The Solo Odyssey
The history of the one-person show is likely as old as language itself. Maybe older. It’s not unreasonable to imagine an overly animated, pre-linguistic Australopithecus grunting out story points in an attempt to get his fellow knuckle-draggers to giggle, or scratch their protruding hominid brows in wonder.
In all cultures, shamans held the sacred office of orally imparting knowledge to the tribe. To do so, they had to couch their wisdom in an easily digestible narrative. The more gifted of them seemed to channel a higher power when doing so. It’s not a big leap to see a listener transferring the supernatural aspects of a story onto an enthusiastic storyteller. The Greek word enthusiasm literally means the god inside. En = in. Theos = god.
Without exaggeration, one could claim that good storytelling is what allowed some species to thrive over time, while other less capable species died out. A good story is nothing short of life saving.
As a Greek, I’d argue that the first official, long running, smash-hit, one-man show, was by Homer. The Iliad was a hard ticket to get in the Archaic Age, primarily because there were no tickets, but also because Homer was the only one spinning the yarn. The show was so successful that Homer couldn’t help but crank out a sequel, The Odyssey, and tour the greater Greek Diaspora all over again.
That said, it’s my belief that Homer originated the one-person show for perhaps the oldest reason in the proverbial scroll: working with other people sucks.
I imagine Homer gathering a group of actors for an early rehearsal of The Iliad. There hundreds of many roles, warriors, priestesses, deities, oracles, sea creatures! In short, a producer’s nightmare. Nor were there scripts back then. Each performer had to literally hear their lines in order to learn them. You can bet there was confusion over what the hell dactylic hexameter was, even after Homer explained how linguistic structure would help you remember what to say, while also making it easier for an audience to hear…
It’s rumored that he work-shopped the piece on a large flat rock on the island of Chios while his manager, Agentus, scratched out extensive notes on papyrus. The first note being that an eight-hour running time was not exactly audience friendly. It would work better as a series. Homer just shook his head.
Agentus also advised him that killing off all of the main characters would depress his audience beyond consolation. “At least keep one alive. Odysseus, I’d say. He’s wily. Why not do a thing where he’s trying to get back home to his wife and kid, and keeps getting waylaid and whatnot, you can milk it for all it’s worth… And then he finally gets home, and there’s a big reunion, and for Zues sakes, end it up!”
It was good advice, and Homer eventually took it. Sadly, he and Agentus parted ways after Agentus was caught selling action figures after each performance and not sharing a cut. Homer was blind and couldn’t see but he ended up stepping on one and the gig was up.
The show eventually opened to rave reviews and ran for a few hundred years before a new form of story telling started to unfold in Athens. Suddenly, working with other people started sucking less because of a new invention called writing. Now, multiple thespians could play out different parts of the stories, instead of just one. There were large choruses of singers filling in the blanks for the audience. There were sets and props, costumes and masks, and cranes swinging actors through the air above the stage. It was nothing short of revolutionary and seemed to mark the end of the one-person show. Except, it didn’t.
Solo performance safely co-existed side by side with larger casts over the next two thousand years, from the Troubadours to the Bards, to the Broadway stage, because for as much as it’s a blast working with other people, it’s still easier and cheaper going it alone.
