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In the corner of the dimly lit stage, a woman stands quietly with her head in her hands.

Silence fills the air of the theatre.

For what feels like an eternity, the audience is left staring at her, just standing there, with nothing but the colour of her freshly painted fingernails to focus on.

The person in the seat behind you stops the munching incessantly on his popcorn to listen carefully. You can feel him breathing heavily down the back of your neck.

A cough echoes from a few rows back.

Finally, the woman lifts her head. She walks slowly to the front of the stage, one small step after another as though she is counting.

Without any warning, she screams at the top of her lungs. The curtains close.

While some of the theatre goers get up from their seats, clapping and cheering, there are a few like yourself who remain seated, thinking, "Huh?"

The concept of a "one-man" show is often times a novel idea. It marks a brave decision on the part of the writer and the performer, and sometimes it actually works.

A show like "Defending the Caveman" for instance has experienced a relatively long run of success, and continues to impress audiences every time it hits the stage.

But there is also a great risk involved when attempting this sort of play. Time and time again, unfortunately, these one-man or one-woman shows end up with a disappointed and confused audience.

Venturing into a world where one person is responsible not only for transporting an entire audience into a fictional place, but also making them believe in a set of characters, all the while still entertaining them, is a tough job if there ever was one!

These days people either over-complicate their work to the point where no one but they themselves can understand it, or they trivialise it, completely underestimating their audience.

One of course can sympathise with the performer ? it can't be an easy task to walk out under the spotlight all on your own ? but in reality, the embarrassment could be avoided by remembering a few key things:

For one, the writer and performer should never presume that the audience immediately knows what is going on.

Sitting there in the darkened theatre, they are relying on you to take them on a journey. If you complicate it too much and don't give them something for their imaginations to work with, you will simply lose them altogether.

Secondly, if you are playing a host of different characters, remember to make them all unique. It doesn't help if all your characters sound the same, especially if you are not planning to do any sort of wardrobe changes.

Your audience won't know if you are Arthur or Martha.

Lastly, when it comes to theatre, silence is not always golden!

In a movie, one has a musical score to accompany a scene to make it more dramatic ? but unless you plan to have one of those Hollywood style music montages, standing on stage in dead silence is only going to be okay for a minute or two.

Trying to express an emotion in silence with nothing but an eye-ball movement for ten minutes at a time is just not entertaining!

Of course, I could be wrong. Each person's taste is completely different.

For some, paying R100 to sit and have a staring contest with the performer on stage might be considered an evening of riveting entertainment.

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