Category: Theatre

When I was writing a lot about theatre here at Just Wrought several of the points I brought up irked people, show people especially:

• MFA’s behave like viruses;
• The primary pursuit of a living wage makes artists complicit in their own co-option;
• No one at Seattle’s Big Houses really cares about developing new work. (Thankfully this one seems to be changing (a tiny bit, but for real, (but only time will truly tell.)))

But nothing I said was more certain to piss off particular people like my contention that one-person shows are not, strictly speaking, theatre. My award for favorite counterstrike, if only for prolixity and opacity, goes to Omar Willey:

Mike Daisey’s [work] is not theater[?] Behind this sort of nonsense is a childish territorialism. The artist here believes he is a High Priest in charge of the cosmic order, and that the entire world would suddenly whirl off its axis if He did not continue to fight for his own narrow definitions, categories and hierarchies–and, by implication, his own place in those hierarchies which, doubtless, is above everyone else he despises. Those who do not accord with his gospel become enemy troops to be extirpated in his Holy Crusade for the One True and Good Art. Such belligerence may be a defense, but it is primarily a defense of human ego. Yet artists cling to such silly notions as though they were essential for craft.

Despite Willey’s daunting hyperbole (heck, I haven’t donned High Priest robes since my college days), I haven’t changed my mind about one-person shows (nor do I delude myself to believe I’ve changed anyone else’s). I still really do think theatre is defined by genuine dialogue between two or more human beings, in the presence of at least one third observer; and I stand by the second and more crucial associated argument made in my original essay, “The Solo Show: A Risk Averse Artistic Administrator’s Best Friend”:

[Artistic Administrators] defend their solo performance offerings like a richly-endowed sculpture gallery might defend an exhibition of paintings.  “We love sculpture.  And of course we are a sculpture gallery, but sculpture itself is expensive and difficult to maintain.  Instead, why not enjoy some lovely paintings of sculptures?”  Paintings of sculptures can indeed be lovely, but not even an idiot would call them sculptures, any more than Mark Twain would have referred to himself as a theatre artist 130 years ago.  Solo performance billed as theatre is a pig in a poke.

Still, no matter how carefully one build one’s boldest arguments, there will always be an example that seems to fly in the face of everything asserted. So when I say solo shows aren’t really theatre, my long time colleague and often collaborator, Dawson Nichols simply puts on a show or two to prove me wrong. Unlike most solo performers, Nichols doesn’t just tell you a story, with a few different voices thrown in for “dramatic effect”. Instead Dawson, himself a consummate playwright as well as actor, director and professor, plays you a play. He’s as adept at transforming himself into other human beings as, say, the vaunted Anna Deavere Smith, but unlike her, he’s no monologist. Dawson creates dialogue up there, real theatre between two or more people, because freakily enough, he actually appears to be able to become two or more people at one time, right in front of our eyes. All the risk that is removed by having only one person on stage is strangely, magically, mixed back into the cauldron.

But don’t my word for it. (I mean, there’s no point in starting NOW, right?) For the next two Fridays, you can go see for yourself, and decide if he succeeds in smashing my “childish territorialism.”

Here’s the skinny, direct from Dawson . . .

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