Mike Daisey is an American monologist, author, and actor best known for his full-length extemporaneous monologues. His breakthrough work 21 Dog Years is an account of life as an Amazon.com employee during the dot-com boom. Since that time he has created monologues about Nikola Tesla, L. Ron Hubbard, 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, weaving together events from his own life with historical facts. Paper magazine described him thusly: "...his 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."[1] He is married to his director and collaborator, Jean-Michele Gregory. Currently, they reside in New York City.[2]
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Daisey presented his monumental 24-hour monologue at Portland's TBA Festival in September 2011.[3] 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.
Daisey's next monologue, which came to Portland's TBA Festival in September 2010, Berkeley Repertory Theatre in January 2011, and played in Seattle in April–May 2011, examined 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."
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.
Daisey's rarely performed piece on his 2008 visit to Tajikistan with the United States State Department. It was most recently performed at the Yukon Arts Centre and in Banff in September 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.
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." All performances will be held at Joe's Pub. The three topics were Facebook, bacon, and the boardwalk.
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. 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. A feature film recording of the work by Steve Anderson was filmed yet remains unreleased.
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. This controversial monologue has appeared at the Under The Radar festival, the Capitol Hill Arts Center in Seattle, the Public Theater, and the Barrow Street Theatre in New York City.
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. It has appeared at American Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Ars Nova Theatre, and the Cape Cod Theatre Project.
Four interlocking monologues about genius and megalomania in the lives of Bertolt Brecht, P.T. Barnum, Nikola Tesla, and L. Ron Hubbard which has been produced at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Joe's Pub at the Public Theater, Galapagos Art Space in New York City, and the Capitol Hill Arts Center in Seattle. A book adaptation of the work is due soon.
A monologue about James Frey, Oprah, lying, and telling the truth. Ran Off-Broadway in New York City at Ars Nova Theatre.
Invincible Summer is about the history of the New York City transit system, loss and democracy in our time. It has been produced at the Public Theater, Yale Repertory Theatre, American Repertory Theatre, ACT Theatre in Seattle, and the 2006 Spoleto Festival.
Among other things, the piece deals with the board game, Nikola Tesla, Bill Gates, Wal-Mart, and the author's home town in Maine. 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.
All Stories Are Fiction 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. Theaters that have produced Stories include ACT Theatre, Portland Center Stage, the Maui Cultural Arts Center, and Seattle's Capitol Hill Arts Center among many more. 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.
The Ugly American, 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, the 2005 Spoleto Festival, and Berkeley Repertory Theatre 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.
21 Dog Years began in New York's Speakeasy Backroom in February 2001, where it received the attention of various media outlets, from Entertainment Weekly to South African Public Radio 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, Seattle's Intiman Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Portland Center Stage, and numerous engagements around the world. In 2002, the Free Press (an 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.
A monologue about Daisey visiting post-Soviet 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. Originally produced by 24/7 Productions in Seattle in June 1998.
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, Wasting Your Breath was remounted and produced at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2004.
21 Dog Years, Monopoly, Invincible Summer, Great Men of Genius, and seven All Stories are Fiction installments are available for purchase on Audible.com.
Daisey's first play The Moon Is a Dead World premiered at the Annex Theatre in Seattle, Washington on October 17, 2008.[4] 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.[5]
The New York Times said about his work: "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."[6] The Boston Globe described his monologues, "Sharp-witted, passionately delivered talk about matters both small and huge, at once utterly individual and achingly universal."[7]
Daisey has received the Bay Area Critics Circle Award, three Seattle Times Footlight Awards, and a MacDowell Fellowship. Daisey was nominated for two 2009 Drama League Awards and a 2009 Outer Critics Circle Award for If You See Something, Say Something.
The April 19th, 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.[8] 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. [9][10]
Daisey later sought out and spoke with representatives of the group, including the member who destroyed his notes.[11] [12]
Mike Daisey, Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2004.
