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.

Mike Daisey, the clear heir of Spalding Gray...Changing the World with his Solo Show

There is a reason that Mike Daisey has been called heir apparent to the late, great Spalding Gray. He sits at a desk and shares engaging,funny stories of life and the human condition. He has a strong and compelling voice. Both men's voices are/ were unique, ironic and specific. Both came from New England and are/were very smart. Spalding, a Gemini and Mike, an Aquarius are both air signs. O.K, dis-regard the last comment. I've just lived in Santa Fe too long.

I think that both men changed the world in very unique ways through their artistry. For me, Spalding gave many of us permission, through his modeling, to speak intimately onstage of our lives. This was way before The Moth, and monologue slams and Fringe Festivals. He was really a revolutionary,  sharing the details of his life in a way that was "speaking the unspeakable" especially for the culture at the time. This was the Reagan 80's after all and authenticity was not the word of the day. In the society at large or in art. But it was always Spalding's way.

He was also a deeply troubled man. Wounded and neurotic. His shows all were about him, his life, his process. He foreshadowed his death and talked about his suicidal ideations. He struggled with addiction and deep pain from his mother's suicide. In the end, he took his own life on a frigid New York day eight years ago now.

It was a horrible day. He left a legacy in his two sons and of course, in the shows. He also left a different kind of legacy in the theater. He created, almost single handedly, a new kind of storytelling. A breaking of taboos onstage. Not shock value taboos like performance artist Karen Finley who appeared onstage naked around the same time, portraying Eva Braun or having the audience examine her clitoris with a magnifying glass. Or Holly...oh what was her last name? "Dress Suits for Hire" woman. East Village. Challenging Gender stereotypes with feminist theater.

I always found Spalding's work much more intimate. His intimacy came from a deep revelation of emotional truth that ran deeper than the mind. It was edgy, yet warm, something lacking in some of the other solo shows coming forward at that time. He is a legend for a reason.

Mike Daisey is very much his own man and performer, yet building on that legend and this art form. Mike's new show about the horrible conditions in factories that make Apple products in China is taking the form to a higher level. Like Spalding before him, Mike presents as warm, funny and razor smart. He also shares some neurosis pretty freely onstage. But, unlike Spalding, Mike's focus is not just on himself. This is the last in a string of shows including "The Last Cargo Cult" where he uses his art to bring attention to an injustice.  In "The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" he calls out one of the most popular and successful corporations in the world. He had his opening at The Public Theater right as the man himself was dying. While most of the world was offering Steve Jobs sainthood, Mike was telling stories of the Apple factories in China that he visited in disguise and the appalling conditions that he found. Mike has been getting a lot of well deserved attention for this show and now, the issues he brought up are being highlighted in the news almost daily.

This is an act of courage and inspiration and this is how Solo Performance at it's best really can change the world. I love how Mike is taking huge issues and making them very accessible and intimate through his gift of embodied storytelling as a monologue. Both these men are inspirations to me and assist me in deepening my understanding of the tru invitation of this work.

FYI: You can listen to a good chunk of "The Agony and Ecstacy of Steve Jobs" on This American Life.

The "Business" of Acting and Finding YOUR own way..

This week-end my fourteen year old daughter Chloe was in NYC for a teen Broadway Intensive workshop. There were days scheduled with casting directors, acting teachers, vocal coaches, dance instructors and even a Master Class with some of the Broadway cast of "STOMP"She attended with her best friend since kindergarten, who is a singer.

Both girls study at the New Mexico School for the Arts high school. Chloe in acting and Sam in singing. NYC was different. Chloe reported experiences with cutthroat stage mothers, casting directors who were mostly concerned about "type" over originality and that intense vibe that one only gets to experience in NYC studios.

The experience was good for Chloe. She has more information on which to base her choices of what kind of actor she wants to be, what kind of path she wants to forge. And the various costs of various paths...Because we all pay in one way or another for our choices.

Her whole experience made me reflect on my own training, my own dreams of youth and how some of them played and some of them did not. And how some of them changed.

When I saw Meryl Streep in the t.v movie "The Holocaust" when I too was 14, I decided that I wanted to be an actor. Her performance rocked me to the core of my humanity. I asked my mother to sign me up for acting lessons in the DC suburbs which she did.

My first teachers were wonderful. I felt "seen" and "whole" for the first time in my life as I embarked upon the deep emotional journey of an actor. I thrived playing in the deep end of the ocean and my happiest times were spent in rehearsals for shows in a darkened theater. I instantly loved Shakespeare, Albee, Williams, O'Neal..I was cast in show after show and attended a summer camp for the Arts during high school at Goucher Collge where I studied with a truly amazing teacher, Pat Vitalglian.

My experiences in college was mixed in terms of teachers. I had a great one, Matthew Vakey at Carnegie Mellon and another great, Ron Jenkins at Emerson. Both continued to instill my love of the art. Both were deeply supportive in terms of developing my craft.

But the ugly shadow of competitive, one size fits all acting had also begun to creep in. At Carnegie Mellon, I had a female teacher who "went after" all the Freshman and Sophmore girls who were vulnerable in any way. She told one girl, Diana that she couldn't stand the sight of her and to get out of her classroom until she lost some weight. She told another girl that she would never work because of the size of her nose.

And one day, she pulled me aside and said that I was too unattractive to be an ingenue and too pretty to be a character actor. And so that at 18, I might as well give up on a career now. Because there was not a "place" for me. And I did give up for a while. Her words penetrated my deepest fears and deepest wounds. I began to get suicidally depressed. By summer I decided that I wasn't going back to school the next year. I went to NYC for a year and began to study with the late, great Bill Hickey at HB Studios. Bill confided at me that he would never teach at any of "the League' drama schools because they were all this way when I told him the story. I got into an abusive relationship to validate my worth and attractiveness.

I was running my life based on  the thought that I was not good enough to have my dream even though I knew that I was talented as an actor. The "business" of acting already felt brutal to me and I had barely begun.

Then I decided to go back to school in Boston.And I met Spalding Gray...a man who was creating his shows and touring with them. A man who had stepped entirely out of the system. From the moment I walked out of the theater after seeing him, I knew what my new dream was. To create and perform solo shows. In time the dream also included helping others create.

Deb Margolin, an early and well known solo performer who also teaches at Yale called solo performance "Outsiders Theater'. I agree with her wholeheartedly. No matter how the culture sees us, those of us who are drawn to solo theater, in some way, identify as outsiders.

I do not know what my daughter's path will be. An insiders path or an outsiders. Or an in-between. As artists, we all find our own way. And pain and failures along the journey can even lead to our deeper calling. That is what happened with me.

I met some amazing people and just kept following an inner voice over an outer voice. Isn't that what outsiders are here to do?

You can have your art. You can have your career. Do it the way you want to.