So You Want To Do A Solo Show?
A unique guide to every aspect of putting on your own solo show: choosing the subject, raising the finance, booking the venue - and performing it!
More and more actors – faced with ever longer periods of unemployment – are turning to the solo show as a way of keeping active, keeping visible, and keeping the wolf from the door! This book is essential reading for anyone contemplating such a move, and comprehensively covers every aspect of putting on your own one-person show.
Being a veteran of the solo-show circuit, as a writer, performer and director, Gareth Armstrong is the ideal guide. He takes you step by step through each stage of the process:
• Choosing the right material – or devising your own
• Raising the finance
• Finding the venues
• Hiring a bookings manager and other personnel
• Arranging publicity
• Winning an audience
There is a special section on that mecca for solo shows, the Edinburgh Fringe, and an extensive appendix covering funding bodies, venues, festivals and more. Throughout the book, Armstrong illustrates his points with case studies of actual solo shows by performers such as Miriam Margolyes, Linda Marlowe and Guy Masterson.
'So You Want To Do A Solo Show? is a thorough, meticulous, hands-on, "how-to-do" manual, covering everything from the germination of an idea right through to the costing of the flyers. It is, I think, the most valuable read for any performer who has ever thought "If only I could have some control over the way my career is going"' Maureen Lipman, from her Foreword
Gareth Armstrong created his own solo show, Shylock, and performed it over six hundred times in over thirty countries and throughout the United States. He now collaborates with other writers and actors in the making of solo performances which tour extensively in the UK and internationally. For more information, visit his website.