Material for a One Person Show

Material for a One Person Show!

This year, I have worked with many actors and other creative people developing their one person shows for performance.

One of the stories was about a man who grew up with a small time Mafioso for a father and the mystery that surrounded his death. One was a woman who interviewed a friend who had a stroke and created her character based on her friend’s experience. One was a Vietnam Veteran who went back forty years to create his show which was ultimately as much a coming of age story as a story about war. Another is of a woman who was given up to a foster family....there was domestic abuse and mental illness throughout her lineage and she used her story and the story of her ancestors as the basis for her show....Michelle, a former student, based her show on an interview she did with a Mexican housekeeper. I had given her solo performance class an assignment to interview someone who they knew as an acquaintance and find out about their life. They were to turn the interview into a monologue and embody the character for the class. Michelle embodied her character, Rosa to a tee...chomping away on a breakfast burrito and telling us the intimate and heartbreaking story of a woman who had left her life and child inMexico to reach for a better life across the border. She spoke of almost dying in the desert and having to take water from the bag of a dead man....This interview with a woman who knew uncovered a powerful story and unearthed an unspoken story in our culture. Who are these new immigrants who work in our kitchens and in the back of restaurants and live among us? This powerful uncovering set Michelle on a journey of interviewing others who had crossed the border into this country, some legally and some illegally to share, in her show, the contemporary immigrants journey..

So where is your show hiding? Where is your material? I would say, it’s in plain site. Look a little closer at your own life, your own stories, the people who live among you. There are stories everywhere, waiting to be told. Waiting for you to tell them… Pay attention today to your life. It's where your themes, topics, passions, dramas, possibilities already exist.