Eric Bogosian
Eric's Personal History of Solo Performance
August 14, 1996.
I'm on a semi-vacation, but Ararat Productions Inc. moves on!
The "subUrbia" production in Los Angeles is excellent. I saw it last week. Very intense, superbly acted, with great directing by Mike Uppendahl. This is a great production to see of the play. And soon the Seattle production will be presented by Printer's Devil Theater, as well as productions in San Francisco, St. Louis, Tuscon and Boston. I'm still waiting for the Berlin version (a translation has been finished).
So, as I wait for my cameo appearances in the Beavis and Butt-head movie, Cindy Sherman's thriller and Robbie Baitz' "Substance of Fire", what else is going on? BIG NEWS. The "subUrbia" film is almost finished and we've just heard it will be in the New York Film Festival in early October. Get your tickets now! After that, I hear it will be released in January by Sony Classics and Castle Rock. Sonic Youth is working on a score.
In the meantime, I'm trying to write some new solo material for my Bumbershoot appearance on September 1 (that's in Seattle). I'm in the garage with a tape recorder jumping around. Knitting Factory, New York, is first week of October.
And if you're really hard-core, be aware that "Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll" will be republished this fall by TCG and that "High Incident" is on ABC every Thursday night.
Solo Work
I'd like to say a few things about solo work, since I've been doing it for about twenty years and seen the format go through some changes.
Around 1980, I started making solos. I'm still making them. There are roughly six solos with names: "Men Inside"; "FunHouse"; "Drinking in America"; "Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll"; "Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead" and "Wake Up and Smell the Coffee", each composed of about a dozen monologues. Counting the monologues I've written for these six shows, I've collected about seventy-five monologues.
When I started putting these pieces together, the term "one person show" was fairly perjorative. People assumed it was some kind of audition, a way of showing off what you can do ("I sing! I dance! And I can act...and do accents!"). There were distinctive exceptions, almost always from the comedic side of the fence, but sometimes from actors. Excluding comedians who did characters and monologues (Lenny Bruce, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, for instance) and venturing forth into the twilight of a true "spoken word" performance, I was dimly aware of a few past lights. Particularly Lord Buckley, who Frank Zappa championed in the Sixties on his private record label. To this day there is no equal to Lord Buckley in sheer fierce genius, rhythm, humor, energy, insanity. (Recordings are not easy to find, but they exist. Look him up on the net.) But of course, I never saw him. He died in the Fifties. I don't know much about Ruth Draper, but in this particular history, she's always cited. Then Lenny Bruce who changed everything even though he was a "comedian." But there was always Brother Theodore since before all these guys (he performed in Weimar Germany!!!) and who is still performing today. He must be a hundred years old. Total, dedicated anarchy. Theodore turned me on to two things: Don't be afraid to make a fool of yourself and don't be afraid to make the audience really think you mean it. (Later, the amazing Andy Kaufman would push this same envelope. Seek out the video of his wrestling performances. A pinnacle of performance madness.)
When I first got to New York, I also got to see Bob Carroll (not to be confused with "Basketball Diaries" Jim Carroll). Bob looked kind of like Johnny Winter. And he was fearless. Would perform anywhere. He did the Johnny Carson show and had no possessions and no permanant address. A true hippie and anarchist. He also taught me about complete exposure on stage. Bob died a few years ago. And, as an actor, the godhead himself: Jeff Weiss. Jeff can do any role and his completely insane solos (rarely performed) set the high-water mark for actors diving off the high platform in the early eighties. To round out this list of influences, I have to add Richard Pryor, who was totally there on stage, also occassionally playing characters. But more importantly, totally immersed in the performance. If you've never seen his first live performance film, your knowledge of performance is not complete.
These were the people who influenced me. Also true performance artists (artists who were performing as part of their art) Joan Jonas, Vito Acconci, the Kipper Kids and nameless other proto-theater people floating around SoHo in the Seventies all made a big impact.
And finally, people "singing" in front of bands. Particularly James Chance (of the "Contortions") and Iggy Pop. These two men, I think more than anyone, were committed to complete ripping open of the soul on stage. Fearless.
The deal in those days, where I hung out, was not actually to have a career or impress anybody or get reviews or agents or any of that shit. The only thing anybody was trying to do was keep an audience watching and interested for more than fifteen minutes. Because we weren't in a formal setting like a theater, this was easier said than done.
It seemed to me (at the time I was writing odd plays and ensemble pieces) that the best way for me to do that was to make work for myself only. They didn't cost much and I trusted myself as a performer (since I had been acting lead roles since I was about fourteen).
No rules and punk rock. I guess that was my only credo. Once I learned how to make people laugh, I wanted to do that too.
Which only confused the issue. Because around this time, Lily Tomlin had reengineered the format of solo work onstage by bringing two shows to Broadway. What she was doing wasn't comedy and it wasn't strictly theater. But it was good. It was immediate. Just taking a gallery of characters and fashioning a show out of them. This was new.
I only mention her work here because many people were digging it and it was very much a part of the theater world of that time. I wasn't really hanging in the theater anymore. I was just performing around, doing solos and my nasty nightclub character, Ricky Paul. But just as I had seen Pryor at the movies and Kaufman on Saturday Night Live and James Chance at the clubs, I saw Tomlin, too.
I was coming at this from a different angle than most performers because I hung out with visual artists. Artists I knew were suddenly making "pictures" again for the first time, that is to say, images. Things had gotten very abstract and pure in the art world, and to make pictures of things (1979) was radical. Even almost punk. Robert Longo and Cindy Sherman were at the forefront of the movement. The idea was to make a picture and just put it in front of an audience and let them figure it out. This highly ironic attitude, which is so commonplace now, was disturbing to the powers that be at the time. People wanted things explained to them and we didn't want to explain anything. We figured you either got it or you didn't. We were making the art that we wanted to see.
So Joe Papp finds out what I'm up to and the next thing I know I'm at the Public Theater and the next thing after that, I'm Off-Broadway and reviews and things are happening.
I didn't understand that such a SHOWCASE was a big deal. I was just looking for more people to come see what I was working on and also making some money since I was completely broke. This was the early eighties. I'm starving to death about a block off the Bowery, but I'm getting my name in the New York Times with my solo, "Men Inside" followed by "FunHouse."
I think it was 1984 when Whoopi showed up and took the attention garnered from the now respectable "one person show" and rode it all the way to Hollywood. (In a way, I did too.) I didn't know what to make of this thing she was doing. The writing was excellent and she got in people's faces, sort of. But it was not the STUFF that I had learned to love. (Also around this time, Ann Magnuson and other folks from downtown were becoming more theatrical in their "performance." I tended to like the nastier stuff that people did, like Ann or the Kipper Kids, and not the cute or sentimental stuff.)
I was not alone in noticing the rocket to stardom that Whoopi's Broadway turn had afforded her. (Sidenote: Of course, this was not the first time an actor had appeared alone on Broadway. Ian McKellen had been doing his Shakespeare stuff, and of couse there was the Mark Twain show that Hal Holbrook had made his name with. And way over in England was the mighty Steven Berkoff making show after show after show when he wasn't acting in movies.)
But something was happening in the performance world. First of all, money was running out. But also all these people wanted to have CAREERS. It was the Eighties. Making money was suddenly a good thing. And just as suddenly there were lots of solo performers. Many of them very good, some very very good. Spalding Grey started selling out. Laurie Anderson became a superstar. Reno, David Cale, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary (more recently, Danny Hoch) showed up and were instantly signed by agents hoping to find the next Whoopi. This trend goes on to this day. There are always at least two or three one person shows running on or off Broadway. And Off-Off Broadway is a virtual hotbed of activity. (Keep your eye peeled for Hazelle.)
It seems to me in hindsight that as usual most stuff of this period (the Eighties) was not distinctive. But more than that, many people seemed to treat the solo as a place to springboard from into another place. Leaving aside any judgement of whether it is "good" or "bad" to leave solo performing for, let's say, movies, the fact is that most, if not all, folks who "scored" with a hit solo show never returned to that arena.
If I were so busy I never had time to do solos, would I? Fact is, I don't have the time, but I love performing solo. It's very exciting. And for me it has nothing to do with showcasing myself. Six years ago when I was getting much-o attention for my solos, I would quiver with expectation when a big director or star came to one of my shows. Maybe this will be my big break. I realize now that thinking like that was missing the point. When I step onto the boards of whatever theater I am, I am entering a profound place, a holy place. I throw myself into a strange mosh pit of expectation, laughter and energy and I turn into something much different than my day-to-day petty self. It is thrilling in an egotistical way, but also in a non-ego way, but whoever I am usually disappears and for a brief time the audience and myself enter a place where the noise goes away. Something very human takes its place. Something primal, people collected, laughing and scared at the same time. Angered and placated, confused and safe. I don't know what this is, but it ain't a showcase.
I think an audience needs certain things when they see a performer perform. And foremost among them is the feeling that this night is not just one night of many, but a night as intense as the first night two lovers get together. Because that's what's happening. The audience meets this performer. And the performer has sex with the audience. It should be that sensual, that strong.
A highly confident, charismatic individual hanging out in front of us talking about his or her personal idiosyncrasies, in a word, who cares? Or a jerky, "funny" person doing characters...can't you see that on TV? I try not to do that kind of stuff.
When I (with my director Jo Bonney) put together a new solo we look for very specific things. First of all is a theme. But the theme is not simply decided upon and then followed rigorously. Instead, we explore a theme ("conformism", for example) and as I do improvs and write material, we look at threads within the writing that may lead to a facet of the theme, or even another theme. In other words, I may have things on my mind but not really be aware of them. By writing and rewriting, this sense of things comes to the surface.
Writing and rewriting is central to what we do. We do not keep material if it lacks sharpness or depth. We may keep a line or two, and try to incorporate it someplace else.
Attitudes and ideas are more important than funny lines. Funny lines you can make up all day. But knitting the whole thing into an attitude is hard. And the most important attitude is the commitment to hard-core performance. Having something at stake.
Sometimes a monologue may be good by itself, but not fit into the flow of the show. It is put aside.
We look for physical material, material I can throw myself into. We try to avoid material where I'm sitting in a chair talking. We imagine someone walking into the theater who doesn't speak English, but digs the energy so much he or she enjoys the show anyway.
We look for dynamic events, as opposed to someone just standing telling a story. Something is happening as the monologue unfolds. A dramatic event contains within it the energy of the moment and the potential energy of the future. Just telling a story lacks this energy.
We test the material in front of audiences, trying to understand why the words don't make sense in places. Filling out sections and cutting out overwritten sections are an important part of the work.
Finally, the question we ask ourselves is, would we watch this?
