The Festival of Monodramas is an audacious and artistically rigorous capstone experience for MFA Performance & Pedagogy students, requiring each participant to write, direct, and perform a full-length solo performance. There is no ensemble, no safety net: just one body, depicting one or multiple voices in a fully realized world. The results will surprise you. While the design is minimal, the shows are anything but. This year, several of the performers revisited canonical material to interrogate, not to reproduce it.

Amanda Before the Memory

Robyn Conner turned to Amanda Wingfield from The Glass Menagerie, asking what history shaped the woman in the original text that audiences should know. Having previously played Amanda in high school and later attending the Tennessee Williams Festival, Robin felt compelled to explore the silence surrounding the character.

“The circumstances that led to the person she becomes are never discussed,” she explained. Her process involved a year and a half of historical research—examining early twentieth-century women’s rights, the turbulence of World War I, the Spanish Flu, and the Great Depression, as well as the specific history of St. Louis. The monodrama became both imaginative reconstruction and scholarly exhumation.

Letting Laura Speak

Another student performer addressed the same play from a different angle. Tori Denike’s work, Blue Roses Reimagined, began with a simple but tricky question: What if Laura Wingfield was able to speak for herself?

In this reinterpretation, Laura, who is often framed from memory within William’s dramaturgy, becomes an autonomous voice. Honoring the emotional landscape of the original while imagining beyond it, Tori described her process as walking through a careful artistic tightrope. The iconic blue roses, which were once an emblem of fragility, are reconstructed to reveal her inner psychological life.

Directing herself requires vigilance against indulgence. Writing demands discipline and dramaturgical clarity: “When you’re alone onstage, nothing can be decorative; everything has to mean something.” In this context, where presence is non-negotiable, solo performance becomes an endurance exercise—both emotionally and physically.

Letting Go to Discover the Story

Not all the monodramas emerged from canonical texts. Zach Judah describes beginning with multiple concepts, only to find himself restricted by early assumptions. Initially working with pre-existing music, he treated the songs as “concrete and immovable.” New ideas surfaced, but only after he stepped away from them. That act of release obviously reshaped the entrire project. “It taught me to stay open-minded about writing,” he reflected, “and not get too caught up on one idea.”  The final work is a testament to artistic flexibility—an acknowledgment that creative rigor sometimes lies not in control, but in realignment.

Training as Foundation

The monodramas may appear solitary on stage, but they stem from years of ensemble training.

Zach cited Meisner technique from his graduate acting courses as a way of safeguarding himself against slipping into unsustainable emotional involvement. Voice work and breathing exercises guaranteed the stamina for a full forty-five-minute show. Equally, pre-show rituals paid reverence to earlier productions—pointing to a collective artistic journey rather than a single one.

For Robyn, coursework on Tennessee Williams brought transformation. Engaging with scholars at the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival deepened her understanding of both textual and historical awareness. During the writing process, she emphasized inquiry over prescription through the mentorship of faculty who gave guidance through questions rather than directives, allowing the authentic voice of the character to emerge.

Pedagogy training was also vital for the rigors of the monodramas. Solo performance, as Tori notes, reframes the audience as collaborator. Without scene partners, the actor must actively consider how meaning is received. Breath, alignment, pacing are not abstract classroom principles, but survival tools in solo work. Reflection becomes continuous maintenance. A monodrama is not locked; it is tended.

Why Monodrama?

Dr. Bill Gelber, a professor in the performance and pedagogy program and one of the mentors of the performers, explained that the format emerged from both logistical and pedagogical shifts. Years ago, performance and pedagogy students were required to direct or act in full productions—limited performance space made this expectation complicated. Over time, the faculty recognized the artistic and professional value of self-created work.

The monodrama became one of three thesis options for performance and pedagogy students with a written thesis or course creation as the other two. This year, almost every student elected the solo format.

Rather than attempting to guarantee casting in mainstage productions, the program chooses to cultivate autonomy. Students integrated their training as actors, playwrights, and directors. Their material is developed in the absence of companies or casting structures. In an industry where self-production and devised work have become increasingly vital, the monodrama functions as both examination and professional rehearsal.

Not Minute but Acute

Audiences that are unfamiliar with the Festival of Monodramas often question: why attend a forty-five-minute solo performance? 

For students, the answer concentrates around intimacy and concentration.

One artist hopes audiences are emotionally affected—recognizing the individual courage embedded in their piece of work. Another places value in the structure of the festival itself: a variety of specific voices, with each performance short enough to attract viewers.

The most compelling reason might be the idea that a monodrama is not a minute theatrical form—it is an acute one. With no elaborate spectacle and no ensemble to divide attention, the exchange between performer and audience becomes immediate. A shared breath. A sustained gaze. A single consciousness holding space.

Dr. Gelber stresses this appeal: these are new plays born from personal experience and critical response to established texts. They represent the culmination of three years of intensive graduate training. The works range from reinterpretations of canonical drama to explorations of collective trauma—each grounded in rigorous craft.

A Festival Discovering its Identity

The Festival of Monodramas, now in its second year, can no longer be termed experimental; it is now a much-embraced tradition. What started as a practical solution has evolved into a pedagogical tenet: to train artists not only to interpret roles, but to generate them. 

For the performers, the festival is an endurance test, a scholarly examination, and a declaration of artistic power. 

For audiences, it is an invitation—to witness a single artist fully occupy space, and to return next year to see who steps into that space next.