Solo Performances

The Four-Worlds Approach.

The monologue section of exam coursework was always my least favourite. Logistically, it’s always difficult to find enough appropriate speeches that meet the length restrictions set by the exam boards, and that are suitable for the students in the class, particularly if you have a large group, and then to ensure that you and the students are familiar with the character, the play and the context of the monologue. More problematic for me though was the fact that, despite the exam boards telling us that the speeches must be performed “in the context of the scene”, a huge part of that context – the other characters onstage at that moment – is missing from the performance that the students are expected to give.

I wasn’t against solo performance per se: while I have seen some deadly solo shows, two of my theatrical heroes when I was living in the UK were Ken Campbell and Claire Dowie, whose one-handers were thrilling, exuberant tour de forces, and arguably the inspiration for the trend among stand-up comedians to move towards personal, story-based shows. (Dowie, I believe, coined the phrase “Stand-up Theatre”). I was equally surprised and not surprised to discover later that they were both managed and directed by Colin Watkeys.

A black-and-white A4 poster for Dowie’s Why Is John Lennon Wearing a Skirt? appeared in the foyer of the University Drama department a few days before she was performing it at the local Arts Centre. No one else wanted to go – I had a theatrical epiphany.

The first of Ken’s performances I saw had no title – I guess he was trying out new material. A three or four hour ramble through the worlds of Cathar heresies, the Knights Templar, Charles Fort and the Royal Dickens Company. It was the most extraordinary night of theatre I’d ever experienced, and when he returned with Pigspurt a few months later, I was in the front row, and for every show after that.

Some years later, when I moved overseas, I contacted Colin Watkeys to see if it was possible to get hold of videotapes (yes, it was that long ago) of any of Ken or Claire’s performances. Sadly not, he said, but Ken was doing a corporate gig in Singapore in a couple of months, why not contact the organiser and see if you can get him into your school. I did, and we did. I often wonder what our eleven-year-old Malaysian students really made of his History of Comedy Part 1: Ventriloquism show. He was worried that censorship rules meant that there were whole sections of his show that he wouldn’t be able to do, so performing it first for a school audience was probably a useful trial run. I don’t know what he cut out, but he added in his “pick a sausage, any sausage” routine.

But that’s all by-the-by. One of the things that really caught my imagination in their performances was the way that a simple set, and a handful of props – a classroom desk in John Lennon with its contents and a teenage girl’s “stuff”, and a couple of wheelie suitcases filled with stuff from his front room in Ken’s shows, could transform the space and be transformed themselves to take us on a joyous journey, not just of people, places and things, but of ideas.

A New Approach to the Solo Performance

It was with those performances in mind that I began to develop what I now refer to as the “Four Worlds” approach to solo performance. It is a way for students to approach their work that has a built-in mechanism for breaking through the blocks of “What should I do for this bit?” They will establish four separate worlds that their character inhabits and moves in and out of over the course of the scene. If they cannot find action in one world, they can simply shift into one of the others.

It works best with story-telling solo scripts such as:

• The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion
• Election Day – Huzir Sulaiman
• Raymondo – Annie Siddons
• Hanna – Sam Potter
• Kafka’s Monkey – Colin Teevan
• Hyperlynx – John McGrath
• The Coffin Is Too Big for the Hole – Kuo Pao Kun
• The Eagle and the Cat – Kuo Pao Kun
• A Hundred Words for Snow – Tatty Hennessy
• The Adventures of Wound Man and Shirley – Chris Goode
• Scaramouche Jones – Justin Butcher
• Hamnet – Dead Centre

It can also work with verbatim texts that use longer interview extracts, or scripted plays in a pseudo-verbatim style:

• Talking to Terrorists – Robin Soans
• Deep Cut – Philip Ralph
• Sports Play – Elfriede Jellinek

Some of these will give you enough material to use with a whole class, so that you can study the play together before you set them off working on it. Others will yield up fewer suitable extracts, but will still reduce the number of plays YOU need to have in your head considerably.

Choosing Your Extract

I usually ask the students to choose three sections of the script that they would be interested in working on. Some sections will be more popular than others and be chosen by multiple students, if they’ve given you a choice of three, you are usually able to assign them one of their choices. [I don’t suppose it would matter really if two students did perform the same extract, but I’ve always avoided it]

The key thing to get across when they’re making their choices is that the section they choose should describe actions – things the character did, or that happened to them – rather than ideas or emotions. A lot of our students are going to be drawn to the sections that sound “deep” or “significant”, feeling that because these had the strongest impact on them as a reader, they will have the strongest impact on the audience. Steer them away from these sections as they will make it much harder for them to create action in their performance.

Also steer them away from sexual material and offensive language. I’m not suggesting this out of prudery, but because what I’ve noticed is that mentioning sex, or swearing, in a “school thing” often becomes the focus of the performance, and instead of seeing our student truthfully inhabiting the character on stage in the context of the moment, we see them being a fifteen-year-old who knows that in about a minute and a half they’re going to be saying “F**k” in front of their friends and teachers, and no one’s going to tell them off. The lead-up to it is awkward and distracting, actually saying it comes with over-emphasis (or trying to be overly-casual) and awkward inflection, and the rest of the performance is someone clearly communicating the inner monologue “I just said “F**k” in school!”

Creating the Four Worlds

Once the extract is chosen, the student can begin creating their four worlds. These are:

1. The Present World – The world in which the character lives now – their home or workplace – the place in which they planned, wrote or rehearsed this story, or where they were interviewed about it.
2. The Past World – The events that are being described in the story they are telling.
3. The Stage World – The physical performance and audience space.
4. The Mind World – The world inside their brain – thoughts, memories and emotions.

World 1 – The Present World

This world is entirely realistic. It is the everyday world that the character lives in now, after the events of the story they are telling. It is the world that their set will illustrate, and it will be filled with the actual objects that they would be using during whichever of their day-to-day activities the student chooses to centre the performance on. All actions are presented realistically, and the props are the actual objects that would be needed for that activity.

I ask the student to imagine their character now, several years after the events they are describing. What is their life like? Where do they live? Do they have a job or are they retired? Do they live alone or with family? How do they spend their day?

I then ask them to imagine that their character is either dictating their story, or that they are being interviewed about it and to select an activity that they might be doing while this is happening.

Their selected activity is going to dictate their set and props, and is going to provide a through-line of action that is the backbone structure of their performance.

The most effective types of activity to choose should be sequential rather than repetitive. By sequential, I mean that it is an activity made up of a series of separate actions:

• Packing or unpacking cases for a holiday, or for moving house.
• Changing after a gym session.
• Setting up equipment for a gym session.
• Dismantling and cleaning a musical instrument.
• Ironing and folding clothes.
• Sorting rubbish into separate recycling bins.
• Preparing for a picnic.
• Unpacking groceries and putting them away in cupboards.
• Laying the table for dinner, or clearing it after dinner.
• Assembling an IKEA bedside table.
• Wrapping a parcel.

Repetitive actions should be avoided, as they don’t move the “story” forward:

• Washing dishes.
• Sweeping the floor.
• Doing sit-us / squats / zumba.

They should also aim to have flexible props – objects that can transform into multiple other things.

Square and rectangular things: boxes, books, rugs, gym-mats, magazines
Round things: dustbin lids, plates, bowls
Containers: dustbins, cardboard boxes, bags, cups, buckets
Heavy things: gym weights, tin cans
Long things: brooms, camera tripods, bottles, screwdrivers

Once they have worked out what their activity is and gathered their props together (and the props must be the real thing, not stand-ins), have them create a simple sequence of actions to show this character doing this activity in an everyday way. Emphasise that they should not try to turn it into a story, or make something dramatic happen. If you’re setting up your gym equipment, you just set up your gym equipment, you don’t get injured, you don’t trip over the weights, you don’t knock over your water bottle, you just set up your equipment.

World 2 – The Past World

This is the world in which the events being described take place. Sometimes it might be the same physical space as the present world, but a different time; often it is a completely different place and time.

In this world the student will act out the actions and events that they are describing in the story they are telling. They will usually step away from the “present world” to another area of the stage to do this.

The events in this world can be enacted in a number of ways:

• Through mime.
• Transforming the present world objects into the objects of the past world – a gym mat becomes the hole of a grave, a dustbin becomes the shaman’s throne, a camera tripod becomes a machine gun.
• Physical theatre / abstract movement.
• Using the present world props to demonstrate the events being described – using the groceries to create a map of the neighbourhood and the route I took as I walked home; two hoodies become puppets to show me talking to my doctor, and so on.

World 3 – The Stage World

This is simply the performance space you are in. Identify the moments when the character is communicating an idea or opinion to the audience – something they must understand.

At this moment you simply step away from worlds one an two, usually moving closer to the audience, make eye contact and tell them what they need to know.

World 4 – The Mind World

This is the world you go into when your character is remembering, or feeling, or thinking. Like the Stage World, you’ll move away from worlds one and two, but now your focus will be away from the audience. It might be:

• Above their heads – as if you’re remembering the distant past, experiencing a “big” emotion or realisation, or picturing a landscape panorama.
• Down on the floor in front of you – sadness, guilt, painful memories.
• Your hands – remembering something you did, someone you used to hold.
• One of your props or piece of furniture – triggered memories.

Creating and Rehearsing Action

All the pieces are in place now to begin creating the performance. I always recommend that students begin with present action to establish their character’s present world. Enter and spend the first few seconds starting your activity. Once you’ve established the location and the activity you can start telling the audience their story.

Before you start talking, though, freeze, and make eye contact with the audience. And put that freeze in the middle of an action, not at the end of it. If you putting groceries in the cupboard, don’t put the cornflakes box on the shelf than turn to the audience, freeze with one hand on the cupboard door and the other, holding the cornflakes, halfway to the shelf. If you’re drinking energy drink after your gym session, don’t take a drink, put the can down and talk to the audience, freeze just before you get the can to your mouth, lower it slightly, then start speaking.

Why are you doing it that way? It gives the moment more power and importance. It’s saying to the audience: “What I’m about to say to you is so important that I needed to stop in the middle of this thing I’m doing to tell it to you”.

Now continue through the sequence of actions that make up your present world activity. Always in the logical sequence that they would be performed in, and start looking out for these opportunities:

• Moments when you can act out the events from the past in mime.
• Moments when you can transform the present world prop into an object in the past world.
• Moments when you can use your present world actions to punctuate your dialogue or to emphasise words and phrases.
• Moments when the present world actions or props can “remind” you of the events from the past.
• Moments when the present world actions of props can “parallel” the events from the past world, or represent them in a metaphorical or symbolic way.

Miming the past world events is fairly straightforward, but lets look at some examples of the other four ideas.

Transforming the Props.

“At the end of three days they’d come back to the initiation grounds, where they’d be lined up…a hundred, two hundred, whatever…and the witch-doctor would empty out an AK47 magazine at the line.” [Talking to Terrorists – Robin Soans]

• Photographer packing away after photo-shoot: He picks up the tripod, to unclip and shorten the legs, but as he does so, he moves it into position as if it is the AK47 rifle that he is holding, and “fires” it at the audience.
• Sorting recycling: He takes a 1 litre plastic bottle out of his bag of recyclables and takes it over to the metal trash-can. As he does so, he first moves it into position as the AK47 rifle, then, at the end of the lines bangs it repeatedly around the inside of the bin to create the sound and rhythm of the gun being fired.

Punctuating Dialogue with Actions

“Memory stops. The frame freezes. You’ll find that’s something that happens.” [The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion].

• Needlework: She enters to a table carrying a basket of needlework equipment on top of a folded length of fabric, on top of a book of sewing patterns: “Memory stops. [Places pile of equipment on table] The frame freezes. [Takes basket from top of pile and places it to one side] You’ll find that’s something that happens. [Takes fabric from top of pile, flicks it open and spreads it across table].”
• Unpacking groceries: “Memory stops. [She takes two cans from cardboard box, crosses to cupboard and places them on shelf] The frame freezes. [Takes two more cans from cardboard box, crosses to cupboard and places them on shelf] You’ll find that’s something that happens. [Closes cupboard door].”

Triggering Memory

“Once, when I was in primary school, I won this drawing competition. we had to draw a poster to help children cross the road safely. Mine was of this pheasant who became a lollipop man” [Hanna – Sam Potter]

• Unpacking groceries: The item she took out of her box of groceries immediately before this line was a packet of Kellogg’s cornflakes. She paused, focusing on it, as if the colourful Kellogg’s rooster on the front of the box had reminded her of her pheasant poster.

“John was in his office. I got him a drink. He sat down by the fire to read. He was reading a bound galley of David Fromkin’s Europe’s Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914?” [The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion].

• Needlework: She picks up the book of sewing patterns after “He sat down by the fire to read” and stares at it as if she is picturing him reading his book.

Paralleling and Symbolism

“We run from car very quick…we’d got ten meters…two missiles hit the car…” [Talking to Terrorists – Robin Soans]

• Changing after sport: He has taken her shoes off in the lead up to this line, after “Two missiles…”, he pauses and throws the shoes one at a time into his open gym bag before saying “…hit the car”.

“Amputations were conducted as a matter of course. It was called ‘sending a letter’.” [Talking to Terrorists – Robin Soans]

• Wrapping a parcel: He places the item to be wrapped onto the wrapping paper, folds the wrapping to size, then tears it along the crease, using the sound of ripping paper to illustrate the idea of amputated limbs.
• Tailoring a jacket: He had a jacket in the process of being made, held together with pins on a tailor’s dummy. As he said the line, he removed the pins that were attaching the arm to the body of the jacket, and let the arm fall to the floor.

The present world, as I mentioned above, provides the backbone of the scene, although often, particularly if the extract is full of past action, they may only perform two or three of the actions that make up their activity. It does the double work of providing them with a clear line of action that they can return to when they have nothing in the story to create action from, and it steers them away from cliché. Students will be able to find much of the action for themselves, but an outside director’s eye from the teacher is also essential to spot opportunities that they miss.