Full exposure? Four solo shows about the art of true nature.

Two years into theater after the shutdown has brought a slew of solo artists to New York stages grappling with topics like grief, death and the apocalypse — and that’s just the comedies. Solo shows are cheap to produce and relatively accessible for a sector that is still on shaky ground.

There’s been no shortage this fall, and now four solo shows on Off Broadway demonstrate a range of approaches to the form, proving, at least for this round, that uncovering your inner thoughts and fears is worth it. “A good day for me, not for you”, at the Connelly Theater in the East Village, and “Sad boys in Harpieland”, at Playwrights Horizons in Midtown Manhattan, opt for total vulnerability and dissect the psyche as if the stage were an operating table. “School photos” And “Entertainments”, also at Playwrights Horizons, you choose the opposite direction, with artists who hold themselves at a distance to direct attention elsewhere, but with devices that can be distracting and evasive.

The middle-aged narrator of “A Good Day to Me Not to You” reveals intimate details from the start: She’s nursing a surprising case of genital warts, she tells the audience, which has been dormant for a decade since she last had sex . .

In this wryly candid confession presented by Waterwell, writer and performer Lameece Issaq plays a New Yorker with a biting sense of humor who endures a downturn: she was forced to drop out of orthodontic school due to her bouts of vertigo, then fired from a dental technician. laboratory because he filed away the imperfections in the plaster molds of patients. Now she is nursing HPV and moving to a boarding house in a monastery named after St. Agnes, the patron saint of virgins and survivors of sexual abuse. (Peiyi Wong’s weathered shrine changes locations under Mextly Couzin’s dynamic lighting.)

Directed with graceful sensitivity by Waterwell Artistic Director Lee Sunday Evans, Issaq’s performance is both tender and candid, switching with ease between addressing the audience directly as narrator and voicing succinctly sketched characters (the teeth of everyone tell a story). Driven by her maternal impulse, first toward her cousin and then a potential child of her own, the narrator is betrayed by what she cannot control but always returns, via an elliptical path, to the care she owes herself.

In “Sad Boys in Harpy Land,” a thrilling and frenetic nervous breakdown of a show, Alexandra Tatarsky, who uses she and those pronouns, inhabits the value of a graduate seminar with German literary characters like kindergarten drag (the scenic, costume and especially inventive props). design is by Andreea Mincic). They call themselves an “anxious clown” and so often disrupt their own act with reflexive interrogations that the interruptions become the point. With twitching eyes, Tatarsky sips from the ever-growing coffee cups, and they seem engaged in a discursive attempt to grow up, create something new, and reckon with their death instincts. (No pressure.)

Tatarski circles further back to Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, a prosperous boy who toils in his bedroom to write a play about self-loathing and passivity. Occasionally, Tatarsky’s madness is expressed in deranged melodies (sound composition by Shane Riley). How should someone create art that makes their identity legible? And why be readable at all?

Directed with a bracing invention from Iris McCloughan, “Sad Boys” has the delirious effect of connecting with a live-wire performer, even though it’s hard to tell whether they’re laughing, crying or both. Tatarski’s cumulative argument seems to be that, like the character of the Wandering Jew, whom she plays with a gray beard that drags across the floor, identity is a process rather than a fixed set of signifiers.

First names scribbled on pieces of colored construction paper form a set list for “School Pictures,” a largely sung collage, written and performed by Milo Cramer, of impressions gathered from tutoring New York City students. Cramer, using they and those pronouns, aims to capture brief snapshots of the privileged youth: their naïve clarity, vocal insecurity, and mandate to excel in a system rigged in their favor. (Cramer notes in the script that the subjects here are fictional.)

Under the direction of Morgan Green, these portraits of high school students whose parents could afford the tuition are presented with the sonic equivalent of a rough chalk: a ukulele and atonal talk vocals. Two? Yes. And it grates once it becomes clear that this will be Cramer’s sustained mode of expression for most of the show’s 60 minutes. Sounding syllables and striking chaotic notes evoke a youthful spirit, but finding the artistic intent in the lyrics is a difficult task. A lecture on systemic inequality in the city’s education system is a welcome break, and ultimately allows Cramer to align himself with the audience as adults.

There is something childlike in the persona Ikechukwu Ufomadu adopts in ‘Amusements’, despite the writer-performer’s tuxedo and the demeanor of a gentleman. The humor in this stand-up set is, as the title suggests, light and mild, almost unjustified. In the gap between Ufomadu’s erudite appearance and simple nature comes a steady breeze of innocent punchlines (“Happy Friday to all who celebrate!” “How many of you are alumni of the school?”). The resulting ratio of eye-rolls to chuckles will come down to a matter of taste.

As directed here by Nemuna Ceesay, Ufomadu has the graceful and charming sensibility of a jacked-up Mister Rogers, never more so than when he ventures into the audience to ask if anyone needs a volunteer and then offers his services. Ufomadu is gentle, but also hesitant and unpolished; his set floats on a current of appealing humility.

It’s an act, of course; How many performers reveal their true colors on stage may be impossible to know. At its most profound, Ufomadu’s literal approach indicates the extent to which we are all on the same page. Where would we be without clothes or shoes? Probably not brave enough at home to show our naked selves.

A good day for me, not for you
Through December 16 at the Connelly Theater, Manhattan; waterwell.org.

Sad boys in Harpieland; School photos; and entertainment
Through December 3 at Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan; playwrightshorizons.org.