Robert Trussell
rtrussell@kcstar.com

Some people have asked: "What do you look for as a critic?" That answer is simple: Something I can remember. Anyone who really knows me might conclude that my tastes are entirely too vulgar to really be a theater critic. The trash, in my view, is often as memorable as the art.

But theater has a split personality: One foot is in the nonprofit world of academically approved high art, the other in the tawdry, commercial world of showbiz. Sometimes the lines are blurred, but the truth is you can find as much truth and beauty in the vulgar as you can in the refined.

But at the end of the day, I look for something real -- a piece of writing, a moment in an actor's performance, an inspired bit of staging from a director that somehow conveys the emotional, pyschological or spiritual reality of being human.