All Solo performers are storytellers, each show is merely another session in which a performer can share a few thoughts and feelings with an audience. As is seen in the majority of Solo shows the audience coexists with the performer on stage much like that of a storyteller and a group of listeners sat around them. The art of the monologist is a difficult one to master – the feeling of being alone on stage can encapsulate and swallow you whole and destroy the show you have created; it is with this information that the Solo artist must feed off the audience’s energy by bringing them in to the action on stage in some way shape or form. Whether that includes bringing them up on stage or merely speaking directly to them; “their energy resonates with that of the lone artist, and their presence in the room can trigger not only new levels of performance, but, more interestingly, new material” (Bonney, 2000, xiii).
In my performance, I wish to play upon the presence of storytelling in monologue. The character of Madame Arcati often finds herself telling the other characters a story about her life or someone else’s. She thrives off the other characters as a way of giving herself power and credibility. Madame Arcati uses her audience as I want to use mine. “It is [the audience] who must give you even more than you give them in the way of imagination and creative power” (Draper, cited in Bonney, 2000, xiii).
I will be using character work from different plays that I have recently performed in and/or studied including Blithe Spirit and A Kestrel for a Knave (Play adaptation) in order to give my work an “infectious, raw energy of spontaneous storytelling” (Bonney, 2000, xiii) to which I can keep the audience engaged and entertained throughout.
Works Cited:
Bonney, J. (ed.) (2000) Extreme Exposure: An anthology of Solo Performance Texts from the Twentieth Century, New York: Theatre Communications Group
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