One man, one stage

This year I have seen three one-man shows through UMS– The Infernal Comedy starring John Malkovich, Watt by the Gate Theatre of Dublin, and The Andersen Project this past weekend starring Yves Jacques.

When I saw my first one-man show, years ago, I was first amazed by the amount of work that one performer would have to do by themselves and the number of lines they would learn.  Invariably, at any of these shows, there is a group of people astounded by the number of lines they heard the performer speak.  That is just the surface level though.  When you begin to think of the way conventional theatre operates and the way a one-person show works, there are noticeable differences.

The first thing I think of is the interaction between characters is a central part of conventional theatre.  When there is a solitary figure onstage, they are either playing all the characters by themselves or interacting with people unseen by the audience.  Each of these three performances handled this construct differently: in The Infernal Comedy, Malkovich was actually onstage with two other women, opera singers, who acted as his victims.  Outside of his interaction with the women, the concept was that he was writing a novel and was addressing the audience as an author.  In Watt, Barry McGovern was telling the audience a story the whole time and when, in his story, he spoke to other characters, the characters were spots onstage.  In The Andersen Project, most interestingly, had Yves playing three different characters throughout the show, with a few cameo appearances as other characters.  When he spoke, he usually spoke toward the audience or to someone offstage, although he did have interactions with an invisible dog, represented by a leash and bell onstage.

The second thing I think about is how one actor will fill a space usually filled by many actors and intricate sets.  It is easy for an actor to be swallowed up by the space, but again these three shows took three vastly different approaches to fixing this problem.  The Infernal Comedy was performed at Hill Auditorium, so there was less space to occupy, and the performers shared the stage with the orchestra, who acted as their own sort of set.  In Watt, The Gate took a minimalist approach, and Mr. McGovern was just sort of framed by the set and called upon all of his power as an actor to fill the space.  The lighting highlighted some key moments and took us through his journey, but it was mostly a traditional one actor, one audience set up.  The Andersen Project, by contrast, used projections to suggest settings and fill out the space.  In seeing this piece, I realized I had never seen projections done extremely well.  That production changed my mind on projections entirely.  It made the one-man show a fully realized production.  I never felt like I was missing out because it was only one man, there was so much happening and it all contributed to the story in the way that more actors or a more elaborate set would usually.

Each show had a very different story, but I think The Andersen Project most successfully emobied the spirit of a one-man show.  There was something inherently lonely within each of Jacques’ characters.  And through his solitude onstage, the audience was both reminded of the loneliness of the 21st century world and distancing effect technology has had but also aware of themselves and their own experiences.  By doing such, I think Jacques showed us that we are not all one-man shows.