Mike Daisey
Mike Daisey | |
---|---|
Born | 1976 (age 47–48) |
Nationality | American |
Occupation(s) | Monologist, author, actor |
Mike Daisey (born 1976) is an American monologist, author, actor and raconteur best known for his full-length extemporaneous monologues about Nikola Tesla, L. Ron Hubbard, Steve Jobs and Apple's supply chain in China, the Department of Homeland Security, the history of the New York transit system, 9/11, the inventor of the neutron bomb, Wal-Mart and a variety of other topics.
Monologues
Wasting Your Breath
Wasting Your Breath (1997) is a monologue of the Great American Roadtrip, Daisey is crossing the country from Maine to Seattle or bust in a story that jumps back and forth between two autobiographical storylines: a crumbling relationship with a pregnant girlfriend and a cross-country exodus from New England. Originally produced by Open Circle Theater in Seattle in 1997,[1] Wasting Your Breath was remounted and produced at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2004.
I Miss the Cold War
I Miss the Cold War (1998) is about Daisey's visit to post-Communist Warsaw and his father's counseling practice treating post-traumatic stress disorder in war veterans, interwoven with the history of his father's time in Vietnam. It was originally produced by 24/7 Productions in Seattle in June 1998.[2]
21 Dog Years
21 Dog Years (2001)[3] was Daisey's break.[4] It began in Seattle's Speakeasy Cafe Backroom in February 2001, where it received the attention of various media outlets, from Entertainment Weekly to South African Public Radio to David Letterman.[citation needed] Daisey then took the show Off-Broadway where it played for six months at the Cherry Lane Theatre before going to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Seattle's Intiman Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Portland Center Stage, and numerous engagements around the world. In 2002, Daisey’s book version of the tale under the same title, and in 2004 the BBC aired his radio adaptation of his monologue on Radio 4.[5]
The Ugly American
The Ugly American (2003), a story of theater and its discontents that covers Daisey's life as a student in London torn between two very different worlds, has been produced by Seattle's ACT Theatre,[6] the 2005 Spoleto Festival, and Berkeley Repertory Theatre[7] after receiving workshops at Manhattan Theatre Club, Intiman Theatre, and the Cape Cod Theatre Project. In 2005 the BBC aired a radio adaptation of this monologue on Radio Four.[citation needed]
All Stories Are Fiction
All Stories Are Fiction (2004) began at Seattle's Performance Space 122 where Daisey performed new shows every Monday night for two seasons in 2004 and 2005. For this series Daisey makes no notes of any kind until one hour before the performance, and then creates a show extemporaneously onstage.[8] Theaters that have produced Stories include PS122,[8] ACT Theatre, Portland Center Stage, the Maui Cultural Arts Center, and Seattle's Capitol Hill Arts Center. There have been over 40 different monologues produced in the series so far, each performed only one time for a live audience, and no two containing any of the same material or stories.[citation needed]
Monopoly!
Among other things, Monopoly! (2005) deals with the board game, Nikola Tesla, Bill Gates, Wal-Mart, and the author's home town in Maine.[9] Monopoly! was developed at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and has been produced at the Ohio Theatre by Les Freres Corbusier, American Repertory Theatre, at the 2006 Spoleto Festival and Seattle's Bumbershoot Festival, the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Noorderzon Festival in The Netherlands, FirstWorksProv, and many more.[citation needed]
Invincible Summer
Invincible Summer (2005) is about the history of the New York City transit system, loss and democracy in our time.[10] It has been produced at the Public Theater,[10] American Repertory Theatre,[11] Yale Repertory Theatre, ACT Theatre in Seattle, and the 2006 Spoleto Festival.[citation needed]
The 19 April 2007 performance of Invincible Summer at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was disrupted when over 80 audience members from a public high school in Norco, California, left the production mid-performance, with one audience member walking on stage to pour water over Daisey's hand-written performance notes.[12] Daisey had this to say:
Last night’s performance of INVINCIBLE SUMMER was disrupted when eighty seven members of a Christian group walked out of the show en masse, and chose to physically attack my work by pouring water on and destroying the original of the show outline. I’m still dealing with all the ramifications, but here’s what it felt like from my end: I am performing the show to a packed house, when suddenly the lights start coming up in the house as a flood of people start walking down the aisles–they looked like a flock of birds who’d been startled, the way they all moved so quickly, and at the same moment…it was shocking, to see them surging down the aisles. The show halted as they fled, and at this moment a member of their group strode up to the table, stood looking down on me and poured water all over the outline, drenching everything in a kind of anti-baptism.[13][11]"
Daisey later sought out and spoke with representatives of the group, including the member who destroyed his notes.[14][15]
Truth
Truth {the heart is a million little pieces above all things} (2006) is a monologue about James Frey, Oprah Winfrey, lying, and telling the truth. Ran off-Broadway in New York City at Ars Nova Theatre.[16]
Great Men of Genius
Great Men of Genius (2006) consists of four interlocking monologues about genius and megalomania in the lives of Bertolt Brecht, P.T. Barnum, Nikola Tesla, and L. Ron Hubbard[17] which has been produced at Berkeley Repertory Theatre,[18] Joe's Pub at the Public Theater, Galapagos Art Space in New York City, and the Capitol Hill Arts Center in Seattle.[citation needed]
Tongues Will Wag
Tongues Will Wag (2007) is a two-headed tale of love and loss, in which Daisey juxtaposes the tragedy of a young couple undergoing an unwanted pregnancy with the unlikely story of raising a puppy to adulthood.[19] It has appeared at American Repertory Theatre,[19] Berkeley Repertory Theatre,[20] Ars Nova Theatre,[21] and the Cape Cod Theatre Project.[citation needed]
How Theater Failed America
In How Theater Failed America (2008), Daisey explores the rise and fall of the American regional theater system, the death of the repertory companies and the declining power of an art form to matter by implicating himself and the American theater as a whole.[22] This controversial monologue has appeared at the Kirk Douglas Theatre,[4] Under The Radar festival, the Capitol Hill Arts Center in Seattle, the Public Theater, and the Barrow Street Theatre in New York City.[citation needed]
If You See Something Say Something
In If You See Something Say Something (2008), Daisey tackles a story at the heart of our world today: the surprising, secret history of the Department of Homeland Security. This is woven together with the untold story of the father of the neutron bomb and a pilgrimage to the Trinity blast site, where atomic fire rewrote history a half a century ago.[23] It was performed in Santa Fe, Washington DC, Portland, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago before running in the Public Theater's 2008/2009 season in New York City.[citation needed]
Mysteries of the Unexplained
Mysteries of the Unexplained (2009) is a series of one-night-only performances similar to "All Stories are Fiction." Each performance "explores trivial elements of our modern world, in the belief that the things we honestly think about most of the time deserve time in the spotlight."[citation needed] Performances were held at Joe's Pub. The three topics were Facebook,[24] bacon,[25] and the boardwalk.[26]
The Last Cargo Cult
In The Last Cargo Cult (2009), Daisey tells of a trip to the remote Pacific island of Tanna in which inhabitants are members of a cargo cult based around abandoned World War II bases. Stories of belief and trust from this “cargo cult” are woven against questions about the international financial crisis.[3]
The Envoy's Dilemma
The Envoy's Dilemma (2009) is Daisey's rarely performed piece on his 2008 visit to Tajikistan with the United States State Department.[27] It was performed at the Noordezon Performing Arts Festival Groningen, Yukon Arts Centre and in Banff in September 2009.[citation needed]
Barring the Unforeseen
Barring the Unforeseen (2010) is a piece "about ghost stories and why we tell them." It played the IRT Theatre in downtown New York City the week of Halloween 2010.[28]
The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs
The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs (2010) is a one-man theatre show. It debuted at Portland's TBA Festival in September 2010, Berkeley Repertory Theatre in January 2011, and played in Seattle in April–May 2011. It purports to examine globalization by exploring the exploitation of Chinese workers through the lens of "the rise and fall and rise of Apple, industrial design, and the human price we are willing to pay for our technology, woven together in a complex narrative."[29]
Excerpts from the show were presented on the Public Radio International show This American Life in January 2012.[30] The episode was entitled "Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory" and became the show's most popular episode, with 888,000 downloads and 206,000 streams. WBEZ planned to host a live showing and a Q+A of "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" in Chicago on 7 April 2012.[31]
On 16 March 2012, This American Life officially retracted the episode after learning that several events recounted both in the radio story and the monologue were fabrications. The same day, This American Life devoted their weekly show (titled "Retraction") to detailing the inconsistencies in "The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs."[32] The show includes interviews between Rob Schmitz, the reporter who discovered the discrepancies and Daisey's translator in China, Cathy Lee, as well as an interview between host Ira Glass and Daisey.
Following controversy around the show, Daisey apologized and reworked his monologue, removing the five minutes of contested material and updating the piece. He has performed this new version, dubbed "Version 2.0", in six cities, including a run at Washington DC's Woolly Mammoth Theater, where Apple’s co-founder Steve Wozniak joined the show for a post-performance discussion on 4 August 2012.[33]
Daisey offers a complete, royalty-free transcript of "The Agony..." which boasts over 100,000 downloads. There have been more than 25 productions, and it has been translated into six languages.[34]
All the Hours in the Day
Daisey presented his 24-hour monologue All the Hours in the Day (2011) at Portland's TBA Festival in September 2011.[35] Emphasizing themes of loss, transformation, and the desire for authenticity, Daisey weaves together stories from his life with fictional, Jungian elements. His wife, a dead high school friend, Warren Zevon, Philip K. Dick, David Bowie, and The Walt Disney Company all feature prominently.
Play
Daisey's first play The Moon Is a Dead World premiered at the Annex Theatre in Seattle, Washington on 17 October 2008.[36] It was previous developed at Soho Rep as a part of their 2008-2009 Writer/Director Lab Readings in a workshop directed by Maria Goyanes.[37]
Book
Daisey's book 21 Dog Years comically describes his experience working for Amazon.com during the dot-com boom.[38]
Film
Layover, Daisey's first film, was screened in Cannes.[39]
Reception
Jason Zinoman said about Daisey's work in the New York Times: "The master storyteller...one of the finest solo performers of his generation. What distinguishes him from most solo performers is how elegantly he blends personal stories, historical digressions and philosophical ruminations. He has the curiosity of a highly literate dilettante and a preoccupation with alternative histories, secrets large and small, and the fuzzy line where truth and fiction blur. Mr. Daisey’s greatest subject is himself."[40] Louise Kennedy described his monologues in the Boston Globe as "Sharp-witted, passionately delivered talk about matters both small and huge, at once utterly individual and achingly universal."[41]
Personal life
Mike Daisey attended Colby College in Waterville, Maine. Daisey is married to his director and collaborator, Jean-Michele Gregory; they reside in New York City.[40]
This American Life controversy
In January 2012, portions of Daisey's monologue "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs", about conditions at the Chinese company Foxconn which makes most products for Apple Computers, were aired on the radio program This American Life.[42] The episode, titled "Mr Daisey and the Apple Factory" quickly became the most downloaded episode in the show's history.[43] Two months later, This American Life officially retracted the episode, having discovered that some of the claims made by Daisey had apparently been fabricated.[44] A follow up episode, entitled "Retraction", stood by the veracity of the claims Daisey had made about working conditions at Foxconn, but claimed that Daisey had dramatized many of the details of his own experiences visiting China. Among other things, Daisey was accused of exaggerating the number of plants he visited and people he talked to, of falsely claiming that the plant guards had guns, of exaggerating the number of under-aged workers he talked to, and of inventing a story of worker with a crippled hand using an iPad for the first time. This American Life also accused Daisey of purposefully misleading them by trying to prevent them from contacting the translator he used in order to fact check his story. In an interview with host Ira Glass, Daisey admitted to giving the producers of This American Life a false name for the translator and also admitted that he lied about her contact information being changed.[45] After the firestorm of the episode, Daisey reformed his work and has continued to perform it, removing five minutes of contested details and standing by his assertions that the conditions in Apple's supply chain violate China's own labor laws and remain inhumane. [46]
Publications by Daisey
- Mike Daisey. 21 Dog Years.
- 21 Dog Years: Doing Time @ Amazon.com. Free Press, 2002. ISBN 0-7432-2580-5.
- 21 Dog Years: Doing Time @ Amazon.com. London: Fourth Estate, 2002. ISBN 1841157651.
- 21 Dog Years: A Cube Dweller's Tale. Free Press, 2003. ISBN 0-7432-3815-X.
- 21 ge gou nian: zai Yamaxun da gong de ri zi (21个狗年: 在亚马逊打工的日子). Beijing: Zhong xin chu ban she, 2002. ISBN 7-80073-534-6. Template:Zh icon
- Mike Daisey. Rough Magic. Theatre Communications Group, 2011. ISBN 1-55936-374-6.
References
Mike Daisey, Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2004.
- ^ Tom Scanlon, "'Wasting Your Breath': A Romp Edged with Bitterness", The Seattle Times, 25 September 1997. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
- ^ John Longenbaugh, "Ah, but how the Cold War stung!", Seattle Weekly, 3 June 1998. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
- ^ a b Mark Gimein, "Mike Daisey's Apple Explanation Is ... Awkward", Bloomberg Business Week, 16 March 2012. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
- ^ a b David Ng, "Mike Daisey, the theater artist behind the controversy", Los Angeles Times, March 2012. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
- ^ "Why aging trendies never feel nostalgic for Madonna", Scotsman, 23 June 2004. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
- ^ "Monologuist Mike Daisey has a story to tell in The Ugly American" (PDF), ACT Theatre News, undated press release. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
- ^ "Mike Daisey returns to Berkeley rep in his latest solo show", Berkeley Repertory Theatre press release. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
- ^ a b "Mike Daisey, Monologuist", Gothamist, 22 April 2005. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
- ^ Misha Berson, "Mike Daisey's spellbinding Monopoly", Seattle Times, 23 January 2008. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
- ^ a b Jennifer DeMeritt, "Mike Daisey’s life before wartime", The Villager, Volume 76, Number 35, 24–30 January 2007. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
- ^ a b "A Night to Remember", American Repertory Theater, 20 April 2007
- ^ Mike Daisey Audience Protest, Walkout and Attack, Youtube, 21 April 2007
- ^ Daisey's Summer Interrupted as Audience Departs and Defiles His Work, Playbill, 22 April 2007
- ^ "Theater Offensive?". The Phoenix. 27 April 2007.
- ^ "Mike Daisey follow-up".
- ^ Larry Kunofsky, "Truth", nytheatre.com, 7 October 2006. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
- ^ "The Genius of Mike Daisey", sfist, 12 June 2007. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
- ^ Notice, Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
- ^ a b Victoria Welch, "Daisey Debut Hits Ground Running", Bostonist, 9 May 2007. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
- ^ press release (PDF), Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
- ^ Notice, New York Theature Guide]. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
- ^ Jason Zinoman, "Stirring Things Up, Regionally Speaking", New York Times, 20 April 2008. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
- ^ "Mike Daisey: If You See Something Say Something", TBA 11. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
- ^ "Mike Daisey Presents Mysteries of the Unexplained: Facebook!", Joe's Pub. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
- ^ "Mike Daisey Brings Mysteries of the Unexplained: Bacon to Joes Pub 6/8", Broadwayworld.com. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
- ^ "Mike Daisey Brings Mysteries of the Unexplained: The Boardwalk! to Joes Pub 7/6", Broadwayworld.com. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
- ^ Notice, Noordezon Performing Arts Festival Groningen. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
- ^ Jacob Gallagher-Ross, "H.P. Lovecraft Goes Bump in the Night: Monologuist Mike Daisey turns out the lights for Halloween", Village Voice, 27 October 2010. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
- ^ "One-man show to depict Steve Jobs' career". CNET. 4 March 2010. Retrieved 22 February 2012.
- ^ "454: Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory". This American Life. 6 January 2012.
- ^ Glass, Ira (16 March 2012). "Retracting "Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory"". Retrieved 18 March 2012.
- ^ "460 Retraction". This American Life. 16 March 2012. Retrieved 17 March 2012.
- ^ "Theater Talkback: 'The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,' Take 2". New York Times. 26 July 2012. Retrieved 13 August 2012.
- ^ "Mike Daisey, Unreliable Narrator". Washington City Paper. 13 July 2012. Retrieved 13 August 2012.
- ^ http://www.wweek.com/portland/blog-27636-tba_diary_mike_daiseys_all_the_hours_in_the_day.html
- ^ The Moon Is A Dead World, Annex Theatre
- ^ http://www.playbill.com/news/article/116336-Daiseys-The-Moon-Is-a-Dead-World-Featured-in-Soho-Rep-Readings
- ^ Page about the ebook, Simon & Schuster. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
- ^ Page of additional resources, Berkeley Repetory Theatre. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
- ^ a b Zinoman, Jason (21 January 2007). "The Need To Think Onstage Is Driving Mr. Daisey". New York Times. Retrieved 12 May 2010.. Also here (jpeg) at Daisey's site.
- ^ Kennedy, Louise (10 April 2007). "Stop and Pick This Daisey". Boston Globe.
- ^ http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/454/mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory
- ^ http://www.thisamericanlife.org/blog/2012/03/retracting-mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory
- ^ http://www.thisamericanlife.org/blog/2012/03/retracting-mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory
- ^ http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/460/retraction
- ^ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/05/mike-daisey-remembers-steve-jobs-a-year-after-his-death.html
External links
- Use dmy dates from September 2012
- 1976 births
- Living people
- American bloggers
- American dramatists and playwrights
- American memoirists
- American public radio personalities
- Writers from New York City
- People from Seattle, Washington
- People from Aroostook County, Maine
- People from Penobscot County, Maine
- Colby College alumni
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