Add the play Underneath the Lintel by Glen Berger to your Solo Show Reading List

Recently, a newly acquired friend and prominent actor/director/writer in the Pittsburgh area turned me on to a little solo show called UNDERNEATH THE LINTEL by Glen Berger.

Glen Berger also wrote a short play I directed years ago called "I WILL GO...I WILL GO..." about a man trying to cross the English Channel and going deaf by the end of it from the cold water.  I loved his writing and loved the theatricality and style of that play.  So I knew I would probably like UNDERNEATH THE LINTEL.

And I must say I'd put it on my required reading list for solo plays--right up there with KRAPP'S LAST TAPE or KICKING A DEAD HORSE or THOM PAINE (BASED ON NOTHING) as well as the others I mentioned in an earlier post.

Why do I love it?  One, it's not your usual confessional solo show of "Why I hate my father" or something god-awful like that.  It deals with existential questions about the existence of god, of faith, and tells a story of the everyday events and how they collide with the universe.  A character goes on a true journey, not just physically but mentally and spiritually and the audience can't help but be swept up in the magnitude of the story.  The writing is lyrical and at times quite funny. 

Actually, I was hooked even from the description of the set.  It takes place as a lecture in an auditorium or stage between shows, saying:

"props and other detritus from other shows can litter the back of the stage...Over the course of the evening the 'lecture' should imperceptibly turn into "theater".  The detritus, unnoticed and seemingly unimportant at first, can unexpectedly take on significance, alluding to scenes and history mentioned in the play.  The lighting can become warmer, more "theatrical", etc, and what seemed like a random strewing of objects, or a random water stain on the wall, for instance, can turn out to not be so random after all."

I knew just from reading this that this playwright was clear of his vision for the story and for the journey he wanted to take his audience on.  I knew I was in good hands. 


(And the writer side of me was envious of Berger's clarity and focus and his damned talent at his craft!)

What's also quite lovely is that Berger takes a small thing--an overdue library book--and explodes it into some with greater meaning.  We always talk about "high stakes' in the theater, but we forget what that can actually mean.  Sometimes even the smallest actions could lead to bigger consequences.  It all depends on how it affects the characters and disturbs their world.

Here's the plot summary from Alexis Soloski of the Village Voice:

On an inauspicious morning at a Dutch library, a librarian makes an unexpected find in the overnight return box. ...a much mistreated Baedeker's guidebook 123 years overdue. Even without compound interest, this tardiness merits a tidy fine, and in UNDERNEATH THE LINTEL, playwright Glen Berger's latest, our librarian hero determines to track down the miscreant. Berger's monologue, subtitled The Mystery of the Abandoned Trousers, hardly slacks. Mailing a fine to the long-lived scofflaw in question proves difficult, as the borrower listed his name only as `A'. In an effort to run him to earth, the librarian, who has never left his native town of Hoofddorp, zips to China, Australia, Germany, and America. He eats sweets, greases palms, sees Les Miserables in three languages, and fritters away all his accumulated vacation days. He has the time of his life, or perhaps for the first time actually has a life.

Writing the Solo Show, Pt 9: Page to Stage

Plays are peculiar things.  Sure, you can read a play, but the truth is that a script is a blueprint.  The performance is the building.

I’ve said this over and over, but I firmly believe this more and more as I work on writing this solo play. 

So where am I in the process?

After many months of writing various stories, notes, observations, I have to compile these pages into a binder.  

This binder is becoming the “script”.

It's still a complete mess, of course.  It's like a taking the clay and getting the shape and size right for the sculpture with only hints of what form that sculpture will take.

The problem here is that I want to write a play.  Not vignettes.  Not the facsimile of a therapy session.   I have no desire to get up on stage and just tell personal stories about my pain and grief and hope the audience “gets” me.  My desire is the universal truth of storytelling, finding the metaphor for the story and relating that to my audience in an entertaining way.

I’m not worried about whether or not the story seems personal or not.  If it comes from my sense of truth, it will be inherently personal, as all great stories are.   

What’s funny is that I’ve already written a solo play before—And I completely forgot about it.  The play is called Material Girl and its about a 15 year old girl waiting in line to get an autograph from Madonna because this will logically prove the existence of God.  Okay, it’s a short play, but still…I’ve done it before. 

In fact, if you’d like to read it, go to Original Works and take a look.

A ticking clock is always more interesting

Wait, no...not that kind of clock...

(That's the Doomsday Clock, if you didn't recognize it.)

My next post will be a little bit more about the progress of the solo show I’m working on.  I have many new pages, all random thoughts and scattered stories right now—it’s a big mess basically, and perhaps even a possible title: Dreaming to Fly.

However, what I really need right now is to give myself a deadline.

I had a wise, old theater teacher named Davey Marlin-Jones who used to joke with us that the reason he got into the theater was because he was so bad with deadlines and this profession forced him to confront that weakness.  There’s no pushing back opening night.  Once a date and venue is set, the clock is ticking.

So I realize I need a deadline.  That means setting a date and time and getting a space (even an informal one) and doing some kind of reading of material.

This really scares the hell out of me, actually.  But in a good way.

The deadline needs to be realistic, by the way.  It’s no good saying “I’ll have a 70 minutes of material ready in two weeks” if you have only a few pages of random thoughts.

Also, think of your workload and other projects you might have in the pipeline.

For instance, I have been cast in a production of Shining City by Conor Macpherson and therefore, will want to wait until after that show closes in mid-May.

Now that the clock is ticking, time to write more pages.

Spalding Gray, I wish I had known you

Tonight we're off to see the show Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell at the Warhol Museum.

If you don't know of Spalding Gray, I'm sorry.

Look him up.  Now.

Especially if you're reading some of these posts about building a solo show.  Everyone from Eric Bogosian to Mike Daisy who are doing autobiographical solo shows or performance works are standing on the shoulders of his groundbreaking work.

I remember seeing the video of Swimming to Cambodia years ago when I was in undergrad.  At the time, I'm not sure I fully appreciated the scope and power of it, the audacity and the genius of it.  I did know though, that I was completely mesmerized by the electricity of his writing and performance.

Spalding Gray is one of those performers I wish I had seen in person.  Although I'm looking forward to the presentation tonight, I know it won't quite be the same.

Writing the solo show, Pt. 8: Reading and Research

If you're anything like me, you might find yourself avoiding the act of actually writing by going to the library to look up books about writing.  

Or perhaps, using Google or otherwise procrastinating on the internet? 

(Curse you, Facebook!)

Now, we know that research is often a necessary beast we must wrangle.  We may need a sense of what has come before us, or to be inspired, or to simply get away from our own projects.  But after awhile, there is that scary moment when reading takes the place of writing. 

That inner voice inside says, “No, not yet…I still haven’t read this yet…so how can I write something about it…nope…gotta do some research…”

This usually happens when whatever it is we want to write is daunting and fearful.

For me, that is this solo show.

I could go on and on about why this particular show scares the hell out of me (gee, other than the “solo” aspect of performing alone on stage?  Or the intimate, more personal conection with the audience, or…)

I have been reviewing some great resources on solo works, though.  The most interesting, and highly recommended is Extreme Exposure, edited by Jo Bonney.  

This book is like a sampler of some of the greatest and most exciting solo performers fron the 70s to today.  (Well, not today, since it was published about ten years ago.)  You can sample through seletions from Spalding Gray, Jessica Hagedorn, Lenny Bruce, Whoopi Goldberg, Eric Bogosion, Lisa Kron, Danny Hoch, John Luguiziamo and Luis Alfaro.  What you get is a lovely panarama of the possibilities of what solo shows can be.  They can be political, personal, epic, or deal with the every day.  They can be sexy and fun or dangerous.  I recommend this for everyone’s shelf, actually.

The other book I’ve looked at is The Power of One by Louis E. Catron.  

It has a more mainstream selection (not quite as radically charged as Extreme Exposure) including examples from Jane Martin and Lanford Wilson. It’s got some great quotes about theater and some helpful examples.  What’s particularly amusing, though, is the argument of how different solo plays are from other plays.  Yet, as he describes what makes a great solo play, he then says how you also need those same things for a great play—conflict, drama, characters, spectacle, etc. 

It’s in reading this book, though, that I’ve had my breakthrough.

Don’t think of solo plays as this "other type of play".  

A solo show is a play.  

It’s not much different than any other play.  It’s theater.  It just happens to be performed by one actor. 

Suddenly, I don’t feel so daunted by it. 

I know how to write a play. 

Sheesh.

Stories left to tell

I seem to have done nothing but post about reading this month. 

Is January the month for reading?  I don’t think so…

So now time to announce the show I’m going to see at The Warhol next month.  It’s called Stories Left to Tell and it will be at the Warhol on February 12, starring David Conrad, celebrated actor and Pittsburgh native. 

Here's the info:

Spalding Gray’s autobiographical monologues were filled with the neuroses, fears and joys that resonate deeply with audiences. Co-conceived by Gray’s widow, Kathleen Russo and director, Lucy Sexton, Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell interweaves his well-loved stories, unpublished letters and journal entries into a funny, poignant and life-affirming evening of theater.

Writing the Solo Show, Pt. 7: Show it to a friend

I’m getting to that point and maybe you are, too.  You’ve been working in a vacuum for a long time, creating pages and pages of material.  Some of it could be crap but you have a sneaking suspicion that some of it is quite good.  

But how do you know?

It’s probably time to enlist the help of a friend. 

And by friend, I mean someone who can give you honest, critical feedback.  This should be preferably someone with a performance, theatre, or writing background.  Not your mother (she loves everything you do).  Not your spouse (need a more subjective and outsider eye).  Not someone who is in competition with you or finds ways of demoralizing you (who needs that?). 

(If you don’t have any friends, maybe you should hire a dramaturg.)

By the way, bribery in the form of buying a coffee, beer or taking them out to dinner is a perfectly acceptable form of coercion.  People are motivated by rewards and are more likely to help you if they know you are grateful, which you should be.

Make sure when you send off the pages, even if it's just a small amount, that you give the friend some context.  Define your objectives for the piece and say, this is where I’m heading, what you do think?  Even if you don’t know for sure, tell them and see if they agree.  The more specific you are with what you want to know about your work, the more specific your feedback. 

This is the first baby step towards the end goal of communicating something to an audience.  Your aim should always be to remain truthful to your own vision, but remember, you have to communicate that vision to others.  This person can help you do that.

Also, give yourself a date—I will email you pages by (blank) and let’s go out for coffee and talk about it on (blank).  Define the expectations for both of you.  The deadline keeps you motivated and accountable.

Don't just sit around waiting for the feedback.  Get back to work.

Writing the solo show, pt. 6: Now what?

You've been writing and writing and you've got all this material down, so now what?

That's where I'm at.  

Mostly I've jammed out on paper a lot of text that may or may not be used.  And a lot of notes.  Much of it is far too personal, but there are some really great gems in there.  I’m still too far away from knowing exactly what this piece will be, but the molds of clay are taking shape.

If you’re in this place, you may get impatient and want to do too much too soon.  You have to resist this urge.  I’ve already started to imagine the opening scene and the last image.  This might be a good touchstone for me in some ways, but I need to not get ahead of myself. 

Remember, it's a process.  One step at a time.

This first step in the process of getting as much down as possible is crucial.  It’s throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks.  There’s no thinking about quality.  You don’t know what’s good or not, you just have to get out of the way and get your story down.  

And whatever you do, don’t show it to anyone yet. 

There is going to come a time when this brain-dumping process is over with.  You may want to put a date on the calendar and say, I will have a “draft” by this date.  By draft, you can give yourself a page number, say 30 pages or 60 pages or whatever you feel comfortable with.  Then say, I’ll have that done by November 1^st.  That’s my date.

I call this part of the process, the “vomit draft”.  When I teach playwriting, I tell my students this is the part of the process where you give yourself ultimate permission to fail.  Write a piece of crap.  Write a real, honest-to-god turd of a manuscript.

You’ll find that once you release the “I have to write a masterpiece” idea from your mind, the writing goes a lot smoother.  When you look at it afterwards, you’ll find that it’s not a piece of crap at all, that there’s some real gold there.

Once you get done with this process, then you move on to showing it someone.  That’s when things will get interesting, too.  

But that’s for another post.

Writing the solo show, pt.5: Live the story

One of my pet peeves with monodramas is when the performer tells me a story in the past tense. 

If I’m sitting in the audience in any play and I hear an actor say “I remember when…” it makes me cringe. 

We must not forget one of the qualities which makes theatre unique:

Theatre is present tense.

We don’t want you to “tell a story”. 

We want to see you live through a story in front of our eyes.

Oedipus Rex is not about what happened (even if it is set in Greek times).  As the audience, we watch the inevitable doom happen to Oedipus before our eyes.  We witness it.  It is in the witnessing of the events that we gain catharsis, or knowledge, or just sheer pleasure (if watching a guy gauge his eyes out is your kind of thing...I'm not judging.).

However, having said that, you are likely to write part of your solo show in the past tense, especially as you initially write things down.  That’s okay.  Most of the stuff I’ve been writing has been a lot of memories and stories in the past tense.  There are ways to dramatize it, put it in the present moment.  After I get all of the raw material down, then I’ll start to work on that.

Ultimately you don't want to create a piece of literature.  You want a performance.  You can only do one  thing a time, though.  First, write some text, then build a performance out of that.  

Live the story, don't tell the story.  

Writing the solo show, pt. 4: Finding your metaphor

I have this thing when I write.  I also use it when I direct a show, as well.  I try to find the metaphor.  This is something I picked up from reading that wonderful directing book by William Ball, I admit it.

So I'm developing my metaphor for my solo show and all I can do is think about this story.  Ideally, a metaphor should be one sentence (ie American Buffalo is boys playing king of the hill), so bear with me, as this story is a little long:

I’m eleven years old and home alone.  We live in two-story house in Reno, Nevada.  I have recently seen the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark at the movie theater, probably for the tenth time.  

Inspired and wanting to be Indiana Jones, I run around the house with a short rope, pretending it’s a whip and I use it to ward off the Nazis. 

The house we live in has a great big foyer and the staircase on the first floor juts out a bit as the stairs run up alongside a landing with a railing on the second floor.  I decide its time to use the whip to swing across a great chasm of death, as Indy does in the movie.  I tie the rope to the upstairs railing.  My thought is to swing from the steps on the stairwell, my body flying out above the foyer, across the chasm, landing safely on top of the railing on the first level where the staircase juts out.  

I hear the trumpets of the Raiders theme in my head and I swing.  I soar through the air, hands holding tight to the rope, landing easily on the railing, carefully balancing.  I swing back again and smirk to myself, thinking, “I am Indiana Jones!”. 

So I do it again. 

Only this time, the rope doesn’t hold.

My body is suddenly adrift, my mind unsure of what is actually happening, and I fall backwards, crashing with a thud on the front hallway tile.  The wind is knocked out of me so hard I can’t breathe.  I’m lucky I my head isn’t cracked open, but as I wheeze and gasp for air, I think I’m going to die and my mom is going to walk in the front door of our house, see her dead son and wonder what the hell happened. 

Finally, I catch my breath.  I’m able to stand up.  Everything seems fine, nothing broken.  

I look at the rope on the floor which seems like a dead snake.

I realize for the first time, “I am not Indiana Jones”.

The idea is that we all have dreams, childhood dreams perhaps, but then reality brings us back down to earth.  Literally, in my case.

We can’t always do the things we want to do.  We can’t always be the things we want to be.  That’s just life.  It’s a hard lesson to learn.

Don’t get me wrong.  I believe in dreaming big dreams.  I believe in following your goals.  As Randy Pausch said in his last lecture, “brick walls are there to see how badly you want something”.  I do believe that.  But Randy, who wanted to be an astronaut, never got to be an astronaut.  He got close—he rode the “vomit comet” and felt what it was like to be in zero gravity, which was what he really wanted, but he never got to be an astronaut.

What I’m talking about is the difference between perception and reality.  I can't magically become six feet tall.  I can't run a 4 minute mile.  I can’t reverse the clock, pretend like I'm 25 years old.    

I can’t change the weather, only dress for it.

My solo show is about the fantasy of the "Real Man" and the reality of what it means to be a man.  Our perception and reality don't always coincide. 

Here are the major questions behind my metaphor:

What does it mean to be a real man?  When and how do we conceptualize this idea of real men and how does it affect us for the rest of our lives?

Indiana Jones exemplifies manliness.  As a boy I looked up to him because he was intelligent, brave, strong, a good fighter, good with the women, comfortable in a jungle or in the classroom, and fought for what he believed in.  He was one of the good guys.  

And let’s face facts, he looked cool, with that hat and leather jacket.  And the whip.  (and yes, I do have a whip even now…) 

There are many other images and faces of “real men”.  Think about Superman and Clark Kent.  Think about the Dark Knight.  Think about actors like Clint Eastwood, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Jack Nicholson, George Clooney, Clive Owen.  We carry around these ideas of what “manhood” looks like…that’s what I want to explore. 

 

More often than not, what we think is manly really turns out to be something else.  We find out we are something else.  

Maybe more than what we thought. 

Writing the solo show pt. 3: Let's get physical

In 1916, a writer of the Evening Sun in New York by the name of Don Marquis, created a fictional poet by the name of Archy. He also happened to be a cockroach with the soul of a human. From this downtrodden, underbelly view of the world, Archy shows how he sees life, and death and religion, and we meet his friend, Mehitable, an alley cat who is the re-incarnation of Cleopatra.

Archy types one letter at a time, without punctuation or much grammar, yet is quite lucid and poetical (and this pre-dates e.e. cummings, by the way).

Take this excerpt from the most famous poem, where Pete the Parrot talks about Shakespeare, the poor mutt, who he knew well:

money money says bill what the hell
is money what i want is to be
a poet not a business man

these damned cheap shows
i turn out to keep the
theatre running break my heart

slap stick comedies and

blood and thunder tragedies
and melodramas say i wonder

if that boy heard you order

another bottle Frankie
the only compensation is that i get

a chance now and then
to stick in a little poetry

when nobody is looking

but hells bells that isn t

what i want to do
i want to write sonnets and
songs and spenserian stanzas
and i might have done it too
if i hadn t got
into this frightful show game

business business business

grind grind grind

what a life for a man

that might have been a poet

Last post I mentioned one should do some research—read some solo shows or go see them. Friday night I got the chance to see Gale McNeeley perform his solo show Archy & Mehitabel. Complete with songs and recitations, characters from the poems and stories came to life due to Gale’s physicality and multiple voices.

Which brings me to my next thing to think about when writing a solo show, or rather, the thing I’m thinking about now.

 And that’s to remember that theatre is a physical activity.

Playwrights often forget this, which is why we see a lot of “talking heads” shows or plays that feel more like TV (which is also very aurally dependent as opposed to film which relies heavily on images).

Even though the above excerpt is a rich text-driven piece of poetry, Gale is able to inhabit multiple characters through his voice, body, and movements. We see him do Archy, by use of a 1920s style hat, and then launch into being Pete the Parrot, a drunken Will Shakespeare, a bloated Ben Johnson, and also Frankie Beaumont (some random bar patron, I assume).

Gale has extensive training in dell’arte and European clowning, which means he understands how a simple gesture, a slight variation in stance can create character and move a story along. Playwrights forget that. They rely too heavily on the words. Words are only part of the story. We’re not building a radio show. It’s live theatre.

Here’s a trick to think about when developing your monologues. Not all of us have dell’arte or clown training (I certainly don’t). You can still think of physicality in the simplest terms by thinking about activities that can be done. What can your character be doing that might coincide with what’s going on in the scene?

For instance:
a pregnant mom talking about her anxieties of being a new mother might be knitting baby socks
a musician changing strings on a guitar.
a man who just got his heart broken might be talking about his ex-girlfriend while he systematically rips up love letters

You don’t always necessarily need some kind of physical activity. There are times when the text needs to be front and center with little movement at all. But in the early stages of writing, it helps to remember and think about the physical three-dimensional space these characters will inhabit.

Solo show inspiration: a little Sarah Jones

Sarah Jones, clips from her performances and talking about her process.

Writing the Solo Show, pt. 2; See, Read, Write & Repeat

In the first part of this series of writing a solo show, I talked about “personal” v. “private”.  Now, let’s think about how you get started.

My recommendation is to first get your hands on some scripts for solo shows. 

(Actually, I would recommend going to SEE solo shows, if you can, but depending on where you live, this might not be feasible.  When I was living in NYC, I was able to see the mesmerizing Sarah Jones do her show down at P.S. 122 before she "made it", saw a dell'arte show by Joanne Shirle, and saw Eric Bogosian's Wake Up at the Jane Street Theater, among many others by lesser known actors.  There is no substitute for seeing these types of amazing performers doing top notch material.  And...tonight I’m off to see a solo show tonight at the University of Pittsburgh, Archy & Mehitabel by a dell’arte performer Gale McNeeley.  I’ll post about that next time.)

Don’t just look at the the usual suspects like Mike Daisey, Anna Deavere Smith, Eve Ensler, Eric Bogosian, Lily Tomlin, or Spalding Gray.  There are the most popular shows like Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife, Sarah Jones’ recent Broadway hit, Bridge & Tunnel, Sam Shepard’s Kicking a Dead Horse (which I saw in NYC, read here for more), or the brilliantly off-beat Thom Paine (Based on Nothing) by Will Eno.  

Also try to get any and all obscure ones.  Find out if any actor friends have written a show and ask if you can read it.  (I just did that on Facebook, actually…)

You’ll find that these solo shows will be as unique as their creator.  Some will be character-based, some documentaries, some more text-driven, others more song or movement.  Some will be funny and some political.  There will be some similarities.  The important thing is, you’ll start to get ideas about your own show. 

This is where you should start asking yourself, what does my show look and feel like?  What do I want my audience to experience? 

Jot down those ideas, no matter how outlandish they may seem. 

Creating content for a first draft is, quite frankly, the most daunting part.  Don’t concern yourself with how much you need to produce—whether it’s a ten minute show, an hour show, or longer.  Get down the main ideas and thoughts first.  Like any first draft, don't worry about quality.  Get it down.  All of it.  Most will suck, but that's okay.  You're digging for gold, so you're gonna get dirty.

If you’re an actor, you can have a lot of fun writing the first draft.  There’s no reason to sit down with pen and paper or at the computer.  You have the freedom to discover your characters on your feet, with or without any text to start. Eric Bogosian used to perform his monologues as an improv into a tape recorder then go back and rewrite/edit it.  That’s one way of doing it.  Sarah Jones talks about how she got most of her characters from riding the subway.

Creating the solo show is ideally the best way to highlight your own performance talents, so cater it for yourself, the performer.  I play guitar and harmonica and write silly songs.  Is that going to be in my solo show?  You bet.  There are certain types of characters I can do well and others I can’t.  Sure, I could challenge myself, but hey, writing a solo show is challenge enough, don’t you think?

To get you started, here is a quick (and by no means exhaustive) reading list:

Books about solo performance:

Extreme Exposure, Edited by Jo Bonny

The Solo Performer’s Journey by Micheal Kerns

Your Name Here by Susan Merson

Solo Scripts (in no particular order):

Krapp’s Last Tape by Samuel Beckett

Not I by Samuel Beckett

Act Without Words by Samuel Beckett

Kicking a Dead Horse by Sam Shepard

Thom Pain (Based on Nothing) by Will Eno

Fires in the Mirror by Anna Deavere Smith

I Am My Own Wife by Doug Wright

Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler (not a solo show but it is monodrama)

Bridge & Tunnel by Sarah Jones

Sex, Drugs & Rock’n’Roll by Eric Bogosian

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee by Eric Bogosian

Swimming to Cambodia by Spalding Gray

Monster in a Box by Spalding Gray

My Name is Rachel Corrie, edited by Katharine Viner & Alan Rickman

Lackawanna Blues by Ruben Santiago-Hudson

Moonshot Tapes by Lanford Wilson (short play)

Going Solo: writing the solo show, pt. 1

A few months ago, I got a request from a reader for advice and tips on writing a solo show.  Now, I’ve never written a solo show, but okay, I’ll admit it—like any other actor, I’ve always thought about putting a show together for myself. 

And then my stomach flips over with angst and fear.

Anything worth doing is difficult, most likely, and now I have actually started to ignore the nagging fears and have started putting together some writing for the purpose of a solo show.  So I will gladly post some of my thoughts on the subject as I try to tackle the beast called “monodrama”.  There are other more experienced folks who have written books on this subject, so I encourage you to do your own research.

First off, I know there are theatre-goers out there would rather rip off their own arm and eat it rather than sit through any solo show.  I have seen a fair amount, actually, and most of them succeeded or failed on the strengths of the actor or the writing.  Some, however, were beautiful combinations of text and performance.

The biggest problem with the solo show is the same with any kind of writing—you can fall into the “private” category instead of the “personal” category.  The result is that if the audience is not friends or family, they don’t care about any of your problems.  I’m sure you’ve seen this show before—it’s usually self-indulgent, theatre-as-therapy perhaps with a dash of nostalgia and melodramatic emotion, with themes ranging from “why can’t I get work as an artist” to “why my mom and I never got along”.

“Personal” v. “Private”

I learned this concept when I took my first poetry writing class and it's always stuck.  What’s the difference?  Personal is something you reveal about yourself that is universal, that everyone can relate to and therefore, will empathize with you.  Private is so personal that only a small circle of friends might understand it.  This type of writing doesn’t bring the audience in on it, but keeps them at a distance. 

And here is the key to the successful solo performance.  A solo show is not about “I, I, I, me, me, me, the performer”.  It’s about the audience.  It’s about “I have to tell YOU this story and here’s what YOU will get out of it.” 

Many monodramas ignore the fourth wall (but not all).  They use the audience, feed off the audience, and the audience knows it.

Of course, this is common sense, right?  The actor-audience relationship is crucial with all good theatre, but even more so with the solo show because 90% of the time, there’s no set, few lights, just one actor and a crowd of people.

So how do you get to that place of writing/performing “personal” stuff?  


That’s coming up in pt. 2.

Keep that dead dog crap off my stage! (Private v. Personal)

The most interesting thing about writing stories is that no matter what the story is about, or who, it’s really about the writer. Give ten writers the same plot, characters, and events and the story would still be different. This is why Seneca's Oedipus Rex is so different than Sophocles'

Because plot is not necessarily story.

If you gave ten writers the plot, characters and events that make up “Little Red Riding Hood”, you’d get ten different stories. The plot is just a collection of facts. Red goes to see Grandma. Wolf tries to trick and eat Red. A hunter saves Red and Grandma by killing the wolf. But what’s the story really about? Each writer may think Red has different wants and relationships with the forest or the wolf. One Red may be frightened of the wolf or doesn’t want to go visit Grandma. Another writer’s Red may love the adventure of it or love Grandma’s cooking. Is Little Red Riding Hood the story of a girl facing her fears? Is it the story of her connecting with her Grandma (youth v. old age?)? What if we told the story, not from Red’s point of view, but from the wolf’s, who is just doing what’s in his nature? Suddenly the story might become a tragedy.

When we tell a story, we reveal how we see the world. So every story I write is really about me. All the characters are from my head and grapple with my own burning questions or issues. Some are more personal than others. No writer can write about something outside of his/her experience. And usually the personal issues of the writer are universal…becomes everyone has a family, has a lover/wife/husband/partner, feels love, anger, loneliness, or deals with rites of passage like growing up or follows their dream or whatever…

Stories should never be private. Private means “so personal, so secret” that it has no relevance to anyone else and is in fact not designed to. Private is not universal.

Personal is for others, involving humanity. Private is “just for me, “aka self-indulgent. In more crude terms…Personal is making love. Private is masturbation.

These thoughts are on my mind because I’m going to develop a solo performance. A monologue. I figure if it worked for Eric Bogosian, it can work for me. Bogosian is a playwright (SubUrbia, Talk Radio) and performer (currently on one of the Law & Orders) and you can check him out on Utube.

I saw him perform his show “Wake Up & Smell the Coffee” at the Jane Street Theater in New York City when I lived there. It was one of those theatrical experiences you remember because you think, “Holy crap, that’s a charismatic performer who doesn’t pull his punches and doesn’t waste my time. He’s got the goods.” Not quite as momentous as when I saw Mnemonic, but still quite thrilling.

What I like most about him is that he doesn’t merely stand up with a microphone and tell me a story about his personal life (like Denis Leary or Mike Daisey). He actually performs characters in dramatic situations. Okay, sometimes he tells personal stories—well, rants is a better word. He even did a character with his own name once. But he never confused the fact that he knew theatre was a construct and therefore the character of “Eric Bogosian” is different than the real person.

Sometimes that personal style of storytelling can be done quite well (Spalding Gray was a master). But usually in less capable hands, it sucks.

Why? Most times the solo performer confuses personal with private.

Theatre involves an audience/actor relationship. Solo performance is not merely a way of expressing emotions without any thought to what you are actually trying to convey. I’ve seen actors who “felt so sad” onstage, but communicated nothing to the audience. It’s not your job as performer to feel sad, but to tell a story. In the end, the audience should feel sad (or whatever you want them to feel, get, understand, etc.). Some solo performers confuse the art of confessing with the art of telling a story. So what you end up with is a lot of crap about a dead dog but no relevance. There’s no story, no social commentary, political context. No point of view about the world. It’s more “let me tell you about something that made me sad”.

So what?

Theatre is too important to waste time on triviality. Also, theatre is not therapy. Theatre is communication. So keep the banality and the confessionals off the stage.

I’m not interested in relating stories about my childhood like reading from some diary. And it’s not because I’m afraid of revealing my inner demons and secrets or telling the truth or “what will others think of me?” I’m a writer. I got over that a long time ago.

I won’t discount the idea of digging into my own personal memories and thoughts. But I want my stories to be compelling and universal. I want it to be about me and you and the world we live in. I can trust it will be about me, because I’m writing from my point of view. Who else is telling the story?

The real question I’m struggling with right now is “what is the story I want to tell as a solo performer”?

And that’s why I’m procrastinating by writing this rant instead of working on it. Or working at all, really.

Ah, procrastination…that’s a topic for tomorrow…