How to Make an American Solo Show
I'm amused. I wrote this in early 2005, and rediscovered it today. Ha.
I'll also do that lj-cut so as not to take up more than my fair allotment of your so-called "friends" page. Gosh.
How To Make An American Solo Show
It’s in your best interest to begin your solo show interestingly. That way the audience is interested in what you have to say. Probably what you have to say isn’t very interesting, but that’s why you’re doing a solo show and not writing a book. If it were interesting, you could write a book about it and sell it in stores across the world, translated into 80 languages, and become a millionaire instead of jumping around on a pogo stick in a black room on the lower east side with 6 of your closest friends in attendance because they knew you’d be mad at them if they didn’t show up. For instance, people are interested in the possibility of making a million dollars. There are tons of books about how to make a million dollars, and you see very few solo shows about making a million dollars. Vice versa on why you see so few New York Times Bestsellers called “My Mommy Was Very Mean to Me or Come Watch Me Fuck a Goat.”
So consider naming your solo show something like “How to Make a Million Dollars.” That way, tourists from New Jersey might come to your show expecting to learn how to make a million dollars and will be extra grossed out when it turns out that you’re fucking a goat while an audio tape of your parents having sex blasts out of the tinny speakers you borrowed from your friend, and you will have proven to them that art transcends class and culture and will have proven your superiority over them, those fucking Republican commercial sell outs!
Also, musicals based on 80s pop culture are very in right now, so if you call your solo show something like “Thundercats: The Musical!” your house is guaranteed to be filled with stoned NYU students, who will be so entranced by how your fucking a goat calls to mind their own desire to publicly fuck a goat that they won’t even notice you didn’t actually do a musical based on that amazing property Thundercats, a musical which when it is finally produced will be an instant box-office success, and of which I have a spec-script in my bag even at this moment to talk to interested producers. Let’s talk. Call me.
Beginning Your Show
It’s best to start out with a song, because that immediately ropes your audience into listening to what you have to say. Remember that what you have to say probably isn’t interesting at all-your whole goal is to make people forget that so that when they tell you they loved your show at the end of it they’re not just pretending, you’ve actually managed to convince them that they liked it.
Lights, please.
Oh, also always start in the dark. It’s very mysterious. Audiences love mystery.
Choosing a song is difficult, because you don’t want it to be too obvious, but you also want it to be just right. A good way to find a song is to watch television a lot, and see what millionaire ad-executives are using to convince people to buy products. For instance, here’s how I might start my solo show using a Queen song I saw featured in a recent C2 advertisement. C2-half the cals, half the carbs. I’m willing to accept endorsements. Let’s talk.
(sings “I Want to Break Free”)
I want to break free
I want to break free
I want to break free from your lies
You’re so self satisfied I don’t need you
I’ve got to break free
God knows
God knows I want to break free
This will establish that the theme of your solo show is “breaking free.” If you feel that singing the song removes it too much from its original context, consider having the original version playing while you enter, or while the lights come up. If you don’t have any speakers, I can loan you some of my mine, but they’re pretty tinny. Here we go:
(plays “I Want to Break Free”)
While the song is playing and establishing your theme, you should do something beautiful and meaningful. Lighting effects are a very good resource, here. For instance, lighting yourself with something that doesn’t usually provide light in a room will astound your audience. I recommend fire more than anything else because not only does it provide a dramatic light source, you’re also introducing the possibility that if the audience doesn’t like your show you might set them on fire.
What if your theme isn’t breaking free? What if you don’t know what your theme is? Let’s try it with a more generic, less specific song that might be about anything you want.
(sings “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”)
They asked me how I knew
My true love was true
Ooooh! (pitch pipe)
Ooooh!
Still I smiled and replied (you should probably learn the lyrics)
Smoke gets in your eyes
But remember that even this may not be opaque enough. It’s a good bet that the theme of your solo show is not “what happens when smoke gets in your eyes.” It’s a good bet that you’re instead trying to make the audience think about what happens when the concept of smoke getting in your eyes isn’t enough to change your life, or how your mommy was mean to me. I mean you, how your mommy was mean to you. So consider using the template of the song that you want them to think about it, but switching some important element of it around so that the audience starts considering how they relate to the idea of song. What I’m saying is, pick the song you want and then play it in German.
(play “In Den Augen Rauch”)
Then you do your entrance and you fire effects and whatnot. By this point, the audience is so fucking entranced by your German music and your lighting effects that you could pull out a goat and start humping right away. But I recommend playing your cards right, and using this opportunity to talk about something that’s meaningful to you, but not as meaningful as taking the virginity of that poor goat.
Talking About Things That Are Important To You
Remember what we’ve been over: what you have to say isn’t interesting. Your job is to trick people into thinking that it might be. Again, music is important here. This time you want to frame your ideas with appropriate “soundscape.”
For instance, if you want to talk about how disturbing it is that humans have 46 chromosomes while the common household fern had about 1200, you need appropriate music. Are you angry about it? Worried? Unsure? Are you just considering the beauty of the world and the strangeness of everything, like so many plastic bags blowing around in the wind?
If you’re angry about it I recommend choosing some angry music. For instance:
(play “Down With The Sickness”)
I’m angry. I’m angry because my mommy was mean to me and I’m angry because the fern in my house has more chromosomes than me! I’m mad and you can tell because of my background music!
But if you’re not so angry about your chromosomal deficiencies, I recommend choosing something operatic. See, opera is “high art” so when people hear it, they automatically think that something brilliant is going on, and that if they don’t get it they’re stupid and uncultured. Choosing opera as background music is a surefire way to get everybody who went to liberal arts school convinced that your solo show is worthwhile. For instance:
(play “Flower Duet”)
I’ve been thinking a lot about mules. You know, the reason that mules are sterile is that they have an odd number of chromosomes. They have 63 chromosomes, one more than a donkey and one fewer than a horse. And I was thinking that maybe I have an odd number of chromosomes, and I just don’t know it. Probably not, but maybe it’s true and the doctors missed it. And I was wondering does a mule know it has an odd number of chromosomes and does it feel deficient? Or does it feel special?
And then I was thinking about how a horse has 64 chromosomes and I started thinking, wow… does that mean a horse is twice the animal a human is? But then I found out that a human doesn’t have 26 chromosomes like I thought they actually have 46. And not only that, but 26 times 2 isn’t 64 at all but instead 52, so I was wrong on all counts, but anyway does that mean that a horse is 1.39 the animal that a human is? And I thought, yeah… yeah it does. But then I was talking to my fern the other day and I said “Fern, how many chromosomes do you have?” and my fern said “Circa 1200” and I said “Fern, I think the word ‘circa’ only applies to time, and what do you mean 1200?” and by the time I realized that there were more important questions I probably could have asked my fern it died from exhaustion at the effort exerted in answering my question and, in truth, that I would never know.
http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.bold.gif
Doing Something Totally Weird
After you’ve talked about something that’s meaningful to you while playing opera music, the audience is putty in your hands. Take this opportunity to do something that’s really meaningful in your own life, but provide no clues as to what it might actually mean to anyone else. You’ve built up some amount of credit by this time, what with the fire effects and the German music. Spend that credit now. Here’s an example:
(play “Hey, Big Spender”)
Q; Hello Gerald.
G: Hello Quincy.
Q: It sure is tiring isn’t it?
G: What’s that?
Q Oh nothing. I just mean holding up this Grecian urn. (if you’d rather not specify that the urn you’re holding up is Grecian in order to make it more universal, just go ahead and call it an urn.)
G Is that what we’re doing? Are we holding up a Grecian Urn?
Q Nobody understands!
G I thought that we were posing for a photograph?
Q For thousands of years? A thousand year photograph?
G Perhaps it is a long exposure photograph?
Q No exposure is this long! We’re holding up a Grecian urn and if we let go the urn will crumble
G I’m suddenly exhausted at the thought of all this responsibility on my shoulders
Q Let’s let go Gerald! Let’s suddenly let go!
G The urn might crumble!
Q Let it crumble!
G By God you’re right! Let it crumble!
And that will just about do it. Now you have to get the audience interested again.
Getting The Audience Interested Again
Do something that involves the audience and isn’t just about serving your own ends. Include them, but not actually. Audience participation is so 2004.
I'll also do that lj-cut so as not to take up more than my fair allotment of your so-called "friends" page. Gosh.
How To Make An American Solo Show
It’s in your best interest to begin your solo show interestingly. That way the audience is interested in what you have to say. Probably what you have to say isn’t very interesting, but that’s why you’re doing a solo show and not writing a book. If it were interesting, you could write a book about it and sell it in stores across the world, translated into 80 languages, and become a millionaire instead of jumping around on a pogo stick in a black room on the lower east side with 6 of your closest friends in attendance because they knew you’d be mad at them if they didn’t show up. For instance, people are interested in the possibility of making a million dollars. There are tons of books about how to make a million dollars, and you see very few solo shows about making a million dollars. Vice versa on why you see so few New York Times Bestsellers called “My Mommy Was Very Mean to Me or Come Watch Me Fuck a Goat.”
So consider naming your solo show something like “How to Make a Million Dollars.” That way, tourists from New Jersey might come to your show expecting to learn how to make a million dollars and will be extra grossed out when it turns out that you’re fucking a goat while an audio tape of your parents having sex blasts out of the tinny speakers you borrowed from your friend, and you will have proven to them that art transcends class and culture and will have proven your superiority over them, those fucking Republican commercial sell outs!
Also, musicals based on 80s pop culture are very in right now, so if you call your solo show something like “Thundercats: The Musical!” your house is guaranteed to be filled with stoned NYU students, who will be so entranced by how your fucking a goat calls to mind their own desire to publicly fuck a goat that they won’t even notice you didn’t actually do a musical based on that amazing property Thundercats, a musical which when it is finally produced will be an instant box-office success, and of which I have a spec-script in my bag even at this moment to talk to interested producers. Let’s talk. Call me.
Beginning Your Show
It’s best to start out with a song, because that immediately ropes your audience into listening to what you have to say. Remember that what you have to say probably isn’t interesting at all-your whole goal is to make people forget that so that when they tell you they loved your show at the end of it they’re not just pretending, you’ve actually managed to convince them that they liked it.
Lights, please.
Oh, also always start in the dark. It’s very mysterious. Audiences love mystery.
Choosing a song is difficult, because you don’t want it to be too obvious, but you also want it to be just right. A good way to find a song is to watch television a lot, and see what millionaire ad-executives are using to convince people to buy products. For instance, here’s how I might start my solo show using a Queen song I saw featured in a recent C2 advertisement. C2-half the cals, half the carbs. I’m willing to accept endorsements. Let’s talk.
(sings “I Want to Break Free”)
I want to break free
I want to break free
I want to break free from your lies
You’re so self satisfied I don’t need you
I’ve got to break free
God knows
God knows I want to break free
This will establish that the theme of your solo show is “breaking free.” If you feel that singing the song removes it too much from its original context, consider having the original version playing while you enter, or while the lights come up. If you don’t have any speakers, I can loan you some of my mine, but they’re pretty tinny. Here we go:
(plays “I Want to Break Free”)
While the song is playing and establishing your theme, you should do something beautiful and meaningful. Lighting effects are a very good resource, here. For instance, lighting yourself with something that doesn’t usually provide light in a room will astound your audience. I recommend fire more than anything else because not only does it provide a dramatic light source, you’re also introducing the possibility that if the audience doesn’t like your show you might set them on fire.
What if your theme isn’t breaking free? What if you don’t know what your theme is? Let’s try it with a more generic, less specific song that might be about anything you want.
(sings “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”)
They asked me how I knew
My true love was true
Ooooh! (pitch pipe)
Ooooh!
Still I smiled and replied (you should probably learn the lyrics)
Smoke gets in your eyes
But remember that even this may not be opaque enough. It’s a good bet that the theme of your solo show is not “what happens when smoke gets in your eyes.” It’s a good bet that you’re instead trying to make the audience think about what happens when the concept of smoke getting in your eyes isn’t enough to change your life, or how your mommy was mean to me. I mean you, how your mommy was mean to you. So consider using the template of the song that you want them to think about it, but switching some important element of it around so that the audience starts considering how they relate to the idea of song. What I’m saying is, pick the song you want and then play it in German.
(play “In Den Augen Rauch”)
Then you do your entrance and you fire effects and whatnot. By this point, the audience is so fucking entranced by your German music and your lighting effects that you could pull out a goat and start humping right away. But I recommend playing your cards right, and using this opportunity to talk about something that’s meaningful to you, but not as meaningful as taking the virginity of that poor goat.
Talking About Things That Are Important To You
Remember what we’ve been over: what you have to say isn’t interesting. Your job is to trick people into thinking that it might be. Again, music is important here. This time you want to frame your ideas with appropriate “soundscape.”
For instance, if you want to talk about how disturbing it is that humans have 46 chromosomes while the common household fern had about 1200, you need appropriate music. Are you angry about it? Worried? Unsure? Are you just considering the beauty of the world and the strangeness of everything, like so many plastic bags blowing around in the wind?
If you’re angry about it I recommend choosing some angry music. For instance:
(play “Down With The Sickness”)
I’m angry. I’m angry because my mommy was mean to me and I’m angry because the fern in my house has more chromosomes than me! I’m mad and you can tell because of my background music!
But if you’re not so angry about your chromosomal deficiencies, I recommend choosing something operatic. See, opera is “high art” so when people hear it, they automatically think that something brilliant is going on, and that if they don’t get it they’re stupid and uncultured. Choosing opera as background music is a surefire way to get everybody who went to liberal arts school convinced that your solo show is worthwhile. For instance:
(play “Flower Duet”)
I’ve been thinking a lot about mules. You know, the reason that mules are sterile is that they have an odd number of chromosomes. They have 63 chromosomes, one more than a donkey and one fewer than a horse. And I was thinking that maybe I have an odd number of chromosomes, and I just don’t know it. Probably not, but maybe it’s true and the doctors missed it. And I was wondering does a mule know it has an odd number of chromosomes and does it feel deficient? Or does it feel special?
And then I was thinking about how a horse has 64 chromosomes and I started thinking, wow… does that mean a horse is twice the animal a human is? But then I found out that a human doesn’t have 26 chromosomes like I thought they actually have 46. And not only that, but 26 times 2 isn’t 64 at all but instead 52, so I was wrong on all counts, but anyway does that mean that a horse is 1.39 the animal that a human is? And I thought, yeah… yeah it does. But then I was talking to my fern the other day and I said “Fern, how many chromosomes do you have?” and my fern said “Circa 1200” and I said “Fern, I think the word ‘circa’ only applies to time, and what do you mean 1200?” and by the time I realized that there were more important questions I probably could have asked my fern it died from exhaustion at the effort exerted in answering my question and, in truth, that I would never know.
http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.bold.gif
Doing Something Totally Weird
After you’ve talked about something that’s meaningful to you while playing opera music, the audience is putty in your hands. Take this opportunity to do something that’s really meaningful in your own life, but provide no clues as to what it might actually mean to anyone else. You’ve built up some amount of credit by this time, what with the fire effects and the German music. Spend that credit now. Here’s an example:
(play “Hey, Big Spender”)
Q; Hello Gerald.
G: Hello Quincy.
Q: It sure is tiring isn’t it?
G: What’s that?
Q Oh nothing. I just mean holding up this Grecian urn. (if you’d rather not specify that the urn you’re holding up is Grecian in order to make it more universal, just go ahead and call it an urn.)
G Is that what we’re doing? Are we holding up a Grecian Urn?
Q Nobody understands!
G I thought that we were posing for a photograph?
Q For thousands of years? A thousand year photograph?
G Perhaps it is a long exposure photograph?
Q No exposure is this long! We’re holding up a Grecian urn and if we let go the urn will crumble
G I’m suddenly exhausted at the thought of all this responsibility on my shoulders
Q Let’s let go Gerald! Let’s suddenly let go!
G The urn might crumble!
Q Let it crumble!
G By God you’re right! Let it crumble!
And that will just about do it. Now you have to get the audience interested again.
Getting The Audience Interested Again
Do something that involves the audience and isn’t just about serving your own ends. Include them, but not actually. Audience participation is so 2004.