ABSTRACT
In theatre, monologues cost little, but savings in production costs must be balanced against the additional fatigue for performer and audience alike. For the performer, this is a not a problem, since narcissism, a vital component in every actor's make-up, will help him bear the burden willingly. In nineteenth-century theatre leading actors carved out a space as solo performers during the so called soirees d'honneur or soirees corbeilles, evenings of personal self-celebration in which the actor would perform the pieces de resistance of his repertoire. The starting-point of modern actors is a kind of professional dualism, born of the experience of Mistero buffo, whose unrestrained vitality wavers between that of the singer-songwriter and that of the agit-prop speaker at a political rally. Some skilled actors of monologue even succeed in winning Oscars, a prize awarded by the Establishment and one which confers equal dignity on the purveyors of comedy and of thereputedly higher forms of art.
