The Week Ahead - May 3-9 - Schedule - NYTimes.com:
Among the loyal friends who accompany me to the theater, there is one game soul whom I can rely on to be willing to see almost anything. Puppet Shakespeare? Jukebox musicals? Polish experimental dance? Say the word and he’s there. The only exception — and it’s a big one — is a solo show. His is not an unusual prejudice, especially because part of the impulse to produce this form is — let’s be frank — financial. But the good news for this derided form is that MIKE DAISEY is taking up its cause.
Mr. Daisey, who kicked off a national discussion last year about the state of regional theater with his fiery “How Theater Failed America,” will deliver another fiery call to arms called “Why Solo Performance Matters: A Manifesto” on Wednesday, the first night of the soloNOVA Arts festival. (The festival runs through May 30.) Also that night, Mr. Daisey will receive the soloNOVA artist of the year award.
Mr. Daisey’s one-night event will argue, he wrote in an e-mail message, “that the solo form is the next great American contribution to world drama.” Its low budget is actually part of the allure since mounting a one-man piece enables a flexibility that big productions cannot match. The goal, as he put it in a previous show, is “a theater that can survive the apocalypse.” 8 p.m., DR2 Theater & D-Lounge, 103 East 15th Street, Manhattan, (212) 239-6200, dr2theatre.com; $35.
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