Hungry for the Human

Years ago, I wrote a one-man show. For the second performance, only one man showed up to see the show. We gave him the option of staying or returning for another performance. Surprisingly, he opted to say. So, a one-man show was performed for a one man audience. In the room, one actor, one playwright, one audience member. Fundamentally, that's all it takes.

From the London Times, a One-On-One Theater Festival in London:

...one-on-one theatre, theatre that’s so experimental, it isn’t sure if it’s theatre at all. In the coming weeks, the curious, the incautious and the increasingly confused will be able to sample an unprecedented number of one-on-ones, as some 34 companies descend on venues across the capital from the Gate to the Barbican, BAC to the National.

Dance to your choice of tune with an unknown partner, join a group-therapy session or speed-date a glamorous stranger, throw a left hook in a boxing ring or sing karaoke with a soldier currently serving in Afghanistan. In one-on-one, anything goes. You might find yourself in a coffin, a bath, or dangling from a window, four storeys up. This is front-line theatre with no rules.

Perhaps the most challenging show that BAC is hosting is Howells’s. His new piece will be available to only about 20 people, and no one will be allocated it without prior warning. Entitled The Pleasure of Being, it invites audiences to submit completely to Howells’s care, get naked, be washed, fed and held in a series of embraces. Where does he draw the line? “Sex,” he says. “I’d never have sex with someone.”

According to Howells, the intimacy and emotional connection that these shows foster is responsible for the wildfire popularity of one-on-one theatre. “When I started ten years ago, hardly anyone was doing it. Last year you couldn’t move in Edinburgh for one-on-ones. The more reliant we become on technology to communicate, the fewer flesh-on-flesh encounters we have. Human contact is being eroded. And nothing can substitute for that.”

BAC ONE-ON-ONE Festival trailer from BAC on Vimeo.