{photo by Ken Howard, Santa Fe Opera: Actors rehearsing for an upcoming production of the world premiere Opera Noir “The Letter,” with libretto by earstwhile Wall Street Journal theater critic Terry Teachout.}

This is really interesting- Wall Street Journal theater critic Terry Teachout made a bold and brave step across the proscenium line recently, agreeing to try his hand at creating the work that he has made a career out of critiquing. In this case, it’s a new adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s 1927 play called “The Letter,” turned into a 90 minute opera noir thriller that will play at the Santa Fe Opera.

Along the way, he has been sharing his experiences in the rehearsal hall through his twitter feed (@terryteachout). You can read the whole journal of his experience by going to www.search.twitter.com and entering the hashtag “#lettertweet.”

He also wrote an essay for the L.A. Times about the experience, and its impact on him as a critic. Here’s an intriguing snippet:

Just as important, hands-on experience also gives critics a proper respect for what Wilfrid Sheed calls “the simple miracle of getting the curtain up every night.” It’s hard to sing Violetta in “La Traviata” or play the Stage Manager in “Our Town.” It’s scary to go out in front of a thousand people and put yourself on the line. Unless you know what it takes to do that night after night — not just in theory but in your blood and bones — your criticism is likely to be more idealistic than realistic.

What is true of the interpretive artist is truer still when it comes to creative artists. Those who paint or write poems, after all, are doing something that is fundamentally different from merely writing about other people’s paintings and poems. They’re making something out of nothing. As Stephen Sondheim put it in “Sunday in the Park With George,” “Look, I made a hat / Where there never was a hat!”

But what if no one likes your hat? Worse yet, what if some callous clod makes fun of it in print? Don’t get me wrong: It’s not a critic’s job to make a bad artist feel good about himself. But a critic lacking in empathy will find it hard to understand the creative process in anything other than a superficial way — and the most effective way to acquire that empathy is to try making a hat of your own.

Read the rest of the essay and then tell us:

What do you think? How helpful is it to be critiqued by a person who actually knows the intimate travails of yanking something from page to stage? Is there value in aesthetic distance? After all, a critic’s job is to argue for the concerns of the audience, who do not necessarily know (or need to know) the behind the scenes difficulties. But is an artmaking critic a more empathetic one? And as criticism evolves, which is better? The “informed stranger” to your art form or the “relatable insider?”

And does Terry’s embracing of a journalistic approach to the rehearsal process change the potential viewer’s experience of the production? Does it change the potential critic’s context for understanding the piece? Should it?