•••
“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.”
NEW YORK TIMES
Mike Daisey has been called “the master storyteller” and “one of the finest solo performers of his generation” by the New York Times for his extemporaneous monologues. Below you'll find summaries of his twelve full-length monologues, production histories, links to reviews and more.
NEW YORK TIMES
Mike Daisey has been called “the master storyteller” and “one of the finest solo performers of his generation” by the New York Times for his extemporaneous monologues. Below you'll find summaries of his twelve full-length monologues, production histories, links to reviews and more.
•••
If You See Something Say Something
In this groundbreaking monologue, Mike 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—called “the perfect capitalist weapon” for the way it kills civilians while leaving cities and industries intact—and a pilgrimage to the Trinity blast site, where atomic fire rewrote history a half a century ago and ushered in an age of American supremacy. Combining damning fact and searing personal history, Daisey takes us on a journey through the dark heart of America, in search of answers for what it means to be secure, and the price we are willing to pay for it.
Praise for If You See Something Say Something:
"Ambitious, persuasive and provocative—Mr. Daisey is as much a performer as a raconteur. Funny, shrewd and continually absorbing."
NEW YORK TIMES
"Once again, Mike Daisey has proven himself that rare theatrical creature: an entertaining performer with something valuable to say. A gripping, vital story."
VARIETY
“Daisey has a masterful command of his art—he is all-powerful. When he wants you to laugh, you laugh; when he wants you to think, you think. He doesn't draw you into the deftly woven stories he tells—rather, he shows how, unawares, you have been part of them all along."
TIME OUT NEW YORK
"Mesmerizing—Daisey draws an Everyman's history of the military-industrial complex from his well of wrath."
THE NEW YORKER
"This master story-spinner has created a finely tuned fury—funny, provocative and even poetic."
WASHINGTON POST
"A very literate, richly researched and frequently very funny show—a monologuist who always threatens to burst out of his chosen form, with a keen and snarky satirical ear for the ironies and contradictions of the American cultural-political-industrial complex."
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
"Highly entertaining—freewheeling, free-associative, and thought-provoking."
NEW YORK POST
"Searingly intelligent and funny—Daisey ties everything together in a graceful, epic sweep that leaves you pondering whether the impulse to annihilate is bred in the bone - and whether vulnerability is a liability or simply the essence of what it means to be human."
WASHINGTON TIMES
"A biting analysis sounding the alarm against everything that should scare us about homeland security."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
"There is nothing minimalist about this monologist—if Lenny Bruce was embodied by Zero Mostel and played by Louis Armstrong, the result would closely resemble Mike Daisey."
BROADWAY WORLD
"Mesmerizing and raucous—a funhouse ride worthy of Dr. Strangelove."
BLOOMBERG NEWS
"Daisey is a hellish bad boy—entertaining and disturbing—a sharply humorous commentary on our troubled times."
THE STAR-LEDGER
"A riveting stage presence—his comic timing is honed to a fine, sharp point. He deals in hard truth with such humor and energy you forget what he's saying is piecing you like a needle."
PORTLAND MERCURY
"Breathtaking—one of the most important shows of the year, if not the most important. Daisey's dazzling new monologue is one of the most exciting evenings of theatre one can have right now."
NYTHEATRE.COM
"A provocative and entertaining examination of post-9/11 America, and the language of security that defines it."
THEATERMANIA
"He’s accomplished that rarest of feats: mixing rage and a revolutionary spirit with a well-grounded intelligence and an ability to promote discussion, maybe even solid changes."
BLOGCRITICS
"Daisey distills vast sources of disparate knowledge, delivered with scathing anger, humor and a sort of gentle wisdom. He’s the History Channel, the best of public radio, and the most entertaining guy at the bar — but much, much better."
METRO
"A scathing and hilarious critique of today's War on Terror. Leaves the audience in gut-busting laughter with the residual "gawd, this is so fucked up" feeling that permeates the entire show—Daisey keeps you captivated with his weaving narrative and brilliant insights."
DCIST
"Exquisitely conceived and obsessively researched."
WASHINGTON CITY PAPER
"Who knew that traipsing through the past six decades of America's security culture could be so engrossing? Listen to a master storyteller show how to condense, edit and sift away all that could be used into a potent script of frightening issues and provocative analysis, punched up with perfectly pin-pointed delivery."
POTOMAC STAGES
"Never any less than fascinating: cutting, humorous, and immensely provocative."
AMERICAN THEATER WEB
If You See Something Say Something was first performed at the Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe before its premiere at Woolly Mammoth Theater in Washington DC. From there it appeared at the TBA Festival in Portland, Oregon and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago before running at the Public Theater in their 2008/9 season.
Read the New York Times review.
Read the Time Out New York review.
Read the Variety review.
Read the Washington Post review.
Read the Chicago Tribune review.
Read the New York Post review.
Read the NYTheatre.com review.
Read the Washington Times review.
Read the Bloomberg News review.
Read the Portland Mercury review.
Read the Broadway World review.
Read the Backstage review.
Read the Theatermania review.
Read the New York Post feature.
Read the Backstage feature.
Read the Star-Ledger review.
Read the Blogcritics review.
Read the American Theatre preview.
Read the American Theater Web review.
Listen to the WNYC feature.
Read the Metro feature.
Listen to the Santa Fe Radio Cafe interview.
Read the Chicago Tribune preview.
Read the TimeOut Chicago interview.
Read the Portland Tribune preview.
Read a review in DCist.
Listen to an interview with Mike on XM Radio's Left Jab.
Read a Washington Post article about Mike's run-in with the TSA.
Read a feature in the Washington Post about the show.
Read an interview with Mike on the show in the New Mexican magazine.
Read the review in Washington City Paper.
Listen to an interview with Mike on NPR's Performance New Mexico.
How Theater Failed America
Master storyteller Mike Daisey sinks his razor-sharp wit into a subject he knows well: the American theater, from the sublimely crass to the genuinely ugly. From gorgeous new theaters standing empty as cathedrals, to “successful” working actors traveling like migrant farmhands, to an arts culture unwilling to speak or listen to its own nation, Daisey takes stock of the dystopian state of theater in America: a shrinking world with smaller audiences every year. Fearlessly implicating himself and the system he works within, Daisey seeks answers to essential and dangerous questions about the art we’re making, the legacy we leave the future, and who it is we believe we’re speaking to.
Praise for How Theater Failed America:
"A sardonic rebuke to the corporate types who hold American theater hostage...a powerful sense of the wonder of theater. A remarkable performer."
NEW YORK TIMES
"Blending political anger with striking personal stories, this piece should reach anyone who believes in live performance."
VARIETY
"Daisey is a working man's Spalding Gray: boyish passion meshed with refined contemplation...not only vastly entertaining, it's also a call to action."
TIME OUT NEW YORK
"His transfixing delivery underscores his central point: theatre is a wave, not a particle, and the current system isn't doing it—or us—justice."
THE NEW YORKER
"A rollicking, entertaining evening that's as inspiring as it is cautionary."
NEW YORK POST
"It's an exhilarating show, as Daisey deftly coaxes the room from raucous laughter to hushed contemplation...Daisey has a knack for disarming his audience with an approachable persona, incandescent wit and a gift for virtuoso storytelling."
GOTHAMIST
"Daisey creates an alternately exhilarating and frightening picture of the contemporary American stage—a startlingly accurate diagnosis of its condition"
BACKSTAGE
VILLAGE VOICE
"An engaging, witty, and impassioned critique of what's wrong with the way theater is currently being done -- and who is responsible. He manages to make the audience understand the weight of everything he's saying while transforming the material into some of the funniest stories I've ever heard. At the heart of all of his tales is an element of truth that makes clear not only his critical opinions, but also his love for the art."
THEATERMANIA
"Pungent, profane and hilarious...Daisey can evoke the thrill and absurdity of theatrical passion with the surreal bravado of a modern-day Swift."
SEATTLE TIMES
"No matter how much vitriol is spilled, Daisey can do so without raising rancor in the hearts of his targets...How Theater Failed America sounds like career suicide. But if anyone can pull it off, it will be Mike Daisey."
SEATTLE WEEKLY
"As a theatre artist whose work demonstrates one way in which the theatre has a unique power to criticize the culture at large, he's uniquely positioned to offer a devastating criticism."
SEATTLEST
How Theater Failed America has appeared at the Public Theater in the Under The Radar festival, in Seattle at the Capitol Hill Arts Center, in a subsequent sold-out five week engagement at Joe's Pub, after which it transferred Off-Broadway to run at the Barrow Street Theatre.
Read the Variety review.
Read the Time Out New York review.
Read the New York Times review.
Read the New Yorker review.
Read the Backstage review.
Read the Theatermania review.
Read the NYTheatre.com review.
Read the New York Times feature on the show.
Read the Gothamist interview.
Read the Village Voice review.
Read the Stage & Cinema review.
Read the Edge New York review.
Listen to the first scene of How Theater Failed America.
Listen to an interview on the Leonard Jacobs show with Mike.
Listen to an interview with Mike about PRI's FAIR GAME.
Read a feature in the Seattle Times.
Read about How Theater Failed America in the Seattle Weekly.
Read THE EMPTY SPACES, an essay by Mike on the state of theater, in The Stranger.
Monopoly!
In this devastating monologue about monopoly and its discontents, Mike Daisey explores the warped genius of inventor Nikola Tesla and his war with Thomas Edison over electricity—alternating current versus direct current—a battle that etched itself into the streets of New York City itself. This thread loops and whorls around Microsoft’s historic antitrust lawsuit, the secret history of the board game Monopoly, and ultimately the story of Daisey’s hometown and its one remaining retailer: Wal-Mart. As subversive as it is hilarious, Monopoly! illuminates the issues we confront under corporate rule, and explores the choices and struggles individuals face living in a system that recognizes only profit and loss.
Praise for Monopoly!:
“Relentlessly interesting . . . a brilliantly spun narrative. His show is ultimately about the messy and often unjust process of making official history. He fights back the best way he knows how—by telling even better stories.”
NEW YORK TIMES
SEATTLE TIMES
“Sharp-witted, passionately delivered talk about matters both small and huge, at once utterly individual and achingly universal.”
BOSTON GLOBE
"Monopoly is the work of a true writer, an inspiring and compassionate activist, and a relentlessly curious historian—a rich tapestry of historical research, personal memoir, and social commentary that creates the illusion of past and present, of timelessness."
PORTLAND MERCURY
“Daisey’s monologue is as complex as his show’s stage design—chair, table, glass of water—is simple. If Daisey’s title suggests a screed against the more bullying aspects of American capitalism, rest assured that his political points are scored with precisely aimed wit and with a marvelously understated irony.”
FINANCIAL TIMES OF LONDON
“A whirlingly comic and subversive exploration of Nikola Tesla, Wal-Mart and corporate rule.”
TIME OUT NEW YORK
“True to his form as an absolute master storyteller, Daisey’s stories are perfectly woven together. He leaves each short segment at a high point—just as you’re expecting to hear what happens next in the exciting story—moving on to continue where he left off in a different story. Daisey is incredibly smart, not just in his wealth of knowledge, but in his comedic skills as well. In predictable setups, he makes completely unexpected jokes. His gestures and expressions are enough to make people laugh even without dialogue. He furrows his brow in frustration, and he sculpts the air in front of him with his hands as if it were clay, grasping with his hands in emphasis.”
CHARLESTON CITY PAPER
Monopoly! has been performed at full productions at the 2005 Spoleto Festival, American Repertory Theatre, the Ohio Theatre (with Les Freres Corbusier), Capitol Hill Arts Center, the Bumbershoot Arts Festival and the Noorderzon Festival in the Netherlands after receiving workshops at Manhattan Theatre Club, Berkeley Repertory Theatre and Portland Stage Company.
Read the New York Times review.
Read the Boston Globe review.
Read the Seattle Times review.
Read the Financial Times of London review.
Read the Portland Mercury review.
Read the Seattle Times feature.
Read the Portland Tribune interview.
Read the Portland Tribune TBA review.
Read the Seattle Post Intelligencer review.
Read Mike's essay on his adventures with a Tesla coil at Slate.
Listen to an interview with Mike about Microsoft on National Public Radio.
Read a review of the show in the Charleston Post and Courier.
Read the Bostonist review.
Read the Seattle SPI review.
View a short film of Mike at Wardenclyffe, the site of Tesla's laboratory.
Read an interview with Mike about Monopoly at Seattlest.
Great Men Of Genius
Monologuist Mike Daisey presents a dazzling new work: four “bio-logues” about megalomania and desire constructed from the interleaved life stories of Bertolt Brecht, P.T. Barnum, Nikola Tesla and L. Ron Hubbard. Over four nights Daisey explores the nature of genius and wrestles with the pride, insanity and chauvinism that bind these men together, and reveals how the heights and depths of their gifts have much to teach us about ourselves. Each evening is unique and can be viewed independently, but all four together form an epic oral accounting of triumph and folly told with Daisey’s dark and hilarious intensity.
The geniuses are, in order of appearance:
P.T. Barnum ~ gifted entrepreneur, showman, raconteur, hoaxster, freakshow and circus promoter who changed the face of nineteenth century America through blatant, shameless lying.
Bertolt Brecht ~ playwright, poet, lover of women and certifiable cad who escaped Nazi Germany, sympathized with the Communists, failed in Hollywood, was persecuted by McCarthy, and redefined world theater.
Nikola Tesla ~ mad genius, brilliant scientist and visionary who sparred with Thomas Edison and died insane and penniless writing love sonnets to pigeons after bringing the world electricity as we know it.
L. Ron Hubbard ~ bigamist, occultist, and charismatic science fiction author-turned-guru who took 1950's popular psychiatry by storm and went on to create the Church of Scientology: the most celebrity-driven and litigious organization on Earth.
Praise for Great Men Of Genius:
Just once, it'd be nice to see Mike Daisey and Garrison Keillor trade places, not so much to hear Keillor's nostalgically mellow take on Daisey's world, but to see Daisey rip the lid off Lake Wobegon and expose its wicked underbelly. For, you see, Daisey is very much the dark doppelganger of Keillor's soul. He is a Keillor for the seriously perverse. He is a mesmerizing performer who spins words into comic and emotional gold, revealing as much about himself as the subjects he is discussing.
OAKLAND TRIBUNE
"Great Men" is big-time brain candy that takes a while to digest. It's a colossally gutsy project that takes the whole medium-is-the-message thing seriously as Daisey slaps the convention of the short and tight solo genre upside the head. He seeks to work on the same ultra-ambitious scale as the great men he chronicles in these birth-to-death sagas. Rest assured, he also has a gift for zapping the zeitgeist, and he knows all too well that ADD is the spirit of our age. So seeing these shows as stand-alone solos would be cheating yourself of one of the cheekiest theatrical adventures in recent memory.
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS
A long day's story into night. The result isn't just highly entertaining--it's also bracingly honest and affecting. Daisey and Gregory abandon the regular alternation between biography and autobiography, and heighten the intimacy of the first-person story to a disturbing, even chilling degree.
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Gripping tales...hilarious, nuanced and wide-ranging runimations...Daisey manages to be even more fascinating. Four addictive monologues on noteworthy men.
EAST BAY EXPRESS
Daisey is a powerful, hilarious, touching monologist. His face is an elastic ball of expressiveness. He has a great way of building each segment of his story to a climax. He makes us laugh. There's also something very gentle about him too. He never takes the obvious route with his stories or goes for the predictable laugh. His take on each of the four "geniuses" on the program - Tesla, Brecht, Barnum, and Hubbbard - made me wish I'd had him as a history teacher at high school. Instead of making obvious links between the historical subject and the details of his own life, Daisey allows us to draw our own conclusions. This is subtle and sublime.
SFWEEKLY
Daisey is a master showman, combining the storytelling acumen of David Sedaris and Lewis Black’s outraged humor.
DAILY CALIFORNIAN
This is one five-hour monologue, broken up into four segments, wherein the true genius of the piece, Mike Daisey, interweaves vignettes from his life with the excerpted life stories of those famous men. He paints for us not only pictures of who these men were, but also of himself, and, by association, how the productivity and madness of genius can be expressed in our own lives. The ultimate result is a vivid and detailed portrait of the nature of megalomania and success. Get tickets for one of the remaining Sunday marathons before this unique theatrical experience sells out.
SFIST
Like a coked-up History Channel biography, Mike Daisey’s new ‘bio-logues’ ruminate on brilliant men and their piteous pitfalls, interspersed with Daisey’s personal experiences. Each night explores a new subject, from Bertolt Brecht to L. Ron Hubbard—it’s like hearing a lecture by your favorite professor while drinking beer in a comfortable lounge chair. You might even walk away smarter than before.
VILLAGE VOICE
An interestingly unpredictable and uneasy moosh of homage and parody…a kind of dual Rorschach test, in which one man identifies his own demons and ideals in the ink-blot of another’s life story.
SEATTLE TIMES
You get the feeling that Daisey is coming to new conclusions and realizations all the time, right there on stage—that his delving into the minds of these men is never complete, and that it’s deepening before your eyes…it’s an exciting process to watch.
THE STRANGER
Engaging and funny, Mike Daisey’s monologues brim with subtle messages that never hammer you over the head...by association, he adds himself to the titular category.
TIME OUT NEW YORK
Great Men of Genius has received productions at the Public Theater in New York City, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Galapagos Arts Center in New York, and the Capitol Hill Arts Center in Seattle.
Read the San Jose Mercury News review
Read the Contra Costa Times review
Listen to Mike's Studio 360 episode all about Nikola Tesla
Read the Jon Carroll column in the San Francisco Chronicle
Listen to an interview with Mike on KPFA's Against The Grain
Read the SFist review
Read the TheaterMania feature
Read the San Jose Mercury News Feature
Listen to a review on the NPR show The Artery
Read the Seattle Weekly profile
Read the Variety article
Read the Brooklyn Rail article
Read The Stranger review of all 4 evenings
Listen to an NPR interview with Mike about L. Ron Hubbard
Read the Seattle Post-Intelligencer review.
Invincible Summer
Mike Daisey tells his story of the last glorious summer before everything changed. Starting with the bizarre history of the Manhattan Transit Authority’s epic subway system, Daisey maps New York City from the bottom up--a city so unbelievable it could only be true—and paints a picture of his Brooklyn neighborhood before and after 9/11 that captures the personal and social shockwaves of that terrible day. By setting the intensely personal story of a family in crisis against the backdrop of massive social change, Daisey tells a story of loss and faith for our time. Weddings and wars, fathers and sons, governments and citizens clash--and the world comes crashing down, leaving serious questions in its wake: What does it mean to belong to a place, and how will we hold on when we lose our way?
Praise for Invincible Summer:
“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.”
NEW YORK TIMES
“Sharp-witted, passionately delivered talk about matters both small and huge, at once utterly individual and achingly universal.”
BOSTON GLOBE
“Daisey's skill is that he is able to talk about the historical and make it human, the personal and make it universal, so that the listener is both informed and transformed.”
PAPER MAGAZINE
“He has a knack for detailed descriptions and keen observations ... His stories are often raucously funny, but the solo performer also probes more intense and painful subjects in a compelling manner ... and isn't afraid of expressing some of his own less-than-politically-correct emotions.”
THEATERMANIA
Daisey radiates heat like the fiery orb of New York’s dreaded summer sun. His delivery can be acerbic, his voice and inflection taking on a distinct Lewis Black edge; in his calmer moments, Daisey sounds more like Garrison Keillor, as he zeroes in - implacably, with perfect deadpan control of his colorful vocabulary - on his pitch-perfect payoffs.
EDGE BOSTON
“The monologist's show pulses forward with Daisey sitting simply at a desk offering existential glimpses that are anything but simple.”
WGBH BOSTON
“Invincible Summer is ostensibly about Daisey’s life during the summer before September 11, 2001, but it also includes digressions about the dreams of cities, Polish wedding toasts, and the history of the MTA to create a story that is bigger, messier, and far more rewarding than mere autobiography. Half the fun of Mike Daisey is watching him spin out a tangle of ideas and wondering how he’ll lasso them into a coherent story. He works from an outline, not a script, and he free-forms the words in each performance, a method that gives him the loose spontaneity of great standup and the kinetic force to fill a room as large as the Public Theater. This performance style has earned him a reputation as one of the best storytellers working today, and a legion of avid fans...Daisey certainly has the talent and the fervor to achieve greatness.”
THE VILLAGER
“He takes seemingly incongruent topics and mixes them with personal experiences to create the dramatic equivalent of a classic cocktail: there’s a balance of strong, sweet, and sour components and a few dashes of bitters. Each night the same story emerges differently; he could be a hip-hop artist freestyling, or a Baptist preacher.”
BOSTON PHOENIX
“Daisey has the journalist’s gift for the telling illustration and the convincing concrete detail.”
CHARLESTON POST AND COURIER
“Powerful and memorable . . . it takes a gifted storyteller to approach tragedy without exploiting it.”
CHARLESTON CITY PAPER
“Daisey knows what makes a story great.”
METRO BOSTON
“Autobiography and commentary, scripted and spontaneous, the monologue showcases its author's performance chops and detail-rich narrative style. Daisey has a knack for pushing the boundaries of comedy and candor, with unflinchingly honest descriptions that show the performer's personal strengths and weaknesses. The result is cathartic.”
BOSTONIST
Invincible Summer has been performed at the Public Theater, American Repertory Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, the 2006 Spoleto Festival and ACT Theatre in Seattle.
Read the New York Times feature on INVINCIBLE SUMMER.
Listen to an interview and excerpt from INVINCIBLE SUMMER on Public Radio International's FAIR GAME.
Read the Paper Magazine preview piece.
INVINCIBLE SUMMER is New York Magazine's top pick of the Under The Radar Festival.
Read a review of INVINCIBLE SUMMER at Theatermania.
Read a review of INVINCIBLE SUMMER in The Villager.
Read an interview with Mike about INVINCIBLE SUMMER and his work at Gothamist.
Read the Charleston City Paper review.
Read an excerpt/essay from of Invincible Summer in The Stranger.
Read the Charleston Post and Courier review.
Read an article on the show in the Charleston City Paper.
TRUTH
{the heart is a million little pieces above all things}
TRUTH follows the fictional and nonfictional stories of James Frey's (author of A Million Little Pieces) self-destruction, the sordid and shocking tale of J.T. LeRoy, (The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things) a world-famous transsexual author whom the world learned ultimately didn't exist, and Fernando Pessoa, a Portuguese poet whose great works were written by warring multiple personalities inside his head. These stories are reflected against an autobiographical accounting of Daisey's own history of lying and telling the truth in an attempt to illuminate the uncertain landscape of the emotionally true, the literally true, and the constant struggle to speak the truth.
Praise for TRUTH:
“Elegantly woven...Engaging and intellectually curious...Mr. Daisey is rarely obvious. His stories resist easy conclusions and cheap laughs. There is nothing as simple as a thesis here, but Mr. Daisey ultimately makes a case for the importance of trying to tell the truth.”
NEW YORK TIMES
“The ethics of literature isn't typical fodder for any drama, let alone a one-man show...What helps him avoid the pitfalls of didacticism is an eye attuned to the absurdity of daily life. In assessing the story of Frey and Leroy, Daisey comes to a judgment that is strict but sympathetic; he suggests that if people are often the least reliable narrators of their own lives, they are also sometimes the most engaging.”
VARIETY
“While Daisey is unforgiving of Frey’s melodramatic style, he offers a more nuanced view of the process though which personal memoir, as a genre, can come to be fertilized by bullshit. Over the course of 100 minutes or so, he artfully weaves diverse narrative strands into a complex Daisey chain that ultimately argues for the paramount importance of honesty. His truth may not be simple, but it is, in its own way, pure.”
TIME OUT NEW YORK
“Watching Daisey sort out anything on stage is a delirious, brainy, hilarious, infuriating experience from which one emerges perversely hopeful: the world may be screwed, but for one moment, it seems, at least one guy gets it.”
METRO
“Speaking non-stop for over an hour while seated behind a simple desk on stage, Daisey weaves the saga of Frey's literary rise and fall into his own personal recollections and feelings about bending the truth when telling about one's life. Not unlike an extended verbal essay, Daisey's performance draws us from one topic to the next, from his father's disappointment at his own bending of the truth to a friend's death, commenting on the importance of personal integrity and the evolution of his thoughts on the subject.”
MEDIABISTRO
“This story is not just about truth, it's about mortality. It's about loss, but it's also about connection. It's about storytelling itself, a story familiar to Mike Daisey, and, of course, to all of us. This story is comical without ever being smug. This story is redemptive without ever being maudlin. This is a true story in the best and fullest sense of the word.”
NYTHEATRE.COM
TRUTH has been performed Off-Broadway at Ars Nova in New York City.
Read a Q&A at Maud Newton's literary blog about TRUTH.
Read the New York Times review.
Read the Variety review.
Read the Time Out New York review.
Read the METRO article.
Read the nytheatre.com review.
Watch a video statement from Mike about James Frey.
Watch a video statement from Mike about J.T. LeRoy.
Tongues Will Wag
Mike Daisey’s latest monologue is a two-headed tale of love and loss with the unlikeliest of subjects—a small black dog. Over the last decade, Daisey has brought his brand of fierce storytelling to theaters across the country and overseas and has been called “the master storyteller” and “one of the finest solo performers of his generation” by the New York Times. Now he explores the difficult decisions we all face when bringing new life into the world through the story of two would-be parents raising a puppy to adulthood. From housebreaking to obedience classes to family planning, Tongues Will Wag illuminates the most difficult questions with honesty, humor, and bracing candor.
Tongues Will Wag has appeared at American Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Ars Nova, Redhouse Arts Center and the Cape Cod Theatre Project.
The Ugly American
At the age of 19, Mike Daisey went to London to study theater at the feet of Gielgud, Olivier, and other important-sounding, possibly dead, white men. He instead falls in with a postmodern, neo-feminist performance troupe that creates idiosyncratic shows in an abandoned church south of the Thames. When he falls in love with an actress who is, unbeknownst to him, a member of the world’s oldest profession, his misadventures have just begun. In The Ugly American, Daisey provides a startling window into an unforgettable education. From serving tea to Tom Stoppard to driving drunk with his girlfriend’s pimp, he weaves together the lessons of artifice, class, gender and power that both worlds so violently taught him.
Praise for The Ugly American:
“Daisey is a master raconteur in the tradition of Spalding Gray, capable of entrancing an audience for two hours. Deft, prescient, and eloquently delivered, the kernel of melancholy and fear at the heart of The Ugly American feels particularly powerful.”
SAN FRANCISCO WEEKLY
“A rich and generous performance. His comic timing is impeccable, building in tempo to astonishingly rapid, roared or whispered climaxes. His facial contortions and vocal mimicry are almost worth the price of admission alone.”
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
“The Ugly American unfolds naturally and with careful attention to pace, volume and gesture. It’s a simple, unfettered approach that lets words, laughs and emotions do the heavy lifting. Personal, intense and surprising, Daisey is a funny guy and a commanding storyteller.”
OAKLAND TRIBUNE
“To describe him as ‘just sitting’ is like describing Lance Armstrong as ‘just riding’ . . . his arms and hands and face perform, subtly, wildly, expressively, as his voice whispers or roars and holds us rapt. He’s one of the best storytellers around.”
PIEDMONT POST
“While the final light falls, Daisey intones, ‘You must remember this, you must remember this,’ as a kind of incantation for teller and audience alike to hold onto the past. It’s unlikely either will forget this memory.”
SEATTLE WEEKLY
The Ugly American has received workshops at Intiman Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, Ars Nova and the Cape Cod Theatre Project before going on to full productions at the Spoleto Festival, ACT Theatre, and Berkeley Repertory Theatre. An adaptation of The Ugly American was recorded for BBC's Radio Four and aired in 2005.
View an excerpt from The Ugly American.
Read the Seattle Weekly review.
Read the Oakland Tribune review.
Read Mike's essay in The Stranger about The Ugly American.
Read the East Bay Express review.
Read the Charleston City Paper review.
21 Dog Years
Boy meets dot-com, boy falls for dot-com, boy flees dot-com in horror. So goes one of the most perversely hilarious love stories ever told, one that blends tech culture, hero worship, cat litter, venture capitalism, and free bagels into a surreal cocktail of delusion. In 1998, when Amazon.com went to temp agencies to recruit people, they gave them a simple directive: send us your freaks. Mike Daisey—slacker, onetime aesthetics major, dilettante—seemed perfect for the job. His ascension from lowly temp to customer service rep to business development hustler is the stuff of both dreams and nightmares. With lunatic precision, Daisey describes the lightless cube farms in which book orders were scrawled on Post-its while technicians struggled to bring computers back online; the fourteen-hour days fueled by caffeine, fanaticism, and illicit day-trading from office desks made from doors; his strange compulsion to send free books to Norwegians; and the fevered insistence of BizDev higher-ups that the perfect business partner was Pets.com—the now-extinct company that spent all its assets on a sock puppet. 21 Dog Years is an epic story of greed, self-deception, and heartbreak, a wickedly funny anthem to an era of bounteous stock options and boundless insanity. With keen observation and honesty, Daisey explores the darkly humorous compromises made every day to survive in corporate America.
Praise for 21 Dog Years:
“Absolutely hilarious! . . . Mr. Daisey nails with damning detail, and his often vociferous malice is delicious.”
NEW YORK TIMES
“A charismatic performer, his show has the insightful hostility of the best comedy. A clever, sprightly look behind the hype.”
THE NEW YORKER
“Mike Daisey does what Michael Moore once did for General Motors.”
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
“There are sure to be comparisons between Daisey and other large-frame comic talents such as Chris Farley and John Belushi. But the devilish side of Daisey’s performance style—which belies an affable presence—is loaded with sharp observations about the dark undercurrents of the American corporate dream.”
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
“Irresistible storytelling . . . elevating and hilarious. With only a laptop, a latte, and a desk made from a door as props, Daisey delivers, and skewers, whole cultures: of an office, an empire, and an era.”
SAN FRANCISCO WEEKLY
“A fast, inventive, exceptionally funny storyteller with crisp comic timing and an amazingly flexible voice.”
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
“Daisey’s storytelling methods are utterly captivating. Every word, every repetition, every gesticulation reverberates—he’s the consummate performer.”
THE LIST, EDINBURGH
“Like some out-of-shape Jon Krakauer, Mike Daisey has survived and returned from a hellish expedition into the American Dream to tell us what he saw there. He’s an anti-inspirational speaker [who] doesn’t flinch from riding your nerves. A sharp and funny monologue, 21 Dog Years remains a refreshing ride alongside the national rat race.”
WILLAMETTE WEEK
“A penetrating and ebulliently performed account of one man's realization that life in big business is a contradiction in terms . . . Daisey spoofs the glazed-eye fanaticism of life in the rat race with exuberant relish.”
THE GUARDIAN, UK
21 Dog Years began in Seattle’s Speakeasy Backroom in February of 2001, where it received the attention of media outlets big and small, from South African Public Radio to Entertainment Weekly to David Letterman. 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, Intiman Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Portland Center Stage, and numerous one-night engagements across this great planet. In 2002, the Free Press (imprint of Simon & Schuster) published Daisey’s book version of the tale under the same name, and in 2004 the BBC aired Daisey’s radio adaptation of his monologue on Radio Four.
Read the New York Times review.
Read the Oregonian review.
Read the Seattle Post Intelligencer review.
Watch the David Letterman interview.
Listen to Mike on Weekend Edition.
Listen to Mike on the Todd Mundt Show.
Read the first chapter of 21 Dog Years.
Buy the book at Powells.
All Stories Are Fiction
Mike Daisey is a fierce storyteller—one minute hilarious, the next minute sweet—with a fine-tuned ear for digression. He circles in on his uneasy subject matter, closer and closer, until he exposes its raw heart. The New York Times calls him “the master storyteller” and he has been compared to Garrison Keillor, Spalding Gray, and David Sedaris. In this provocative series, audiences get the chance to hear one-of-a-kind stories, told for the first time and never to be repeated again. An hour before curtain, Daisey sits down backstage and creates a one-page outline, usually drawing on the events of that week, and when the lights come up he opens his mouth to tell the tale for the first and only time. The words spoken that night will live for only as long as they are in the air, and then beyond that, only in memory and reflection. The audience discovers the story at precisely the same moment the storyteller does—resulting in a performance that defines the very idea of LIVE entertainment and creates a bond between performer and audience that the Seattle Weekly describes as “pure magic.”
Praise for All Stories Are Fiction:
“An American storyteller.” NEW YORK SUN
“His stories are sweet or strange or a bit sad with comic edging.” VILLAGE VOICE
“Achingly funny and painfully honest.” BACK STAGE WEST
All Stories Are Fiction premiered at Performance Space 122 where Daisey performed new shows every Monday night for two seasons in 2004 and 2005; some of these performances are available for listening at Audible.com. Theaters that have produced Stories include ACT Theatre, Portland Center Stage, the Maui Cultural Arts Center and the Capitol Hill Arts Center; colleges that have hosted Stories include University of Puget Sound and Colby College.
Unique monologues performed in the series so far include:
#1: THE OUTSIDERS
#2: CHECKING YOURSELF IN
#3: THIS SCHADENFREUDE AND FILIBUSTER
#4: GOODIE BAGS, DEALMAKING AND INNUENDO
#5: LOST CAUSES AND THEIR DISCONTENTS
#6: TEACHERS, TEACHING AND THE TAUGHT
#7: PASSING OVERHEAD
#8: BOARDING HOUSE REACH
#9: YOU ARE WHERE YOU EAT
#10: SUCKING AT THE GLASS TEAT
#11: THE DARK ART OF PROCRASTINATION
#12: THE CHANGELING
#13: A ROUGH GUIDE TO LIBEL, SLANDER AND HORSESHIT
#14: ON WEDDINGS AND OTHER COMMON DISASTERS
#15: THE BLACK-HEARTED PEOPLE OF BROOKLYN
#16: THE DEAD ARE JUST LIKE US
#17: ELECTRICITY: FRIEND OR FOE?
#18: PROFIT AND LOSS AND THE SPACE BETWEEN
#19: WHERE WATER MEETS WITH WATER
#20: ON LACKING CONVICTION
#21: GAMES PEOPLE PLAY
#22: TENSION IS THE GREAT INTEGRITY
#23: SERENITY THROUGH VICIOUSNESS
#24: JUST AS THE LIGHT FAILS
#25: YES, THERE WILL BE DANCING
#26: NOTHING LIKE I USED TO BE
#27: THOMAS WOLFE TOLD THE TRUTH
#28: THE BLACK DOG AND HIS BRETHREN
#29: OFF THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW
#30: LIFE DURING WARTIME
#31: BETWEEN THE VALLEY AND THE ISLAND
Wasting Your Breath
In this hilariously dark vision 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. As he flees his old life he finds himself in a Trappist monastery in Kentucky, struck by lightning in Nevada, stealing jewelry in New Jersey, and visiting the final resting place of Marilyn Monroe in California. Half comedy and half confession, Daisey's shocking and relentless first monologue cuts to the heart and refuses to let go without a full accounting.
Praise for Wasting Your Breath:
“A show so honest, smart and daring that these events could only be true. A bright light.”
SEATTLE WEEKLY
“Daisey is an accomplished storyteller, and spins a mean yarn.”
THE STRANGER
“Daisey has a sharp wit and a way with words that elicit both the humor and pathos in each scenario.”
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
Originally produced by Open Circle Theater in Seattle in 1997, Wasting Your Breath was remounted at Berkeley Repertory Theater in 2004.
Read the Seattle Weekly review.
Read the Stranger review.
Read the Seattle Post-Intelligencer review.
I Miss the Cold War
In 1997 Mike spent all the money he had in the world to fly to Poland to win the heart of a girl. In 1990 he was a high school senior who argued viciously for the destruction of the Warsaw Pact while its factions were weak. In 1983 he was ten years old and spent every night waiting for a nuclear warhead to detonate over his home. In 1971 his father was fighting in Vietnam, and later would return to become a counselor to other veterans. Using interviews with veterans from his father's clinic and his own experience of sudden immersion in post-Cold War Warsaw, Daisey tells a story of expectations and our own blind alleys.
Praise for I Miss the Cold War:
“Mike Daisey is one of those people who can talk incessantly about himself with true charm. Unlike other self-styled ”storytellers,“ he not only knows what makes a good story, he knows how to make that story good theater.”
SEATTLE WEEKLY
“Mike Daisey is a unique talent...he demonstrates a fine eye for the little absurdities of life and for how monumental events can sometimes crystallize into ridiculous little moments.”
SEATTLE TIMES
Originally produced by 24/7 Productions in Seattle in 1998.
Read the Seattle Weekly preview.
Read the Seattle Times review.
***
Nikola Tesla ~ mad genius, brilliant scientist and visionary who sparred with Thomas Edison and died insane and penniless writing love sonnets to pigeons after bringing the world electricity as we know it.
L. Ron Hubbard ~ bigamist, occultist, and charismatic science fiction author-turned-guru who took 1950's popular psychiatry by storm and went on to create the Church of Scientology: the most celebrity-driven and litigious organization on Earth.
Praise for Great Men Of Genius:
Just once, it'd be nice to see Mike Daisey and Garrison Keillor trade places, not so much to hear Keillor's nostalgically mellow take on Daisey's world, but to see Daisey rip the lid off Lake Wobegon and expose its wicked underbelly. For, you see, Daisey is very much the dark doppelganger of Keillor's soul. He is a Keillor for the seriously perverse. He is a mesmerizing performer who spins words into comic and emotional gold, revealing as much about himself as the subjects he is discussing.
OAKLAND TRIBUNE
"Great Men" is big-time brain candy that takes a while to digest. It's a colossally gutsy project that takes the whole medium-is-the-message thing seriously as Daisey slaps the convention of the short and tight solo genre upside the head. He seeks to work on the same ultra-ambitious scale as the great men he chronicles in these birth-to-death sagas. Rest assured, he also has a gift for zapping the zeitgeist, and he knows all too well that ADD is the spirit of our age. So seeing these shows as stand-alone solos would be cheating yourself of one of the cheekiest theatrical adventures in recent memory.
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS
A long day's story into night. The result isn't just highly entertaining--it's also bracingly honest and affecting. Daisey and Gregory abandon the regular alternation between biography and autobiography, and heighten the intimacy of the first-person story to a disturbing, even chilling degree.
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Gripping tales...hilarious, nuanced and wide-ranging runimations...Daisey manages to be even more fascinating. Four addictive monologues on noteworthy men.
EAST BAY EXPRESS
Daisey is a powerful, hilarious, touching monologist. His face is an elastic ball of expressiveness. He has a great way of building each segment of his story to a climax. He makes us laugh. There's also something very gentle about him too. He never takes the obvious route with his stories or goes for the predictable laugh. His take on each of the four "geniuses" on the program - Tesla, Brecht, Barnum, and Hubbbard - made me wish I'd had him as a history teacher at high school. Instead of making obvious links between the historical subject and the details of his own life, Daisey allows us to draw our own conclusions. This is subtle and sublime.
SFWEEKLY
Daisey is a master showman, combining the storytelling acumen of David Sedaris and Lewis Black’s outraged humor.
DAILY CALIFORNIAN
This is one five-hour monologue, broken up into four segments, wherein the true genius of the piece, Mike Daisey, interweaves vignettes from his life with the excerpted life stories of those famous men. He paints for us not only pictures of who these men were, but also of himself, and, by association, how the productivity and madness of genius can be expressed in our own lives. The ultimate result is a vivid and detailed portrait of the nature of megalomania and success. Get tickets for one of the remaining Sunday marathons before this unique theatrical experience sells out.
SFIST
Like a coked-up History Channel biography, Mike Daisey’s new ‘bio-logues’ ruminate on brilliant men and their piteous pitfalls, interspersed with Daisey’s personal experiences. Each night explores a new subject, from Bertolt Brecht to L. Ron Hubbard—it’s like hearing a lecture by your favorite professor while drinking beer in a comfortable lounge chair. You might even walk away smarter than before.
VILLAGE VOICE
An interestingly unpredictable and uneasy moosh of homage and parody…a kind of dual Rorschach test, in which one man identifies his own demons and ideals in the ink-blot of another’s life story.
SEATTLE TIMES
You get the feeling that Daisey is coming to new conclusions and realizations all the time, right there on stage—that his delving into the minds of these men is never complete, and that it’s deepening before your eyes…it’s an exciting process to watch.
THE STRANGER
Engaging and funny, Mike Daisey’s monologues brim with subtle messages that never hammer you over the head...by association, he adds himself to the titular category.
TIME OUT NEW YORK
Great Men of Genius has received productions at the Public Theater in New York City, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Galapagos Arts Center in New York, and the Capitol Hill Arts Center in Seattle.
Read the San Jose Mercury News review
Read the Contra Costa Times review
Listen to Mike's Studio 360 episode all about Nikola Tesla
Read the Jon Carroll column in the San Francisco Chronicle
Listen to an interview with Mike on KPFA's Against The Grain
Read the SFist review
Read the TheaterMania feature
Read the San Jose Mercury News Feature
Listen to a review on the NPR show The Artery
Read the Seattle Weekly profile
Read the Variety article
Read the Brooklyn Rail article
Read The Stranger review of all 4 evenings
Listen to an NPR interview with Mike about L. Ron Hubbard
Read the Seattle Post-Intelligencer review.
Invincible Summer
Mike Daisey tells his story of the last glorious summer before everything changed. Starting with the bizarre history of the Manhattan Transit Authority’s epic subway system, Daisey maps New York City from the bottom up--a city so unbelievable it could only be true—and paints a picture of his Brooklyn neighborhood before and after 9/11 that captures the personal and social shockwaves of that terrible day. By setting the intensely personal story of a family in crisis against the backdrop of massive social change, Daisey tells a story of loss and faith for our time. Weddings and wars, fathers and sons, governments and citizens clash--and the world comes crashing down, leaving serious questions in its wake: What does it mean to belong to a place, and how will we hold on when we lose our way?
Praise for Invincible Summer:
“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.”
NEW YORK TIMES
“Sharp-witted, passionately delivered talk about matters both small and huge, at once utterly individual and achingly universal.”
BOSTON GLOBE
“Daisey's skill is that he is able to talk about the historical and make it human, the personal and make it universal, so that the listener is both informed and transformed.”
PAPER MAGAZINE
“He has a knack for detailed descriptions and keen observations ... His stories are often raucously funny, but the solo performer also probes more intense and painful subjects in a compelling manner ... and isn't afraid of expressing some of his own less-than-politically-correct emotions.”
THEATERMANIA
Daisey radiates heat like the fiery orb of New York’s dreaded summer sun. His delivery can be acerbic, his voice and inflection taking on a distinct Lewis Black edge; in his calmer moments, Daisey sounds more like Garrison Keillor, as he zeroes in - implacably, with perfect deadpan control of his colorful vocabulary - on his pitch-perfect payoffs.
EDGE BOSTON
“The monologist's show pulses forward with Daisey sitting simply at a desk offering existential glimpses that are anything but simple.”
WGBH BOSTON
“Invincible Summer is ostensibly about Daisey’s life during the summer before September 11, 2001, but it also includes digressions about the dreams of cities, Polish wedding toasts, and the history of the MTA to create a story that is bigger, messier, and far more rewarding than mere autobiography. Half the fun of Mike Daisey is watching him spin out a tangle of ideas and wondering how he’ll lasso them into a coherent story. He works from an outline, not a script, and he free-forms the words in each performance, a method that gives him the loose spontaneity of great standup and the kinetic force to fill a room as large as the Public Theater. This performance style has earned him a reputation as one of the best storytellers working today, and a legion of avid fans...Daisey certainly has the talent and the fervor to achieve greatness.”
THE VILLAGER
“He takes seemingly incongruent topics and mixes them with personal experiences to create the dramatic equivalent of a classic cocktail: there’s a balance of strong, sweet, and sour components and a few dashes of bitters. Each night the same story emerges differently; he could be a hip-hop artist freestyling, or a Baptist preacher.”
BOSTON PHOENIX
“Daisey has the journalist’s gift for the telling illustration and the convincing concrete detail.”
CHARLESTON POST AND COURIER
“Powerful and memorable . . . it takes a gifted storyteller to approach tragedy without exploiting it.”
CHARLESTON CITY PAPER
“Daisey knows what makes a story great.”
METRO BOSTON
“Autobiography and commentary, scripted and spontaneous, the monologue showcases its author's performance chops and detail-rich narrative style. Daisey has a knack for pushing the boundaries of comedy and candor, with unflinchingly honest descriptions that show the performer's personal strengths and weaknesses. The result is cathartic.”
BOSTONIST
Invincible Summer has been performed at the Public Theater, American Repertory Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, the 2006 Spoleto Festival and ACT Theatre in Seattle.
Read the New York Times feature on INVINCIBLE SUMMER.
Listen to an interview and excerpt from INVINCIBLE SUMMER on Public Radio International's FAIR GAME.
Read the Paper Magazine preview piece.
INVINCIBLE SUMMER is New York Magazine's top pick of the Under The Radar Festival.
Read a review of INVINCIBLE SUMMER at Theatermania.
Read a review of INVINCIBLE SUMMER in The Villager.
Read an interview with Mike about INVINCIBLE SUMMER and his work at Gothamist.
Read the Charleston City Paper review.
Read an excerpt/essay from of Invincible Summer in The Stranger.
Read the Charleston Post and Courier review.
Read an article on the show in the Charleston City Paper.
TRUTH
{the heart is a million little pieces above all things}
TRUTH follows the fictional and nonfictional stories of James Frey's (author of A Million Little Pieces) self-destruction, the sordid and shocking tale of J.T. LeRoy, (The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things) a world-famous transsexual author whom the world learned ultimately didn't exist, and Fernando Pessoa, a Portuguese poet whose great works were written by warring multiple personalities inside his head. These stories are reflected against an autobiographical accounting of Daisey's own history of lying and telling the truth in an attempt to illuminate the uncertain landscape of the emotionally true, the literally true, and the constant struggle to speak the truth.
Praise for TRUTH:
“Elegantly woven...Engaging and intellectually curious...Mr. Daisey is rarely obvious. His stories resist easy conclusions and cheap laughs. There is nothing as simple as a thesis here, but Mr. Daisey ultimately makes a case for the importance of trying to tell the truth.”
NEW YORK TIMES
“The ethics of literature isn't typical fodder for any drama, let alone a one-man show...What helps him avoid the pitfalls of didacticism is an eye attuned to the absurdity of daily life. In assessing the story of Frey and Leroy, Daisey comes to a judgment that is strict but sympathetic; he suggests that if people are often the least reliable narrators of their own lives, they are also sometimes the most engaging.”
VARIETY
“While Daisey is unforgiving of Frey’s melodramatic style, he offers a more nuanced view of the process though which personal memoir, as a genre, can come to be fertilized by bullshit. Over the course of 100 minutes or so, he artfully weaves diverse narrative strands into a complex Daisey chain that ultimately argues for the paramount importance of honesty. His truth may not be simple, but it is, in its own way, pure.”
TIME OUT NEW YORK
“Watching Daisey sort out anything on stage is a delirious, brainy, hilarious, infuriating experience from which one emerges perversely hopeful: the world may be screwed, but for one moment, it seems, at least one guy gets it.”
METRO
“Speaking non-stop for over an hour while seated behind a simple desk on stage, Daisey weaves the saga of Frey's literary rise and fall into his own personal recollections and feelings about bending the truth when telling about one's life. Not unlike an extended verbal essay, Daisey's performance draws us from one topic to the next, from his father's disappointment at his own bending of the truth to a friend's death, commenting on the importance of personal integrity and the evolution of his thoughts on the subject.”
MEDIABISTRO
“This story is not just about truth, it's about mortality. It's about loss, but it's also about connection. It's about storytelling itself, a story familiar to Mike Daisey, and, of course, to all of us. This story is comical without ever being smug. This story is redemptive without ever being maudlin. This is a true story in the best and fullest sense of the word.”
NYTHEATRE.COM
TRUTH has been performed Off-Broadway at Ars Nova in New York City.
Read a Q&A at Maud Newton's literary blog about TRUTH.
Read the New York Times review.
Read the Variety review.
Read the Time Out New York review.
Read the METRO article.
Read the nytheatre.com review.
Watch a video statement from Mike about James Frey.
Watch a video statement from Mike about J.T. LeRoy.
Tongues Will Wag
Mike Daisey’s latest monologue is a two-headed tale of love and loss with the unlikeliest of subjects—a small black dog. Over the last decade, Daisey has brought his brand of fierce storytelling to theaters across the country and overseas and has been called “the master storyteller” and “one of the finest solo performers of his generation” by the New York Times. Now he explores the difficult decisions we all face when bringing new life into the world through the story of two would-be parents raising a puppy to adulthood. From housebreaking to obedience classes to family planning, Tongues Will Wag illuminates the most difficult questions with honesty, humor, and bracing candor.
Tongues Will Wag has appeared at American Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Ars Nova, Redhouse Arts Center and the Cape Cod Theatre Project.
The Ugly American
At the age of 19, Mike Daisey went to London to study theater at the feet of Gielgud, Olivier, and other important-sounding, possibly dead, white men. He instead falls in with a postmodern, neo-feminist performance troupe that creates idiosyncratic shows in an abandoned church south of the Thames. When he falls in love with an actress who is, unbeknownst to him, a member of the world’s oldest profession, his misadventures have just begun. In The Ugly American, Daisey provides a startling window into an unforgettable education. From serving tea to Tom Stoppard to driving drunk with his girlfriend’s pimp, he weaves together the lessons of artifice, class, gender and power that both worlds so violently taught him.
Praise for The Ugly American:
“Daisey is a master raconteur in the tradition of Spalding Gray, capable of entrancing an audience for two hours. Deft, prescient, and eloquently delivered, the kernel of melancholy and fear at the heart of The Ugly American feels particularly powerful.”
SAN FRANCISCO WEEKLY
“A rich and generous performance. His comic timing is impeccable, building in tempo to astonishingly rapid, roared or whispered climaxes. His facial contortions and vocal mimicry are almost worth the price of admission alone.”
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
“The Ugly American unfolds naturally and with careful attention to pace, volume and gesture. It’s a simple, unfettered approach that lets words, laughs and emotions do the heavy lifting. Personal, intense and surprising, Daisey is a funny guy and a commanding storyteller.”
OAKLAND TRIBUNE
“To describe him as ‘just sitting’ is like describing Lance Armstrong as ‘just riding’ . . . his arms and hands and face perform, subtly, wildly, expressively, as his voice whispers or roars and holds us rapt. He’s one of the best storytellers around.”
PIEDMONT POST
“While the final light falls, Daisey intones, ‘You must remember this, you must remember this,’ as a kind of incantation for teller and audience alike to hold onto the past. It’s unlikely either will forget this memory.”
SEATTLE WEEKLY
The Ugly American has received workshops at Intiman Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, Ars Nova and the Cape Cod Theatre Project before going on to full productions at the Spoleto Festival, ACT Theatre, and Berkeley Repertory Theatre. An adaptation of The Ugly American was recorded for BBC's Radio Four and aired in 2005.
View an excerpt from The Ugly American.
Read the Seattle Weekly review.
Read the Oakland Tribune review.
Read Mike's essay in The Stranger about The Ugly American.
Read the East Bay Express review.
Read the Charleston City Paper review.
21 Dog Years
Boy meets dot-com, boy falls for dot-com, boy flees dot-com in horror. So goes one of the most perversely hilarious love stories ever told, one that blends tech culture, hero worship, cat litter, venture capitalism, and free bagels into a surreal cocktail of delusion. In 1998, when Amazon.com went to temp agencies to recruit people, they gave them a simple directive: send us your freaks. Mike Daisey—slacker, onetime aesthetics major, dilettante—seemed perfect for the job. His ascension from lowly temp to customer service rep to business development hustler is the stuff of both dreams and nightmares. With lunatic precision, Daisey describes the lightless cube farms in which book orders were scrawled on Post-its while technicians struggled to bring computers back online; the fourteen-hour days fueled by caffeine, fanaticism, and illicit day-trading from office desks made from doors; his strange compulsion to send free books to Norwegians; and the fevered insistence of BizDev higher-ups that the perfect business partner was Pets.com—the now-extinct company that spent all its assets on a sock puppet. 21 Dog Years is an epic story of greed, self-deception, and heartbreak, a wickedly funny anthem to an era of bounteous stock options and boundless insanity. With keen observation and honesty, Daisey explores the darkly humorous compromises made every day to survive in corporate America.
Praise for 21 Dog Years:
“Absolutely hilarious! . . . Mr. Daisey nails with damning detail, and his often vociferous malice is delicious.”
NEW YORK TIMES
“A charismatic performer, his show has the insightful hostility of the best comedy. A clever, sprightly look behind the hype.”
THE NEW YORKER
“Mike Daisey does what Michael Moore once did for General Motors.”
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
“There are sure to be comparisons between Daisey and other large-frame comic talents such as Chris Farley and John Belushi. But the devilish side of Daisey’s performance style—which belies an affable presence—is loaded with sharp observations about the dark undercurrents of the American corporate dream.”
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
“Irresistible storytelling . . . elevating and hilarious. With only a laptop, a latte, and a desk made from a door as props, Daisey delivers, and skewers, whole cultures: of an office, an empire, and an era.”
SAN FRANCISCO WEEKLY
“A fast, inventive, exceptionally funny storyteller with crisp comic timing and an amazingly flexible voice.”
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
“Daisey’s storytelling methods are utterly captivating. Every word, every repetition, every gesticulation reverberates—he’s the consummate performer.”
THE LIST, EDINBURGH
“Like some out-of-shape Jon Krakauer, Mike Daisey has survived and returned from a hellish expedition into the American Dream to tell us what he saw there. He’s an anti-inspirational speaker [who] doesn’t flinch from riding your nerves. A sharp and funny monologue, 21 Dog Years remains a refreshing ride alongside the national rat race.”
WILLAMETTE WEEK
“A penetrating and ebulliently performed account of one man's realization that life in big business is a contradiction in terms . . . Daisey spoofs the glazed-eye fanaticism of life in the rat race with exuberant relish.”
THE GUARDIAN, UK
21 Dog Years began in Seattle’s Speakeasy Backroom in February of 2001, where it received the attention of media outlets big and small, from South African Public Radio to Entertainment Weekly to David Letterman. 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, Intiman Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Portland Center Stage, and numerous one-night engagements across this great planet. In 2002, the Free Press (imprint of Simon & Schuster) published Daisey’s book version of the tale under the same name, and in 2004 the BBC aired Daisey’s radio adaptation of his monologue on Radio Four.
Read the New York Times review.
Read the Oregonian review.
Read the Seattle Post Intelligencer review.
Watch the David Letterman interview.
Listen to Mike on Weekend Edition.
Listen to Mike on the Todd Mundt Show.
Read the first chapter of 21 Dog Years.
Buy the book at Powells.
All Stories Are Fiction
Mike Daisey is a fierce storyteller—one minute hilarious, the next minute sweet—with a fine-tuned ear for digression. He circles in on his uneasy subject matter, closer and closer, until he exposes its raw heart. The New York Times calls him “the master storyteller” and he has been compared to Garrison Keillor, Spalding Gray, and David Sedaris. In this provocative series, audiences get the chance to hear one-of-a-kind stories, told for the first time and never to be repeated again. An hour before curtain, Daisey sits down backstage and creates a one-page outline, usually drawing on the events of that week, and when the lights come up he opens his mouth to tell the tale for the first and only time. The words spoken that night will live for only as long as they are in the air, and then beyond that, only in memory and reflection. The audience discovers the story at precisely the same moment the storyteller does—resulting in a performance that defines the very idea of LIVE entertainment and creates a bond between performer and audience that the Seattle Weekly describes as “pure magic.”
Praise for All Stories Are Fiction:
“An American storyteller.” NEW YORK SUN
“His stories are sweet or strange or a bit sad with comic edging.” VILLAGE VOICE
“Achingly funny and painfully honest.” BACK STAGE WEST
All Stories Are Fiction premiered at Performance Space 122 where Daisey performed new shows every Monday night for two seasons in 2004 and 2005; some of these performances are available for listening at Audible.com. Theaters that have produced Stories include ACT Theatre, Portland Center Stage, the Maui Cultural Arts Center and the Capitol Hill Arts Center; colleges that have hosted Stories include University of Puget Sound and Colby College.
Unique monologues performed in the series so far include:
#1: THE OUTSIDERS
#2: CHECKING YOURSELF IN
#3: THIS SCHADENFREUDE AND FILIBUSTER
#4: GOODIE BAGS, DEALMAKING AND INNUENDO
#5: LOST CAUSES AND THEIR DISCONTENTS
#6: TEACHERS, TEACHING AND THE TAUGHT
#7: PASSING OVERHEAD
#8: BOARDING HOUSE REACH
#9: YOU ARE WHERE YOU EAT
#10: SUCKING AT THE GLASS TEAT
#11: THE DARK ART OF PROCRASTINATION
#12: THE CHANGELING
#13: A ROUGH GUIDE TO LIBEL, SLANDER AND HORSESHIT
#14: ON WEDDINGS AND OTHER COMMON DISASTERS
#15: THE BLACK-HEARTED PEOPLE OF BROOKLYN
#16: THE DEAD ARE JUST LIKE US
#17: ELECTRICITY: FRIEND OR FOE?
#18: PROFIT AND LOSS AND THE SPACE BETWEEN
#19: WHERE WATER MEETS WITH WATER
#20: ON LACKING CONVICTION
#21: GAMES PEOPLE PLAY
#22: TENSION IS THE GREAT INTEGRITY
#23: SERENITY THROUGH VICIOUSNESS
#24: JUST AS THE LIGHT FAILS
#25: YES, THERE WILL BE DANCING
#26: NOTHING LIKE I USED TO BE
#27: THOMAS WOLFE TOLD THE TRUTH
#28: THE BLACK DOG AND HIS BRETHREN
#29: OFF THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW
#30: LIFE DURING WARTIME
#31: BETWEEN THE VALLEY AND THE ISLAND
Wasting Your Breath
In this hilariously dark vision 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. As he flees his old life he finds himself in a Trappist monastery in Kentucky, struck by lightning in Nevada, stealing jewelry in New Jersey, and visiting the final resting place of Marilyn Monroe in California. Half comedy and half confession, Daisey's shocking and relentless first monologue cuts to the heart and refuses to let go without a full accounting.
Praise for Wasting Your Breath:
“A show so honest, smart and daring that these events could only be true. A bright light.”
SEATTLE WEEKLY
“Daisey is an accomplished storyteller, and spins a mean yarn.”
THE STRANGER
“Daisey has a sharp wit and a way with words that elicit both the humor and pathos in each scenario.”
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
Originally produced by Open Circle Theater in Seattle in 1997, Wasting Your Breath was remounted at Berkeley Repertory Theater in 2004.
Read the Seattle Weekly review.
Read the Stranger review.
Read the Seattle Post-Intelligencer review.
I Miss the Cold War
In 1997 Mike spent all the money he had in the world to fly to Poland to win the heart of a girl. In 1990 he was a high school senior who argued viciously for the destruction of the Warsaw Pact while its factions were weak. In 1983 he was ten years old and spent every night waiting for a nuclear warhead to detonate over his home. In 1971 his father was fighting in Vietnam, and later would return to become a counselor to other veterans. Using interviews with veterans from his father's clinic and his own experience of sudden immersion in post-Cold War Warsaw, Daisey tells a story of expectations and our own blind alleys.
Praise for I Miss the Cold War:
“Mike Daisey is one of those people who can talk incessantly about himself with true charm. Unlike other self-styled ”storytellers,“ he not only knows what makes a good story, he knows how to make that story good theater.”
SEATTLE WEEKLY
“Mike Daisey is a unique talent...he demonstrates a fine eye for the little absurdities of life and for how monumental events can sometimes crystallize into ridiculous little moments.”
SEATTLE TIMES
Originally produced by 24/7 Productions in Seattle in 1998.
Read the Seattle Weekly preview.
Read the Seattle Times review.
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