Anybody who’s attended a Fringe Festival knows the drill. In the first days, before word-of-mouth reviews get out, you flip through the program, scanning for provocative or otherwise attention-grabbing titles (see this year’s I’m Naked and I’m Ready), which might indicate a show worth taking a chance on. Last year, scouring the listings, I zeroed in on Whiskey Bars, not really for its title, but because it promised two things that tickle my fancy: Kurt Weill songs and cabaret.
Fifteen minutes into the show, my friend was drumming her palm against her knee, trying to help this poor fellow (an out-of-towner, by the way) keep time. With no rhythm and, worse, no pitch, he butchered Weill’s songs. Even more painful was the narrative thread, a story about a past-his-prime performer making backstage confessions to a ghostly critic. In other words, this was a show about the woes of being a bad actor.
As with so many art forms, just because theater can be done solo doesn’t mean it should be. “Why do they often insist on doing at least three of the following tasks themselves: writing, directing, performing, composing, and design?” That was a question posed earlier this year by New York Times critic Margo Jefferson, in an essay called “Words to the Wise Performance Artist: Get Help. Collaborate. Grow.” Human beings, she argued, are endowed with but one gift, two if they’re lucky (three if they’re Meredith Monk). Thus, artistic expression is better served when artists with complementary gifts collaborate—see Gilbert and Sullivan, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Mozart and da Ponte.
Whiskey Bars neatly showcased Jefferson’s point. This performer, who had an impressive opera resume, had shouldered many tasks outside his realm of capabilities. His text luxuriated in solipsism. His interpretation compelled him to flit about as if he had swallowed Mexican jumping beans. That, in turn, buried all musical rhythm or pitch.
Much of this could have been avoided had he engaged with a real director—someone to camp out in the sixth row during rehearsals, shaping the show from the perspective of its audience, rather than the performer. Theater cannot exist without an audience; even when the impetus to create a solo show is to exorcise personal demons, why put your work onstage if you don’t envision some sort of payoff for those watching?
Judging by the growth of one-person shows at Fringe Festivals here and around the world, the numbers of people who want to get up onstage and gamble on that payoff are, to say the least, not subsiding. Ease and economy are two prime factors—shows like extended monologues and unaccompanied acts are among the least expensive and most easily produced forms of theater. It follows, then, that the low-tech, nonjuried Fringe Festival environment (for which acts are chosen by lottery) is a natural breeding ground for them; this year, about one in five Minnesota Fringe productions (August 4 through 14 this year) is a solo show. The Minnesota Fringe Festival, the biggest in the U.S., even helped spawn a handful of solo celebrities, like the provocateur Heidi Arneson, ancient tale-teller Charlie Bethel, shtick-man Ari Hoptman, and the hilariously self-loathing Amy Salloway. Even Kevin Kling counts in a way—National Public Radio made him famous, but scores of fans look forward to his annual Fringe show.
As a genre, the one-person performance is hardly monolithic. A single performer might play multiple, even dozens of characters, as in Becky Mode’s Broadway hit Fully Committed (produced to much acclaim by the Jungle Theater two years ago). Then there’s the lonely cabaret singer, stringing together songs with simple and often innuendo-laced narrative; and performers who blur the lines between theater and standup (see Margaret Cho, Billy Crystal, and even Dame Edna). But the largest subspecies of one-person performance, the one propagating within Fringe Festivals with the most vigor, is the theatrical cousin to literary memoir, or even reality television. These shows often are written, performed, and directed by a single person and mostly or wholly concerned with that person’s life. At this year’s Festival, Esera Tuaolo, the gay former Vikings football player, is slated to perform For the Rest of My Life, and Kling will dish up another helping of home-state stories in Dick da Tird. Salloway, who had a local and national Fringe Fest hit with Does This Monologue Make Me Look Fat? will relate tales from her summers at Jewish camp in So Kiss Me Already, Herschel Gertz!
In an age of DIY everything, this surfeit of self-involved theater comes as no big surprise. Glancing across the larger spectrum of pop culture, it’s easy to find what’s fanning the flames of our performance fantasies: home recording technology, desktop video- and music-editing suites, and, more pointedly, the glut of reality television series and makeover shows. It may be a stretch to say everyone’s an artist, but surely we can all be actors, or at least performers of some sort. Maybe the private citizen is becoming obsolete; our struggles—with intimacy, with weight loss, with marriage—are no longer deemed mundane. Depending on how much of ourselves we are willing to expose, if we’re willing to perform our problems, we’re sure to attract at least a few voyeurs.
From the audience perspective, confessional theater appeals to our often prurient sense of curiosity. In that respect, among last year’s tell-alls, Salloway’s Does This Monologue Make Me Look Fat? did not just go the farthest; it was also one of the best. The audience knew all along that the insufferable main character was Salloway herself; still, they laughed raucously (and some cried) because her stories—late-night supermarket binges; an attempt to find self-acceptance at a convention of obese lesbians, even though she’s heterosexual—were as devastating as they were sidesplitting. Salloway is apparently one of those doubly gifted artists, having written and performed her show (she also apparently got lucky in going without a director). The script was stacked with witty turns of phrase and conversational stylings, but more important, it was clear that Salloway the performer managed to detach herself from Salloway the person (as, of course, any good actor must do). She treated herself as a character, and offered a perspective on that character that was neither glamorous nor protective.
It’s not just acting and writing that draws us to solo performers, despite the considerable chance that we’ll be disappointed by what they offer. There’s also something noble about their perseverance. In some cases, such as Salloway’s, these folks consider themselves outcasts from the larger ensemble theater world. Salloway is obviously a capable actor, but she doesn’t fit the two most popular actress prototypes, the ingénue and the “comforting aunty.” Thus her longtime battle to get cast in ensemble productions. Yet passion pushed her on to make a name serving up one-woman sideshows.
Also, it can be mighty lonely up there onstage. Many of us have a distinct fear about public speaking, let alone baring all, emotionally at least, before a live audience; this feeds our admiration for people who do. And in my case, I suspected seeing a show about a fat actress (this was well before Kirstie Alley’s TV show) would leave me feeling better about myself. Somehow we take comfort in knowing there are people more messed up than we are, and luckily for us, they’re everywhere these days.
But beyond all that, first-rate solo performers can challenge us to have a more engaging theater experience. After all, they have no one to rely on except their audience, whereas in ensemble productions, the actors create energy among themselves. At last year’s festival, local storyteller Dave Mondy seemed to be talking directly to his audience in This Love Train is Unstoppable and I Am the Conductor—but it was less an incarnation of the dreaded “interactive theater” than it was a nod to solo theater’s kinship with cabaret, standup, and one-on-one storytelling.
These forms are bound together by performers who “fake” trusting relationships with their audiences, which can elicit a more passionate response and sometimes make the whole experience rather volatile. It’s the rare solo show that can trick our imaginations to go outside the playhouse. Suddenly, we can become less interested in our own entertainment and, instead, more invested in the well being of its star. In the instance of Salloway, when I eventually spoke to her, long after seeing her show, I had to repress the desire to ask about her personal life. After all, while her performance was certainly drawn from real life, it was also necessary to remember that it had all been an act.
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