Solo Performances: A Tool for Social Justice/ A Tool for Healing

here is a great movement underway in the theater  and simultaneously in the healing community. It has been a long time coming, yet in essence returns us to our deepest community roots from our ancestral egalitarian society’s. We are reclaiming our roles as storytellers, as Hero’s on a journey home, as social justice commentators, as jesters and shamans. In the contemporary theater, we are doing this through the vehical of “The Solo Show”.

The solo show that I am speaking of is the one person show that is conceived of, written by and performed by one man or one woman. It is a show that is the most holistic form of theater as it is born and manifested from one person’s deepest vision. It goes beyond conventional theater in terms of intimacy because the story, experience and perspective is created by the performer.

For me, it has been the richest and most empowering journey I have taken in my lifetime and I have devoted my self the exploration of this form. I have written and performed my own shows, directed and produced countless other solo shows and been a teacher and coach in the development of solo shows. Additionally, I have created and implemented a process to utilize contemporary monologues as a therapeutic form with populations of people with cancer, AIDS, mental illness and survivers of emotional, physical and sexual abuse. There is no form that I have found that has the possibility of being a more powerful testement to the human spirit that the solo show. On a profound level, it is about the willingness to show up onstage and reveal our humanity to one another.

Unlike the artifice inherent in traditional theater, this is no smoke and mirrors euphimism. Solo Performance is based on the direct experience of the performer him or herself. It is based on real life experiences. The emotional story is the performer’s story one way or another, every time. This includes documentary theater such as Anna Deveare Smith and Danny Hoch who are choosing their subjects for interview.It is their personal point of view and choice to frame particular subjects in a particular way that shows us who they are.