'How Theater Failed': Daisey Has Thorns - washingtonpost.com:
Mike Daisey repeatedly sticks his finger in his employer's eye during the one-man "How Theater Failed America," offering a scorched-earth critique of the dramatic world's rampant creative failure and moral hypocrisy.
He calls out major not-for-profit companies for gutless programming and caving in to a corporate marketing mentality. Instead of raising pots of money for new buildings, Daisey suggests (even while acting in Woolly Mammoth's handsome new space), artistic directors should be sticking to the regional theater movement's first principles: nurturing acting troupes.
Yet the show is better -- more varied -- than the unchained soapbox scold promised by its "graceless, bombastic title" (Daisey's words). "How Theater Failed America" is a funny, surprisingly supple performance about life in the theater, the ecstatic highs and the aching, humiliating lows, rendered here with explosive humor and a dark edge of tragedy.
3:22 PM
Dilettante Archives