Writing Yourself onto the Stage: The One-Person Show
The solo show is theater at its best. The bare essentials–a good story and one performer. This course is for writers, actors, comics, and anyone who wants to create (or are in the process of creating) their own one-person show. Whether you are writing a solo show based on personal experience, a historical figure, or a gallery of characters around a central theme, this course gives you the tools to construct a show that utilizes all of your talents. For writers, the solo show presents the great challenge of peopling the stage with vivid characters while telling a compelling story. For actors and comics, the one-person show gives you more control over your career as well as a place for your own voice to be heard. In the style of Ruth Draper, Anna Deavere Smith, Jane Wagner and Lily Tomlin, Eric Bogosian, Spalding Gray, and John Leguizamo, each student writes and presents monologues, combining the guidelines of each in-class assignment with his/her own experience.
For more information see the course listing at UCLA.
My friend Laurel Ollstein is teaching this class and you should take it if you are a writer, actor, comic. She’s truly wonderful!