Theater of one

Early screen star Greta Garbo may have declared "I want to be alone," but that was off-screen.

On stage, there may be no more daunting task than the solo performance.

The show is you - and you're the show. But actors continue to brave this special kind of high-wire act. Some of the reasons are economic: It makes for a short line at the pay window.

But the more profound lure is artistic: the chance to have the audience all to yourself, to shape an intimate show that's entirely personal.

"The difference in being out there by yourself is, 'The buck stops here.'

"If [the show] fails, it's you that failed," says Annette Miller, who played Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in the world première of William Goldman's "Golda's Balcony."

But along with that burden "comes the totality of the joy" of creating a world occupied by just you and the audience, says Ms. Miller.

and just won an award as best solo performer from a group of New England theater critics.

Undoubtedly the most successful solo evening of drama today is "Mark Twain Tonight!" which actor Hal Holbrook has performed for more than 40 years. And for decades, actress Julie Harris won similar raves as poet Emily Dickinson in "The Belle of Amherst."

British actor Patrick Stewart ("Star Trek: The Next Generation") has won kudos for a solo version of Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol."

And currently in New York, another former "Star Trek" captain, Kate Mulgrew, is playing Off-Broadway in "Tea at Five," a one-woman show in which she channels film legend Katharine Hepburn. And the late comedian George Burns has a new booking on Broadway in the form of actor/impersonator Frank Gorshin's one-man homage, "Say Goodnight, Gracie."

Beyond theaters, a handful of other solo performers can earn $5,000 or $6,000 per appearance speaking to business audiences, offering the wisdom of an "Albert Einstein" or "Benjamin Franklin," says Lilly Walters, a consultant to professional motivational speakers in Glendora, Calif. In fact, her agency used to have a stable of them that it called its Dead Speakers Society.

But as the demand for motivational speakers has dropped, mirroring the economic slump, so has the business audience. Ms. Walters says it's love, not money, that should motivate solo performers today.

"It's a tough road" financially for most of these one-person acts, she says, but "if you are passionate about Florence Nightingale or whoever, it doesn't make any difference. Because you're going to love every minute of what you do."

It's also not a job for a newcomer, says Miller. "I would not suggest this for a young actor."

She developed a one-woman show in 1972 called "Who's a Lady?" But at the time, "I got too scared to do it by myself, and I hired another actress" with whom she performed as a team. "You have to have a whole lot of experience to be up there. It requires tremendous concentration."

With "Hail to the Chief" blaring in the background, "President Teddy Roosevelt" sweeps down the center aisle of a basement recreation hall at a church in Natick, Mass., pausing to greet enthusiastically those along the way with water-pump handshakes and his trademark toothy grin.

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