How many reviews did you read?

Now both of Dublin's main theatre festivals have drawn to a close, here's something else to consider. Over the past three weeks the arts pages of this newspaper have been dominated by reviews of shows at Dublin Fringe Festival and Dublin Theatre Festival.

Critics have assessed the writing, the direction, the performances and the technical details, as well as the place of productions within certain traditions or through the lens of current social or political situations.

So did you read the reviews? More to the point, did you heed them? Did they make a difference to what you saw and what you spurned? Did they affect how you thought about a piece after you'd seen it? And why? Or why not?

These are not trick questions; they are questions that demand to be asked, regularly, by everyone with an interest in theatre. That much was brought home at the weekend by Conditions of Criticism, a symposium on theatre criticism held at Liberty Hall as part of Irish Theatre Magazine's Critical Engagement week, in partnership with the school of drama at Trinity College in Dublin.

Nineteen academics, from universities in Toronto, Tel Aviv and Prague, as well as from several UK and Irish institutions, were joined in their debates on the history and reality of criticism by Sir Richard Eyre, the director and former artistic head of the Royal National Theatre in London, and by Joyce McMillan of the Scotsman, a prominent theatre critic.

Such a combination was bound to produce some high-octane discussion, with strongly academic concerns, such as subjectivity and corporeality, nationhood and identity, and the ever-present spectre of postcolonial theory, muscling up to the more practical matters of newspaper-based theatre criticism, as candidly elucidated by McMillan: space, deadlines and the duty to file copy that interests general readers.

This tension between the two types of criticism, academic and journalistic, was one of the most frequent issues to emerge during debate - with often frustrating results for generalist theatre writers.

They were frustrating because, although several speakers skilfully identified the challenges facing critics in contemporary Ireland (and beyond), and although many also forcefully illustrated the case for a more deeply engaged, more socially responsible criticism, a persistently vague use of the term "critic" made it almost impossible to discern what was being demanded of each critic. What constitutes a critic, after all: a PhD, a press pass or both?

And they were frustrating because these were real and serious responsibilities. We heard about the role of the critic as elucidator of a society's awareness of itself, even as shaper and definer of a nation's coming into being. Dr Ben Levitas and Dr Chris Morash showed how critics performed this function in the early years of the Irish nation state, when they were crucial in defining the role of the National Theatre. Eyre remarked that he wished critical challenges to the Royal National Theatre during his time at its helm had been sharper, more passionate guides for his sense of what needed to be done.

Prof Freddie Rokem, from Tel Aviv, talked about the critic as the creator of a community, of a sense of cohesion and direction. And several contributors made clear the need for critics to pay greater attention to audiences, to their reception of theatre - for the purposes both of historical documentation and for the understanding of audiences and their needs.

In one of the day's most memorable contributions Dr Jools Gilson-Ellis, a Cork-based choreographer and academic, addressed the floor through performance and speech, identifying the need for critical writing to engage in the process of making theatre rather than to engage only the finished product - to emerge from the space between theory and practice.

Her argument was backed up by her colleague Dr Bernadette Sweeney, who questioned critics' authority to render an ephemeral process material and substantive. In their critical analysis and description - and, worse still, grading - of a performance, the "making word of flesh", as she put it, is something vital inevitably lost or suppressed? Sweeney thought so, and she called for changes in the use of imagery to accompany reviews, in the use of the star system and even in the composition of review headlines.

All of this was asked of academic critics by academic critics themselves; that much was clear, and it prompted stimulating debate.

But what was being asked of newspaper critics seemed constantly to vacillate. Almost at once, reviewers were reminded that, unlike academic writers, they were not artists and should know their place as journalists; they were also being asked to write in a language of greater artistry, a language to understand process, performance and the visual.

And with the need for audience development in this country broadly agreed on, a comment from the floor that academic articles boast an average readership of 2.8 people suggested that the more widely read medium of the newspaper review is as important as the academic article in addressing this need. The specifics of how this could happen were always far from being discussed, however, as crucial lines remained blurred.

What was being asked of newspaper reviewers: to rate or to reflect? What was really the greatest crime a newspaper could commit: to close down subjectivities and ways of thinking or to close down a show? Given the high emotion aroused by the latter function, how could newspaper reviewers approach their task so as to make an impact beyond the immediate granting of approbation or injury? And how can more readers be encouraged to be critical themselves in their approach to criticism, to seek, in a newspaper review, more than just the go-ahead or the caution against seeing a show?

With luck future symposiums will address in more detail the complex issues opened up by the weekend's event. With luck, also, given that the topic of newspaper reviewing featured strongly in proceedings, more newspaper critics will be on future panels.

That said, the absence of critics - and of practitioners - in the audience suggests the lack of interest may lie at the source. Yet, as McMillan pointed out, criticism is not a matter merely of sitting back and making or breaking a show, it is a civic process in which everyone to whom the art form matters should be involved. And that includes the reader of reviews, the audience member, the artist.

Without events such as Critical Conditions, without the letters pages of newspapers, the diversity of critical voices risks being stifled, as Victor Merriman argued, in a culture of silence rather than being accommodated in a dialogue that can only grow healthier with every note of dissent and dispute.