The preface contests the appropriateness of using the term “Performance Artists” to categorise solo performers. Bonney explains that performance art was often used as a testing ground for exploring concepts that may later be “expressed in objects such as paintings or sculptures” (2000, p. xii). With solo performance having close relations to many other art forms that a standard multi-cast theatre production could not replicate, the potential for artistic expression is limitless. Solo performance is an artistic style that immerses itself within the process of creating work rather than the final end product. Bonney states that this attitude however is still at the core of some solo performers and not all. This is because it “has become a crowded division of the performing arts, with many of its artists reaching mainstream audiences through mass media” (Bonney, 2000, p. xiv).
Bonney also explains how artists arrived at the medium of solo performance. She describes this century as “the era of the ‘self’ – a hundred years of shifting from the nineteenth-century emphasis on the community to the late twentieth-century elevation and examination of the individual” (Bonney, 2000, p. xiv). This change stems down to specific events and the attitudes generally felt through each decade. Hedonistic attitudes in the twenties and radical activism in the sixties are examples of this. Bonney posits “In solo work, the contemporary cultural moment is quickly assimilated and fed back to us” (2000, p. xiv).
Works Cited
Bonney, Jo (2000) Extreme Exposure: An Anthology of Solo Performance Texts From The Twentieth Century, New York: Theatre Communications Group.