What does it all mean?
I've been thinking on my day off about the nature of one-on-one or indeed many-on-one theatre.
I think there is some interesting work and the artists i have spoken to have a clear vision of what their individual shows are trying to communicate. Which is great, because sometimes in theatre ideas get a bit woolly, and there just isn't any room for fluff in a 1-1 show.
The basic mechanics of the format allow for some truly amazing and transformative work to be made. You can access your audience emotionally and physically in a way impossible at other scales. You can push them further whilst allowing for everyone to have a totally different reaction. They can be totally present as themselves and yet be completely part of the work. They can even rail against the experience and have that worked with.transformative
As a format how does it arise? What are its origins?
I have an awkward feeling that it is the culturisation of a individualistic, self regarding, self centred mind set, that capitalist ideas of the pre-eminence of the individual have feed through into a theatre that has moved from a mass audience to a singular one.
Perhaps we are so over saturated with clamours for our attention that the only thing which can hold us is a direct and all encompassing experience, unmitigated by the presence of others.
There is a encapsulation, analogous to cinematic escapism that seems present, you are transported into a world where made-up rules have real consequences, the actor dies on screen in a hail of fakery, but within the film it is a tragedy, in the 1-1 the performer is performing - it is a kind of fiction, but there may be tragedy or joy for the audience member depending upon the rules of that performance, and it will be experienced as a real situation because the forth wall is a bubble containing both actor and spect-actor.
Who knows? Inspired by the Korean film 3 Iron I just thought that it would be fun for people to try and see my face and it spiralled from there.
Last of all a dose of negative pragmatism: it is economically unsustainable.
Once you go beyond my extremely minimal set up with one performer and a show that lasts 60 seconds or less, where it would be possible for me to charge perhaps £1 for the experience and thus make up to £60 per hour to be split between the venue, the usher and myself and even then it's pretty tight, to a situation where the show lasts maybe 45 minutes and contains 5 performers where you might need to be paying a hypothetical £225 for your ticket, it becomes obvious that the enterprise requires huge subsidies and a lot of volunteers to make it happen.
Is this a problem? The way I see it West-End Musicals and Stand-Up Comics are the only kinds of theatre/performance that stand a chance of making money, and often they don't. So it isn't at all essential that art should pay for itself, otherwise you just get Ben Elton (depending on the stage of his career).
But funds and goodwill are finite resources so there are opportunity costs involved - a single place at a 1-1 show might mean sacrificing ten audience members at another show. So does the 1-1 have to be 10 times as good?
Whatever the answers I will be getting chased around a room by strangers, saying the first thing that comes into my head and letting people say whatever they want, until Sunday night.
Get involved.
