Let me start with a disclaimer: everything that follows is just my opinion, and you’re welcome to take it or leave it. I’m also very open to discussion about this topic and I encourage folks with differing points of view to jump in and share their thoughts with me on this subject.
This past August, I was fortunate enough to spend two weeks in Scotland for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. My wife and I were there for work, taking meetings with some of the biggest venues in the festival as we lay the groundwork for a new initiative. We also took meetings with a number of artists looking to come to the Hollywood Fringe Festival.
On this trip, we attended a mixer for American artists at a pub where I got into a conversation with a few folks about what types of shows do well at Hollywood Fringe. I mentioned that solo theatre’s the biggest category at the festival, and we all acknowledged how the quality can vary wildly between shows. Obviously this holds true for Fringe in general, but thanks to the (well-earned) stereotype of autobiographical solo shows just being “therapy sessions on played out on stage,” solo theatre gets scrutinized a lot more than other categories of production.
Well, someone in that group who wanted to write their own solo show and bring it to Hollywood Fringe straight-up asked me, “what makes a good solo show?”
And fam, to nobody’s surprise, I had opinions.
Here are some of the highlights from the… well, I don’t want to call it a rant, but that’s basically what it was.
Hot Take #1 – 99.9% of the population simply aren’t interesting enough to justify their own bio play.
Yeah, I said it. That’s a spicy meatball, and I’m sure I’m gonna get some hate for saying it but…
Seriously, before you write your own bio play, you should truly ask yourself what is so interesting about your particular life experience that makes it worth it for the average audience member to give you an hour of their time and anywhere from $10-25 of their hard-earned money.
Because…
Hot Take #2 – Doing a solo show shouldn’t be about you.
It’s about the audience, and what you can offer them to enhance their lives.
If you’re in this for ego gratification, or because you want to do a show at a festival and you think this’ll be easy, or if you think this is a quick way to get discovered… don’t do it.
First off, industry people can smell bullshit from a mile away. Second, a good solo show shouldn’t just be thrown together. You may think doing a show all about yourself is easy, but the bar is high.
Like I said above, by putting up and marketing this show – or any show, really – you’re asking people to spend their precious time and their hard-earned money with you. You need to respect and honor that.
You need to make sure your show is Something Worth Seeing.
A long time ago, before I was a competent producer, I poured a lot of blood, sweat and tears into shows that ultimately… weren’t great. More to my point, I got my friends to come see the bad shows that I put up. These weren’t solo shows, but the lesson here holds true. I dragged my friends to so many of bad shows because we needed an audience, not because we had something truly good to share. Now that I’m a… well, now that I’m a better producer than I was back then, I can’t get those friends to support my current work. And I get it. They got burned one too many times. They don’t trust me when I say “this is a good show, you’re going to enjoy it,” because that’s what I told them back then.
You need to think about the long game. Even if you’re not established, you have a name and a reputation. Don’t burn your potential core audience because you need people to fill seats so you don’t feel like a failure.
So yeah, ask yourself if you think there really is something interesting enough about you to justify an autobiographical solo show.
Then ask someone you trust if they think you are, too. And no, I’m not talking about asking your bestie/hype man. They’re gonna lie to you.
I’m talking about asking someone whose opinion you trust and respect. Someone you know will tell you the unvarnished truth.
If they say yes, then you should consider proceeding, and proceed carefully because…
Hot Take #3 – Of the 0.1% that are interesting enough, 99% of them are doing it wrong.
There are certainly exceptions to this rule, but that’s what they are: exceptions.
Keep in mind that when you cast the wide net of “telling the story of your whole life” you may think you’re being specific, but you’re not. If you’re going to go the autobiographical route, you need to find the one most interesting thing about you, focus almost entirely on that, and throw the rest away. If what you want to share about yourself can’t fill an hour, that’s a sign that maybe this isn’t the format for you.
All too often I’ve gone to a solo show because of an interesting premise, and the show then fails to deliver on that premise. The problem? Oftentimes, it feels like they had 10 minutes of core material and now they’re telling the rest of their life story to pad out the rest of their hour-long slot.
There’s a telltale sign for shows like this, and it’s normally when the artist goes “and then I decided to become an actor and now I’m doing this show at <INSERT> Fringe for all of you!” when the premise of the show had nothing to do with them being an actor. It’s an easy applause line, sure, but to me it signals that the writer was struggling for material.
But that’s not the only tell-tale sign. I don’t want to name names here, but there was a show I saw years ago that said it was all about crypto and offered an “insiders view” into the world of cryptocurrency movers and shakers.
I’d been promised a story of technological breakthroughs, corruption, rug-pulls, and high drama. What I got was someone telling me how crappy a person they were to their friends and co-workers, then listing grievances about “boys club” politics and how they felt like no one trusted them – after telling us about all the crappy stuff they did.
By the end, not only was I unsympathetic, I felt like they’d straight-up scammed me with their own bait-and-switch into watching their (wait for it) therapy session on stage where they’re doing a show to seek absolution from strangers.
And yes, I do see the irony of feeling like I’ve been scammed by a show about crypto. That does work on a meta level. But this ain’t the Blockchain.
If you find yourself struggling to find enough material for an hour long show, maybe consider making a YouTube video essay instead. 10 minutes is the perfect length of time for that kind of video, and you’re not asking people to brave Friday night traffic in Hollywood to hear it.
You know what’s a good solo show? I think it was the sixth Hollywood Fringe Festival back in 2015, when I saw Dean Cameron’s Nigerian Spam Scam Scam.
This was an autobiographical show written and performed by someone with something interesting to say. It was entertaining. It was funny as hell. And it inspired me to take similar tactics in dealing with scammers who have the misfortune of reaching out to me.
You know what I learned about Dean outside of the epic story that was running the reverse scam? That he was an actor in Hollywood that had too much time on his hands while doing background work, so he decided to fuck with the scammers that had emailed him. That’s it!
Introduce the main character. Set up the premise. And boom, we’re off to the races!
Dean weaved this tale skillfully, keeping us hooked with baited breath the entire time. It’s not just the story, but how he told it. There was comedy. Drama. Pathos. Catharsis. An epic (literal) mic-drop. And in the end we all learned something.
This was a well-done autobiographical solo show. I’m still talking and laughing about it 11 years later.
That is the quality of show you should aspire to put up.
So, to sum it up, if you are going to be autobiographical, I think you need to avoid giving your full life story and focus on what makes you unique, only providing enough detail outside of the main focus in service of providing context. Give us a deep dive on the specific thing that makes you interesting and unique, not a generalized life story that follows an established template beat-for-beat like Solo Show Mad Libs.
Hot Take #4 – Your story has been told before and told better by other people.
The scene is saturated with similar deeply personal tales of important landmarks and milestones that shape an individual’s life – powerful stories about coming out as queer or trans, tales of overcoming cancer, poverty or other hardships, soul-baring revelations about wrestling with grief or mental illness. It’s all been done.
Is that a reason for you to not talk about your experience? No, not at all. These stories need to be shared.
But that is the reason why you need to figure out what makes your story stand out from the crowd, either by what you’re saying or how you’re saying it. What is unique about your particular story that makes you special? Focus on that.
Also keep in mind that you’re not just going to be compared to people who’ve told their story better than you. You’re going to be compared to the folks who came before you and done worse than you, too. And that can be tougher to deal with. This is where terms like “solo show bingo” and “therapy session on stage” come from.
Sadly, the sheer volume of “bad” solo theatre has made the bar for what is “good” solo theatre exceptionally high, much more so than other theatrical formats.
So if you want to have a go at doing a solo show, maybe consider not looking within for your subject matter your first time out. Which leads me to…
Hot Take # 5 – The best solo shows aren’t about the artist at all. If they do involve the artist personally, it is only tangentially.
I think the best solo shows either have an entertaining premise or convention, or have an important message, and present that message with a clear thesis statement and strong argument to back it up.
Shows like Woody Fu’s One-Man John Wick are a physical comedy extravaganza. Turn your brain off and enjoy the incredibly inventive and creative ways Woody recreates the John Wick franchise on stage all by himself.
Wendy Gough Soroka’s The Divine Madness of Isabella is a bio play, but it’s about the queen of commedia dell’arte, Isabella Andreini improvising the final scenario of her life. Wendy is an artist who is very passionate about history, commedia as an art form and mask work. Instead of writing her own story about her relationship with the art, she instead chose to platform one of the form’s most important figures and tell her story instead.
Brett Moore’s Batter Up! My Brain On Baseball is a solo show where he shares his love and encyclopedic knowledge of baseball with the audience through a series of games, party stunts and statistics-driven “stupid human tricks”. In later editions of the show, Brett took the opportunity to share poignant stories from the history of the game, including a profile on Buck O’Neil. Now, this show is very autobiographical because he talked extensively about his relationship with the game, what it means to him, the influence it’s had on his life, and how it has shaped and reinforced his relationships with his family and friends. But the show is about baseball, and explores both the history of the game and what it means to be a true fanatic about a subject, as exemplified by his preternatural command of statistics.
In Conclusion…
I want to make it clear that I’m not saying you shouldn’t do a solo show. What I am saying is that if you want to write and produce a solo show, be prepared to put the work in and do it right. Here are a few suggestions to keep in mind if you’re going to go down this path:
Go see a bunch of solo shows before you start developing your own. Go to a Fringe festival somewhere and see as many solo shows as you can. The more you see, the more you’ll understand the art form, what you like, and what you want to avoid. Terms like “good” and “bad” are completely subjective, but the more you experience, the more you can figure out what works for you and your story, and what doesn’t.
Build a Team.
Yes, I know it’s called a solo show, but it still takes a village to make it happen. Theatre is truly a collaborative art form by necessity; there’s simply too much to do, and it’s incredibly rare to find an artist that can truly handle it all by themselves. Get a director. Get a producer. Get a publicist. If you’re lucky, you might be able to find one person who can do more than one of those roles, but many hands make light work. You will always need to get your hands dirty behind the scenes to some degree, but the more help you have, the more you can focus on the stage.
Beware workshops and teachers selling you a surefire method. Remember what I said about Solo Show Mad Libs? If you start working with a coach or director/producer/guru to help bring your show to the stage, be mindful about whether they’re helping you shape your story to be the best version of itself, or if they’re simply trying to cram the square peg that is your unique tale into the round hole of a template they use with all of their clients. Don’t get lost in a sea of clones. Your story deserves better than that. More importantly, in situations like these, make sure you read all the fine print before you sign anything, because you just might be signing away the rights to your own story.
Start small. Maybe do some storytelling shows or open mics to refine both your story and your technique before mounting a full production. Make sure you know what you want to say and that you’re getting your point across, then grow from there.
Remember that it’s not about you, it’s about the audience. There’s a social contract with theatre. You’re asking your audience to brave traffic, find parking, get dinner and/or drinks, and spend money on tickets to your show so they can spend anywhere from an hour to ninety minutes listening to you. In this economy.
In return, you’re promising to deliver Something Worth Seeing, and I can’t understate how important that is.
Don’t let the lobster bisque be the best part of their night, know what I mean?
Otherwise you’ll wind up the punchline in another think piece nobody asked for.
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