More
- Classifieds
- Cars
- Deals
- Real Estate
- Rentals
- Photos
- Find&Save
- Obituaries
- Archives
- Topics
- Blogs
- WP Wine Club

Theater & Dance

Mike Daisey on the truth and facts of ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs’

By Nelson Pressley,July 12, 2012

(Page 3 of 3)

“What we mean,” he elaborates, “is, ‘What’s written?’ And the answer to that is always nothing, until 24 hours before the performance. And that’s been true of every monologue.”

Therefore theaters have no script to evaluate when deciding whether to book him. It also means he has no scripts languishing in regional theater development hell: “I dodge it all,” says Daisey, who has flown an anti-establishment banner throughout his public life. “And that’s actually one of the reasons the shows are so good.”

‘The dark time’

“Steve Jobs” was — is? — regarded as possibly the best of his entertaining and provocative performances. Certainly it’s his most activist, his most ahead-of-the-curve piece. It is debated whether or how much Daisey heated up the news about Apple’s labor practices in China. He and Shalwitz stick to the claim that response to “Steve Jobs” helped move reported stories toward the front pages.

Inarguably, Daisey was timely about injecting himself into a pressing issue, putting himself out front in his own larger-than-life voice. It’s something too few artists can say in the country’s play-it-very-safe theater.

“If anybody’s going to get into trouble, Mike would be the one,” Shalwitz says with a laugh. Daisey, Shalwitz adds, is “an indispensable American artist” who is “only tackling huge topics now.”

The period of vilification led to what Daisey calls a “dark time,” when “everything was on the table” — quitting the theater, getting divorced, worse.

“One could argue easily that I’m still in it now,” Daisey says, picking his words carefully. “But at a certain point, when something is disruptive enough, you’re sort of in it forever, in the sense that there’s a new equilibrium. Part of figuring out where you’re at — you never come back to exactly where you were.”

Last month in Boston, Daisey workshopped a new monologue at the annual Theatre Communications Group conference.

“It was a nerve-racking group,” Daisey says, but Shalwitz, who was on hand to deliver a speech of his own, was heartened: “I saw him starting to get his courage back.”

Gregory says repairing relationships with audiences will take time, but that she feels she and Daisey are “through the tunnel”: “This whole thing, terrible as it’s been, I have a sense that it has renewed a fertility of ideas. I kind of wonder if this won’t be an explosive year where we do four new things. . . . Everything’s getting back on line.”

The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs

created and performed by Mike Daisey. Tuesday-Aug. 5 at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, 641 D St. NW. 202-393-3939. www.woollymammoth.net.

Continued12

3