"Layering outrage, official and underground history, personal memoir and rollicking humor, Daisey makes you think, feel and question. And he makes you laugh—hearty laughter, cathartic and barbed. Spellbinding." —Seattle Times

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. Ship in freeze-dried actors from New York City? Certainly! Create generations of theater professors who have never worked in theater? Absolutely! Earn no pay and have no hope of a living wage? Sign us up! Daisey gives a darkly hilarious and truthful dissection of the art that’s being made, the legacy we leave to the future, and just who it is the theater believes it's speaking to.

"A charismatic performer, his shows have the insightful hostility of the best comedy."
—The New Yorker

Performed and Created by Mike Daisey
Directed by Jean-Michele Gregory

Executive Producers: Marty Tuzman, Eileen Heisman, and Jenkintown Building Services

Read blog articles about this show by clicking here.

Mike Daisey’s (performer, creator) monologues, fourteen and counting, include the controversial How Theater Failed America, the six-hour epic Great Men of Genius, and the international sensation 21 Dog Years. He’s appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman, and been a frequent guest on BBC and NPR. A feature film of his monologue If You See Something Say Something will be released this year, and he stars in the Lawrence Krauser film Horrible Child. His first book 21 Dog Years: A Cubedweller’s Tale (Free Press) is being followed by second, Great Men of Genius, adapted from his monologues about Bertolt Brecht, P.T. Barnum, Nikola Tesla, and L. Ron Hubbard. He was nominated for the Outer Critics Circle Award, two Drama League Awards, and received the Bay Area Critics Circle Award, three Seattle Times Footlight Awards, and a MacDowell Fellowship. He lives in New York City with his director and collaborator, Jean-Michele Gregory. www.mikedaisey.com

Jean-Michele Gregory (director) works as a director, editor, and dramaturg, focusing on unscripted, extemporaneous theatrical works that live in the moment they are told. Working primarily with solo artists, for the last decade she has collaborated with monologuist Mike Daisey, directing his many monologues at venues across the globe, including the Public Theater, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, the Under the Radar Festival, Yale Repertory Theatre, the Barrow Street Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Cherry Lane Theater, the Noorderzon Festival, American Repertory Theatre, Intiman, ACT Theatre, Performance Space 122, Portland Stage Company, the T:BA Festival, Ars Nova, and many more. She also works with New York storyteller Martin Dockery (Wanderlust, The Surprise) and the Seattle-based performer and writer Suzanne Morrison (Yoga Bitch, Your Own Personal Alcatraz).