This is a narrative of the identity concerns of three authors and actors, which includes their solo plays, or perhaps a collection of six solos, that comes with a narrative of the creative endeavors of their authors and actors.
A contest of solo theatre, which takes place in the Arlington Theater in Santa Barbara (California), with a first round between these three finalists in the Fall 1973 and a second round in the Winter 1974, lays the background for this dual genre.
Naldo Arez, a Canadian New Yorker is a theorist of the relationships between the author, the actor, the character and the spectator. At the contest, he presents a collective pseudo musical solo, Kollective, and a comic thriller about an agoraphobic play-writer, Excessive.
Pink Jake is a San Francisco stand-up comedian who reflects the identity concerns of the transvestite, author of himself as a character. At the contest he presents a solo tryptic comedy Shoplifter, and a tragicomic thriller Décalage, in which the soloist is confined to an old elevator that moves at different speeds.
Britt Albright is a Texan drama therapist specialized in suicide that leaves group psychodrama to embrace individual drama therapy. She presents: Transformers, a solo version of Chekhov The Three Sisters, and The Suicides, a collection of the last moments of famous theatrical suicides.
This narrative & solos joint text is also a faithful mirror of an American historical period, in which its Portuguese author was a witness. Political events like Watergate, the final moments of the Vietnam War, the Pinochet coup in Chile as well as sociological-political events such as the Symbionese Liberation Army, Reagan ranch in Santa Barbara and, above all, the movement of streaking for impeachment or “run naked for the destitution of Nixon” extensively illustrate the context in which the solo contest takes place.