Bob Dylan Just Played a Private Show for an Audience of Exactly One (1) Fan. On Purpose, Too.
It was a proper gig, a set backed by Bob’s regular band. In the audience was exactly one person, someone named Fredrik Wikingsson. How did this happen?
Fred is the friend of Anders Helgeson, a filmmaker whose current project is documenting what it’s like for a solitary person to be exposed to an event that would normally be staged for a large crowd. A concert by Bob Dylan, for example. The project, called Experiment Ensam, has also staged single-person events at a comedy club and a karaoke bar.
For the Dylan shoot, Wikingsson sat alone in the middle of the second row in a theatre inside Philadelphia’s Academy of Music. Zimmy and the band strode on stage and worked their way through a series of covers.
Wikingsson’s reactions to the show were obviously greatly influenced by the fact that he was the only person in the audience. The results will appear in a 15 minute documentary due for upload to YouTube on December 15. Meanwhile, you can listen to a discuss of the project here and read more about the event itself at Diffuser.