Portland Story Theater: Singlehandedly Solo Festival Guidelines

2012 Singlehandedly Guidelines for Participation

Portland Story Theater
The Pacific Northwest's
Premier Storytelling Organization
Performance is always by invitation and all artists who participate meet the ten (10) criteria listed below. For those of you interested in receiving an invitation to perform in Singlehandedly, please refer to these guidelines before contacting us. We suggest that you contact us yourself, rather than have your agent, coach, or assistant do that for you. We are all about relationship and so is our work. Our preference is to see you perform live but we are always open to talking with artists who want to collaborate with Portland Story Theater. This is not a fringe festival. It is not acting and it is not readings of plays. It is a festival of feature-length personal narratives. Every night is different and each artist typically performs once. If you believe that you are interested, meet the criteria listed below, and want to follow-up, please arrange a time to talk with us via email . We look forward to hearing from you and appreciate your interest in Portland Story Theater.
2011 Guest Artist,
Slash Coleman
writes about his experience
Modern Storytelling and
The Singlehandedly! Residency
    1. It must be a solo piece. It can be a refinement of existing work, but preference is given to new work.

    2. The length is 45 minutes (min) to 60 minutes (max).

    3. There must be a narrative. It need not necessarily be conveyed through spoken words, but there must be a story line that the average audience member will readily grasp and follow. PST is not the place for abstract performance with no meaning or hidden meaning or meaning so obscure that no one except the performer gets it.

    4. The hallmark of PST is personal narrative, so the piece must be a personal story. We want first person accounts. Your story need not be 100% true but it must be based on true events in your own life.

    5. You must be willing to participate in the collaborative development process. PST has a unique development process that is stimulating and community-building. Even if you are not local to the Pacific Northwest, we encourage input and interaction with the group of festival artists.

    6. We are looking for performances with no fourth wall, where the performer intentionally and deliberately engages the audience directly. This is critical and differentiates us significantly from most theatrical productions.

    7. You must be your authentic self having a conversation with the audience, not a character on stage.

    8. The piece can be one seamless story or it may be several distinct pieces connected together. If so, there should be something perhaps chronologically and definitely thematically or emotionally connecting the several pieces into a unified whole; a through-line or a narrative arc so that the full-length solo piece is more than an olio or a potpourri of distinct and unconnected pieces.

    9. Some folktale / myth / traditional / fictional / non-personal material may be included or interwoven but only to the extent that it supports / enhances / illuminates / explains the personal narrative.

    10. It is our goal that the stories have some kind of universality to them. We are looking for stories that have meaning for and resonate with the audience.