Edinburgh festival: Spare us the monologue
Less tricky to write than a full-scale drama and cheaper to produce, the one-person how is everywhere this year. But doesn't your heart sink, just a little?
More than half the shows I saw this week were one-person plays or monologue collections. Big deal, you might say: at a festival where larger companies can lose 10 grand or more a month, a solo show makes more financial sense. Transport, food, accommodation, even wages: everything is multiplied by your cast list. Little wonder that so many writers, actors and directors practice the monologue method, with its controllable costs and supreme adaptability to Edinburgh's unforgiving venues. After all, why should stand-ups be the only ones to have it easy?
And yet I can't help feeling that it's a lack of imagination, as much as cash constraints, that provokes this annual glut of theatrical onanism. You could not, for instance, blame budget for the staging of The Six Wives Of Timothy Leary at the Pleasance, where a sextet of clearly talented actors barely address or acknowledge each other for 85 numbing minutes.
With one or two exceptions - Spalding Gray springs to mind - the theatrical monologue show is intrinsically dull. At best, it spoonfeeds an audience that wants to be flattered with subtleties; at worst it simply harangues them. Who hasn't walked into a venue to feel their heart sink, just a little, at the sight of yet another single chair, yet another single spotlight, yet another cast of one? Solo plays can showcase fine, delicate acting, as Bully does at the Gilded Balloon, and inventive staging (try Borderline at the Underbelly for that), but these shows succeed in spite of the form not because of it, and they're not half as much fun to watch as an actual, honest-to-goodness play.
For writers, especially developing or first-time playwrights, the one-person show is understandably less threatening than a full-scale drama. There's little need for the tricky cut-and-thrust of conversation and plenty of space to explain your hero's hopes and fears. But are you sure you wouldn't rather write a novel?
The conventions of traditional stage drama are restrictive, yes, but then they're supposed to be. What's the first thing that every student director learns? Show, don't tell. All drama is about conflict, about argument, whether it's Richard III seducing Anne or Josh crossing swords with Toby. Good stage writing offers multiple points of view engaged in an almighty barney for supremacy, and an argument requires more than one person.
So here's a request for any playwrights who are hard at work plotting next year's smash hit show. Please, ban yourself from the monologue. Go on, give it a go. Scrape together enough cash to hire two actors. Even if the second performer does nothing but listen to the first one, you've created a dynamic that is more interesting than one actor spilling their guts to the audience. Resurrect the fourth wall and build it high - lock your characters inside until they're forced to talk to each other. Spare us the confessionals,
no matter how searching. Spare us the lectures, no matter how eloquent. Just write a goddamned play.
Timothy Hughes wrote
Paul,
I couldn’t disagree with you more. But then I would as I produced THE SIX WIVES OF TIMOTHY LEARY and am one of the Artistic Directors of Weaver Hughes Ensemble, who along with this production, have two others up at the festival this year. For your information both of those other plays are not monologues.
But let us address your comment on monologues or “monologue collections”. You have a very nifty get out clause to your damning statement that monologues lack imagination by the phrase “with one or two exception” which I am assuming excludes such writers as Alan Bennett, Samuel Beckett, Shakespeare, etc. So, you are able to avoid these great theatrical works and not lump them with the rest of playwrights attempts at being “intrinsically dull”.
Of course you include the SIX WIVES in that group. Lets forget for the moment the many, many, many great reviews that have been given to this production (4 stars in The Herald; 4 Stars in Edinburgh Festivals; “Be Impressed” The Independent; “A remarkable Achievement” The Stage; 4 Stars and Critics’ Choice in Time Out, etc.) as with all theatre there will be critics who don’t like a production, the writing, the performances as sometimes its about taste, world view, what is means to them – the list goes on. But let us rather examine this statement of a monologue being dull. Your statement is just immature and quite reckless and demonstrates a lack of understanding of theatre, though I see your name mentioned as producer of the Guardian Musical event so clearly you work within the business. A successful monologue is incredibly hard to achieve as it’s a direct relationship to the audience. The solo actor has to be both their own character and the one they are relating to. It is demanding on an audience. Also, for a playwright, it’s about developing their craft. Is Sarah Kane’s Crave this “dull collection” or an artist desiring
to establish and create new a form and relationship with the audience.
In the end Paul, I am just bored of your statement, and disappointed. It lacks imagination in its writing. You seem not to understand that the all important relationship which is necessary for theatre is the one between the stage and audience, whether the stage is filled with a cast of hundred’s, a single chair or nothing but a woman buried in sand. That is the real tension. So to demand of playwright’s just full-length plays is to ignore the power of the craft, its diversity and beauty. It shows ignorance.
I am not going to even address the issue of finances, but for the record the cast have been paid and provided with travel and accommodation.
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