JOIN USGoing Solo’, a theatre festival of solo performances, was staged at Ranga Shankara recently.
It saw the coming together of some of the most acclaimed artistes in the industry, who lit up the stage with their performances.
Artistes Robert Softley and Guy Masterson spoke about performing in Bangalore. This was Robert’s first visit to India, where he staged a touching play ‘If These Spasms Could Speak’, a work written and directed by him. The play is based on differently-abled people. On his first visit here, Robert says India is an incredible country. “The size and culture are very different to Scotland where we only have five million people. It's quite frightening but at the same time a great experience.”
When asked about how he ended by writing such a heartening play, Robert says, “I was on a holiday with my partner a few years ago — we were celebrating his great academic achievement with a couple of champagne cocktails but as soon as they were set down on our table, my hand ‘spasmed’ and I knocked them all over both of us. Now things like that are obviously annoying but they also show that differently-abled people have experiences that are unique to us and that inform who we are.
So the play came from a desire to share these stories — I worked with four other people, collecting their stories and adapting them to make them more theatrically interesting. I was inspired to write the piece because I wanted to let people who aren’t differently-abled know some of the truths about what it is like to be disabled and have a body that’s a little bit different from the norm.’’
For Robert performing a solo show was a unique experience as the show became more about the audience and him, whereas acting with other people is a collective exercise. Exchanges between performer and audience becomes much more intimate and important. “The advantage of this is that you can take the audience with you; you’re with them the entire time and you’re very much in control of the show.
But that leads to the disadvantage that you don’t have anyone to support you or fall back on, so if you’re not in that right place the whole show falls down: there’s no one to back you up,’’ adds Robert Guy Masterson is an Olivier Award-winning producer, actor, director and writer. On his tour of ‘Going Solo’ he staged ‘Shylock’, adapted from Shakespeare’s famous comedy ‘The Merchant of Venice’, and performed the role of the Jewish moneylender. In the play, he takes on several roles at once and engages the audience with his deep conviction.
“Through this piece, he comments on how the Jewish people have been treated in history, whether it is the characterisation of Shylock as a comic villain in Shakespeare’s time or the extreme racial discrimination the community was subjected to later on,” says Guy.
“For me, solo acts can never be challenging; this is what I have learnt and this is what I want to do. In this play, I enact a lot of characters, and previously also I have taken on 25 character in ‘Animal Farm’ and 75 in another play. So its exciting and great fun,” he says.