One is a theatre/performance project involving 100 actors and 100 rooms.

ONE, a large-scale performance project conceived by Pan Pan, Ireland. ONE is a performance in which the audience meets a performer on a one to one basis. One hundred rooms/performance spaces will be constructed with the name of each performer on the door, the audience each receives the name of one actor whose performance they will attend. In the room the actor will tell the audience the story of why they became an actor.

He/she will then offer to perform his/her favourite audition piece. The audience will then be brought for drinks to another room while the actors prepare for a curtain call. This will happen when a long curtain is pulled back to reveal all 100 actors taking a bow. This production is intended to give audiences a singular experience of an actor in the theatre. The reasons why any individual should choose the acting profession are interesting to one who chooses to watch them. This project is subtitled ‘Healing with Theatre’ There is also a parallel documentation project, which will centre on the one hundred performers taking part in the event.

One is intended to be a complete experience for the general public and artist.
It will enhance the meeting between different people and different senses. ‘One’ is an arena of creativity where the audience and artist will interact in “multi-sensory ways”. ‘One’ is a new and original link between the general public and live performance. ‘One’ provides a special way for art and performance to be experienced and looked at for the 21st century. It is an intertwining of the expectation of the theatre experience and a new kind of reality that can exist for the theatre experience. It is an aesthetic encounter which is made extremely concrete for the artist and member of the public, it is multifaceted, personal, bodily and intellectually illuminating.

We will carry out research and development of the project from August to December 2004 with a view to performing it in July 2005.

Other aspects to the project:

Video Documentation of ONE.
Photography documentation and catalogue of ONE.
Dissemination of documentation of ONE to a wider public.

Every actor taking part in the project will be photographed and filmed in each of their respective homes. The video footage will be turned into a film of all the actors, which will be projected on the exterior walls of the building where “One” is to be performed so that a passer by audience can also access the project in a completely different way.

Main Objectives of “ONE”:

To be a unique participatory experience for the audience. The main objective of the project is to provide a personal and interactive experience for the audience and the actor. In the general performance situation the audience and
actor are anonymous to one another with the actor becoming a character that usually serves the writer and the director’s objective. The Objective of the ‘One’ Project is to have another kind of meeting between audience and artist, an intimate meeting to get to know each other a lot better than normal. To enact a strong, lasting and vibrant quality of contact and exchange between the artist and the general public, literally on an individual basis. As we observe a meteoric rise in cinema going and a crisis in theatre attendance, the perception of audiences of actors is an uncertain one. In theatre, audiences can be unfamiliar with and uncertain of what to expect from live performance, when we do not have the easy suspension of disbelief that cinema provides. ONE will attempt to change people’s perceptions of a live theatre performance and to establish a precedent for quality of contact between audiences and artists.

To Document the stories of one hundred actors.

Healing With Theatre: The result of this meeting is intended to result in a healing process, where a level of understanding for a fellow human’s journey is realised by the one on one contact with traditionally the most important person to the actor, the audience. This should evolve naturally to a state of ‘healing with theatre’.

Once an audient has experienced a close meeting with an actor, he or she will feel naturally more connected to actors in live performances.

To understand the reason why performers love and practice their craft, and to realise also that audience attendance and appreciation is one of the most important things.

One Hundred Stories: One hundred illuminating stories of why people have chosen the acting profession as their career or life’s journey. Actors generally describe entry into the professional world of acting as a choice beyond their control or against their better judgement. In a world of declining theatre audiences and where it is guaranteed that you will not work all the time it is a decision tantamount to a vocation. There is also the tantalising possibility that one may become famous and find oneself in the position of the revered and adored. A celebrity. Gathering one hundred stories will result in gaining insight and discovering the impulses why some people become actors and performers.
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