
beldar & I are theater reviewers for the local paper he works at. We see on an average of 70+ shows a year. We see and review more shows than the other two area papers which do theater reviews. Since we actually like the local theater community and support them, we try to keep our reviews positive if we can (the past critic for the major paper felt the need to tear everything apart no matter what). If something's really horrible, we do a focus piece on a local performer rather than actually reviewing the piece. We have never let personal feelings get in the way of our reviews. There are local performers that we despise and that we love and have never shown favoritism of any kind regardless of what our true feelings are.
That said, here comes the rant.
I was an original board member of our local Fringe Festival and only dropped off because their choice of dates, prevented me from attending most or all of the festival itself and the organizers were very unprofessional. I tried in vain to get some simple information from them (schedule of events, media contact person, etc.) and was ignored repeatedly , not to mention told to make my own damn schedule of the shows if I wanted one. Also, the dates were supposedly the only window world-wide when no other Fringe Festivals were being held despite the fact that two other major ones (including the original one that started the whole thing) were being held in the same time frame. Needless to say I was annoyed by the lack of professionalism here.
In addition to this, I printed a review of a HORRIBLE show and chose mention the only redeeming performance rather than publishing the litany of bad acting, singing, etc. that overwhelmed the show. This greatly upset the lead actor (who was never mentioned as he was horribly mis-cast and gave the worst performance of the show) and he has no forbidden me to review anything that he has anything to do with (he feels we cannot give an unbiased review although we've never once mentioned that the man has no range - he plays every character EXACTLY the same regardless of what's called for). He's a board member on one of the local venues which casts a large amount of people from our readership and this will make it harder to argue that we should continue theater coverage since the editor already wants us to practically eliminate it.
Now, I am far from the most outspoken person or biggest bitch on the local theater boards but I'm really pissed that someone this petty is actually getting away with his threats to ban me from the local theater scene (I'm been moderated and am prevented from posting anything to our local theater list).
beldar is insisting that we cave to his whims but I don't feel like this sort of bullying should dictate my views and my participation.
OK, am I being wrong and should we submit to this petty, unprofessional shit or am I right in feeling raped (yes, this is how I feel) by his whims?
Discuss...