Why a Solo Show is Great for Business (even if you're not an actor!)

People come to me to do one person shows for many diverse reasons. I notice that different kinds of people come to me in waves.


Because I have been doing this work for so long, I have had waves of people doing solo shows for various reasons.

In the beginning and because of my own training I suppose, I almost got actors exclusively as clients. And there are still many many actors who have become aware of the fact that solo performance is an empowering way to showcase ones' talents. This is one of the reasons why Fringe Festivals and Solo Performance festivals are popping up all over the globe. Solo Performance IS the new paradigm of theater and the fastest growing in the world.

Because I live in Santa Fe, not NYC, LA or San Francisco , I get a unique cross-section of non-actors who are driven by alternative reasons for wanting to find a specific and powerful expression for creating and performing a show. Many are woman who want to feel their voice is being heard in a deep and creative way in the world.

In the last ten years I have worked with a shaman who wanted to express her spiritual journey, a former sex worker who was now a therapist, many business people and several cultural creatives doing interesting projects in alternative markets.

When people tell an interesting and powerful story in this forum, huge amounts of energy get stirred up. It's why I tell people it is a shamanic process. You literally cannot offer a show onstage to a community of people and not change and be changed.

It is a great way for like-minded people and people who can benefit from your business services to find their way to you.

I must say that particularly for people who do work with people; therapists, teachers, healers of one kind or another..the balance of sharing one's own story onstage attracts business.

It is a new paradigm. In a way, it is exactly how my path has played out. From solo performer, to teacher/facilitator to healer/director. It has all been how my brand has been formed. Not in a contrived way, but in a very organic way.

Solo shows are a wonderful, expressive and fun way to connect with your natural clients. It is putting yourself out there in a HUGE way.

And so the form continues to morph and expand....


Happy Spring to All! Love, Tanya

More Solo Performance Tips from The Solo Performance Coach

The pitfalls to watch out for when creating a solo show (hint: self-indulgence tops the list) xoxo, Tanya

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.

Spalding Gray video

Here is a scene from Spalding Gray's seminal work, Swimming to Cambodia. I met Spalding a few years before he did this show at the Wooster Theater Group.

I saw an earlier  show at the Brattle Street Theater in Cambridge, Ma. in 1984. It changed my life. About twenty of us sat in the audience. He came onstage in his usual way. His voice and style was already established.

He spoke openly about his mother's suicide and masturbating at Walden Pond to feel closer to the Spirit of Thoureau. I was hooked. From that night on, I knew that solo performance/contemporary storytelling was my path. Who knew how far it would lead me.

I love you Spalding. You were my first and the best of the best. Your generosity onstage set the bar.

Creative Empowerment: The Right and Need to Create Your Own Work

I am sitting here in a cafe in my hometown of Santa Fe...pondering.

What do we crave? What do our Souls need? What is the highest path as an artist?

The answers are different for all of us. But, I do see certain patterns in common...either for better or worse no matter what the medium.

My medium is solo performance. It began almost 30 years ago when I met Spalding Gray and saw him perform an original show.

At the time I was studying acting and didn't realize it consciously, but I was already feeling confined.

I had performed in classical plays for years by then. I began as a young teen. Shakespeare, Molier, Albee, Pinter, the Greeks were already in my repertoire. I loved the experience of pouring my own emotional experience into a character. It was amazing. But the stories I was telling were not my stories.

I could relate to some. Many..not so much. Including the pinnacle. When I was twenty seven years old, I was in the Pulitzer Prize winning play "The Kentucky Cycle". It was a well done production, but less than satisfying. I has the realization "If this is the BEST, contemporary American theater can offer me and I am still not getting the experience I was desiring, I need to create my own work.

So, I did. I took the leap. The terrifying, exciting and HUGE leap into the world of creating my own work and helping others create their own work. It was raw, it was hilarious, it was heartbreaking, it was true, it was hard.

And I was hooked.

That was twenty some years ago.

What has my life been since?

It has been authentic. It has been hard. It has been joyful.

Mostly, it has been ALIVE. Vitally and unapologetically alive.

My medium is solo performance. Some will call it indulgent. Some will call it narcissistic. Sometimes it is. But not the way I strive to work with it.

I call it generous. I call it intimate. And I call it fulfillment in the way that conventional theater never could be.

My favorite musicians are always also composers. I'd take a rendition of one of Sam Llana's songs, straight from his own Soul and life over a polished Broadway voice or pop icon calling it in any
day.


My own guide has been "do the most intimate work in alignment with your own soul as possible"And, you will find your true audience. The one who resonates with you.

Be bold. Risk failing. Be true. Be who you are. Put it on a stage and let yourself shine.

Next month I am bringing Lauren Weedman to Santa Fe. Lauren Weedman is pretty much the Holy Grail of solo performers in my opinion. I am not sure if she claims this title, but when I saw her tape of BUST (check it out online) I knew that I was in the (virtual) presence of a master of this genre.

And, I work with, produce, direct, teach and see hundreds of solo shows a year. So, when I say this, I am saying something.

She is hilarious and transcendent and her point of view is sharp, dark, absurd and deeply compassionate. Not an easy combination to pull off. Only a most brilliant mind and embodied actor can offer such an enormous range. She just got a rave in the Washington Post. She deserves it.

She is humble enough to come to our little town of Santa Fe and offer her amazing talent for not much of a financial guarantee. That is because I produce these amazing shows on a shoestring. This is a mom and pop solo show operation. As in, her husband will be running the lights and my child will be babysitting her child. And I will be picking them up from the airport. Glamorous life...this one of live theater, huh?

And yet, when one hits the ball all around the park with performers like Lauren Weedman, Ann Marie Houghtailing, Ann Randolph all of whom I have presented or am presenting this year...the experience is like not other for me. It is a moment of shining glory, shining humanity actually.

This past year, I presented Doug Vincent at the first Santa Fe Solo Performance Festival. Doug had been working on the script for his show for several years when he got in touch with me a few years ago. He and I slowly worked on it together for a few more years. He presented it at this years festival. The show, which was called "Dad" and was brilliant, poignant and hilarious. It was about his Dad's suicide when he was a freshman in college, him coming to terms with it, and the birth of his own daughter. Doug was tender, warm, funny as hell and outrageous. As I watched him simultaneously claim the story, release it, and transform it...walking it out like a shaman in front of the tribe of audience, I could not stop crying.

The best solo shows will do that to you. You will not be able to stop crying, or laughing, or both simultaneously, or getting goosebumps. Solo performance is not meant as an intellectual exercise; leave that for the ministers and politicians. It is not meant to be self indulgent though many inexperienced solo performers can fall into that trap. One has to walk through a mine field of the Self to find the gold. But when mined, it is the most brilliant gold on the planet.

This is why I do the work I do. This is why I keep exploring it, teaching it and offering it. It has given me some of the richest moments of my life....Happy Holidays Friends!