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Assessing Jeune Leune:
Last Monday, a day after learning that Theatre de la Jeune Lune would shut down, singer/actress Momoko Tanno walked through the company's cavernous warehouse building in downtown Minneapolis.
Collecting memories, she eyed scenery from past shows, including a boat used in "Figaro," a reimagined Jeune Lune opera that won rave reviews.
"It's such a unique space, and it has all these ghosts," said Tanno. "How could this be lost?"
That is the question being asked after Jeune Lune's board voted last weekend to cease operations after 30 years and sell the building in the face of a $1 million-plus debt. (Theater officials did not reveal the exact amount.) Only three years ago, the company received a Tony Award as one of the nation's outstanding regional theaters.
"Retrospectively, maybe the theater should have launched a [fundraising] campaign earlier," board chair Bruce Neary said in an interview last Sunday. "We had a terrific team on board at the end. We just ran out of money."
Could the theater have been saved? Do theaters have a natural life cycle, as some in the company have suggested? Is this closing an anomaly, or a cautionary tale with implications for other arts groups?
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A response to HOW THEATRE SAVED AMERICA, PART ONE and an open letter to AMERICAN THEATRE magazine:
I was recently made aware that American Theatre magazine had published a response to my monologue HOW THEATER FAILED AMERICA in its July/August 2008 issue, written by Theresa Eyring, the Executive Director of TCG. (Full disclosure: I met Ms. Eyring briefly at the TCG Conference this June in Denver, and I performed the aforementioned monologue at that conference.) You can read that article here.
I wish I could be delighted at the exchange of ideas, but this article's publication was disappointing for three reasons.
The first is the lack of context given for the piece—it is such an important topic that I wish American Theatre would dedicate an entire issue to it, and open its doors to multiple voices on the matter. A two-page article (even in two parts, as this one is, which will give us a grand total of four pages) can't cover even the preamble to such a topic. It is far larger than my monologue, which is the reason I was inspired to develop the piece—because it touches on the heart of our shared form, and how we treat our artists and our audiences should lie at the core of our concerns.
Secondly it is disappointing because it is such a poor title. My piece is called HOW THEATER FAILED AMERICA because I am speaking about the responsibility the institution of theater has to America, how it has failed that responsibility, and how we are all implicated in this.
Ms. Eyring's title takes one's breath away. If it were called HOW THEATRE WILL SAVE AMERICA it would still be defensible, if a bit sweeping—it could fantasize about a nearly unimaginable future when theater will reach out from the stage and save all of America from corporate greed, the military-industrial complex, racism, sexism, and human nature itself by reshaping America.
That's bold. But Ms. Eyring takes it a step further and uses the past tense—HOW THEATRE SAVED AMERICA—informing us that the work is done, the wars have been fought and that we actually live in a glorious utopia right now, one that has been created by the American theater. If one didn't know better, one might think it is an attempt at wit—a shallow attempt to play off of my title for comic effect, ignoring the actual meaning implicit in the words I’d chosen.
It is a shockingly poor idea to make such an assertion in the title, unless the essay that follows brings some serious arguments to bear, and this is the third problem with the piece. HOW THEATRE SAVED AMERICA, PART ONE chooses to accomplish this goal not by grappling with any of the arguments in my monologue, but instead displaying examples of theaters that are working within their communities as a kind of proof positive that theater has saved America. It specifically cites one example at length, describing the work of Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble.
I find it reaching to claim that one company from a town of 12,000 in Pennsylvania, however wonderful they might be, contraindicates the larger story of the arts infrastructure in a country of 300 million, but I will set that aside for a moment. In the opening of Ms. Eyring's second paragraph, she mentions my work directly:
"While permanent acting ensembles are indeed a rare commodity at major U.S. theatres, typically ignored—even by the popular monologist Mike Daisey in How Theatre Failed America, which ran Off Broadway through June 22—is the array of ensemble companies working across the country. What about, for instance, the long-term acting collaborations of Minneapolis’s Theatre de la Jeune Lune, Brooklyn’s Irondale Ensemble Project, New York City’s Wooster Group, California’s Dell’Arte International, Pig Iron Theatre Company of Philadelphia, and Touchstone Theatre, also of Pennsylvania?"
While I am flattered to be thought "popular", I don't know if I can agree that I belong to a group that has "typically ignored" ensembles. I programmed and hosted a series of roundtables during the Off-Broadway run of HOW THEATER FAILED AMERICA about the state of American theater, featuring luminaries like Oskar Eustis, Richard Nelson, Rocco Landesman, James Bundy and many more in conversation with working actors, technicians, arts funders and more.
One of the symposiums, titled "ASSEMBLING ENSEMBLES", was focused on exactly this kind of artist-driven work, and featured representatives of the Civilians, Elevator Repair Service, Printer's Devil and...wait for it...Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble! The lovely Elizabeth Dowd, a 29-year veteran of Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble was on hand, and an absolutely wonderful and essential voice at the roundtable.
So it is foolish to paint me as someone who has "typically ignored" these ensembles...but even if I had ignored them utterly this would not change the issues argued in HOW THEATER FAILED AMERICA. The existence of a good theater in no way invalidates the arguments in my monologue—I am speaking very clearly about failures within the institution of American theater, which afflict the institutions that dominate that world. The existence of any theater company who is doing good work is always cause for celebration, but to ignore the state of the industry as a whole by cherry-picking test cases that don't represent where the vast majority of arts funding is going is disingenuous at best, and irrational blindness at worst.
Once Ms. Eyring is done extolling the virtues of this one small company (which indeed sounds quite excellent—I heard a great deal about their model from Elizabeth Dowd) she moves on to her second argument, which I will recount here:
"In larger cities, there’s another interesting dynamic at play in terms of how theatres and artists productively coexist. Many cities boast one or two major theatres that set down roots in the 1960s and ’70s, alongside a range of small and midsize companies that have sprung up within the community over time: think Chicago, Philadelphia, the Twin Cities, Washington, D.C. In many of these communities, a strong local acting, artistic and production community has also evolved. This group has in effect become a repertory company—not of a single theatre, but of an entire community. Many actors—instead of performing in several shows with a single theatre company in the same season—construct year-round employment by performing in different theatres throughout the year. Audience members get to know the actors of their community by seeing them in a number of plays at various venues. Yes, this arrangement still calls upon actors to freelance and lacks the year-after-year commitment of a seasonal contract with one institution; there can be frustrations when theatres hire too heavily from outside the community, or when there isn’t much opportunity for crossover between larger and smaller houses. But the fact remains that in these cities, the regional theatre movement’s larger goal of making it possible for theatre professionals to make a living in their own communities has in many cases been achieved."
The facts of what Ms. Eyring has set forth here are correct—it's her analysis that is deeply flawed. The fact that actors can create a career cobbled together through blood and sweat in the face of the failure of the American theater to create any kind of sustainable path for its artists does not do credit to the existing system—quite the opposite, in fact.
Often artistic directors and other administrators have made this argument to me—in the New York Times recently Kurt Beattie, artistic director of ACT Theatre in Seattle said as much, claiming that the arguments of my piece are "shallow" to him because they do not apply to his theater, as the majority of the actors ACT employees are local. His argument would be that if ACT hires most people locally, piecemeal when it needs a role filled, it has served and supported the local community—what more could they possibly do?
Kurt is a friend, but he is perpetuating the same falsehood Ms. Eyring is with this analysis—if actors manage to create community and continuity IN SPITE OF the institutions, no credit for that reflects back on theaters that refuse to support artists in a meaningful fashion: with staff positions, with health insurance, with a modicum of respect and dignity earned by working craftsman anywhere. Dribs and drabs of roles given when artists can jump for them are no substitute for real institutional support, and to claim otherwise is absurd.
To steal the achievement of making a career work back from the artists who have made it happen is to heap another injustice on good people to whom almost nothing has been offered...and when they make their own luck, against all odds, institutions are ready to point and say, "See? They never needed any help...they'll figure it out on their own. Let us return to raising funds for a glorious new building--after all, artists will always find a way to get by, and if they don't, there are always more. Buildings, on the other hand, won't build themselves."
Even Ms. Eyring seems to understand this is a load of horse manure, given the number of caveats she includes in the her assertions: she mentions the lack of any level of commitment from the theaters, the absence of crossover between large and small theaters, and the fact that at any point New York actors can be flown in whenever convenient. But then she comes to a remarkable conclusion:
"But the fact remains that in these cities, the regional theatre movement’s larger goal of making it possible for theatre professionals to make a living in their own communities has in many cases been achieved."
This "fact" is worthy of Orwell—and if it is "possible" to eke out a living from year to year, without any kind of security, it owes everything to these artists, and little or nothing to the regional theatre movement, which has systematically ignored and abused the artists who work within it while profiting from them.
Ms. Eyring ends her piece saying, "And this is just the beginning of how theatre saved America." The implication is that we will see a great deal more of her argument in Part Two. I do hope that this response will make her think more judiciously about the title for the second half of this article, and I hope some of the criticisms I've raised may be addressed in its contents.
If American Theatre magazine wishes to address the issues raised in HOW THEATER FAILED AMERICA, there is an abundance of informed bloggers and theatrical luminaries who would leap at the opportunity to debate within its pages. If anyone from American Theatre is reading this, I'd be happy to transcribe one of the performances of HOW THEATER FAILED AMERICA to create a transcript that would be publishable in the magazine, especially for such a purpose—it's a vital conversation we should be having.
I know that after six weeks of roundtables with some of the finest minds in the American theatre there was much debate over many issues, but not one voice ever argued that it had actually saved America. If Ms. Eyring, TCG and American Theatre magazine want this assertion to be taken seriously, they need to open their doors, let the light in, and engage with the artists, technicians, and administrators of the theater today. If they make this necessary step, they will find both the passion and empathy that has been missing for too long from the national conversation.
Mike Daisey
Working Artist
July 3rd, 2008
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The work of Larissa Tokmakova.
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Believe Me, It's Torture: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com:
You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it “simulates” the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning—or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure. The “board” is the instrument, not the method. You are not being boarded. You are being watered. This was very rapidly brought home to me when, on top of the hood, which still admitted a few flashes of random and worrying strobe light to my vision, three layers of enveloping towel were added. In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited for a while until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose. Determined to resist if only for the honor of my navy ancestors who had so often been in peril on the sea, I held my breath for a while and then had to exhale and—as you might expect—inhale in turn. The inhalation brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face. Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, and flooded more with sheer panic than with mere water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal and felt the unbelievable relief of being pulled upright and having the soaking and stifling layers pulled off me. I find I don’t want to tell you how little time I lasted.
4:54 AM
4:48 AM
Bush, McCain, Torture:
Is it not a rather fantastic historical irony that the torture techniques that the North Vietnamese used against McCain that forced him to offer a videotaped false confession ... are now the techniques the Bush administration is using to gain "intelligence" about terror networks.
How is it possible to know that everything John McCain once said on videotape for the enemy was false, because it was coerced, and yet assert that everything we torture out of terror suspects using exactly the same techniques, is true? In fact, McCain at least knew somewhere that his own government knew he existed, that there were procedures to eventually release him, that he was on someone's radar. The average prisoner at Gitmo or in the other parts of the detention program believes that no one will ever save him, that he could be disappeared for ever, that there are no procedures for his eventual release and no government to remember him. If McCain uttered lies on tape to stop the torture, why would an Islamist tell the truth?
4:46 AM
BoingBoing vs. Violet Blue:
Having said that, I do believe they’ve made a bad decision, and I would feel remiss if I didn’t explain why, in hopes that my reasoning might persuade them.
By making the decision to remove Ms. Blue from their archives, Boing Boing has, intentionally or otherwise, made the following statements:
1. As bloggers, we do not have the responsibilities of a professional media outlet.
2. We do not feel the need to discuss our policies with our readers.
3. We reserve the right to hide behind our terms of service.
I’ll address these points one by one.
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Dark Roasted Blend: The Weirdest Examples of Mass Hysteria:
Things supposedly started innocently enough. Kashasha, near Lake Victoria in Tanzania in 1962: One girl in a boarding school there told another girl a joke. Maybe, "Have you heard the one about?" or "A Jew, an Indian, and Herbert Hoover walk into a bar …" or "Take my wife, please … " Whatever the setup, the delivery, or punch line, the result was laughter. Whether it was a giggle, a guffaw, a chortle, a snort is irrelevant. The listener found it funny.
But then things went dark, weird, and creepy: one girl laughed, but then so did another, and then another, and then another, and then another.
After exposure, the incubation period from nothing to hysteria was short, from a few hours to a couple of days. There was no fever, no physical symptoms, just laughter and occasional crying between short moments of exhausted recuperation. When victims were restrained they sometimes became violent.
No one knew what to do. The school administrators were puzzled, local doctors were confused. Trying to put a lid on the phenomena, the administrators shut the school down.
But that was too little, too late: Whatever it was began to spread. It infected other schools and worked its way into the village, seemingly carried by infected students. It traveled to another village 20 miles away, and another 55 miles from Kashasha.
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Judges cite nonsense poem in Guantanamo case - Yahoo! News:
"The government insists that the statements made in the documents are reliable because the State and Defense Departments would not have put them in intelligence documents were that not the case," the court wrote. "This comes perilously close to suggesting that whatever the government says must be treated as true."
The judges compared the argument to the logic in Carroll's nonsense poem, in which a hapless crew hunts for a creature that is never quite defined. The Bellman, the ship's leader, led his men across the ocean, guided by a map that was just a blank piece of paper. He rallied and reassured his crew simply by repeating himself.
"I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true," the Bellman says in the poem.
"Lewis Carroll notwithstanding, the fact that the government has 'said it thrice' does not make an allegation true," the court wrote.
1:02 AM
Brand New: Less Hyphen, More Burst for Walmart:
In what has to be the most under whelming unveiling yet — and a bad case of stolen thunder — for one of the largest retailers in the world, Walmart (unhyphenated as a single word from now on) just uploaded a formal, band-aid of a press release to their web site confirming the logo change that surfaced over the weekend when The Wall Street Journal reported that the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development had received documents from Walmart with the intent of opening a prototype store there.
12:25 AM
Ruslana Korshunova, No Longer Anonymous:
Over the weekend a successful young fashion model touched off a minor media circus by killing herself. Almost immediately, details of the beautiful life cut tragically short swooped in to fill blanks; the apocryphal tale of her "discovery" by benevolent industry scouts; her melancholy poems; how she'd been watching "Ghost" the night before. It was mostly bullshit. But there is something about great beauty that inoculates us to the more mundane realities of life, which was that Ruslana Korshunova was an immigrant from a desperately poor country who came to New York at a scarily young age to make money to send back to her parents. In that way she was no different from the tens of thousands of kids from former socialist states whose parents send them thousands of miles to work in restaurants and gas stations. It's generally more legal, and the living conditions a little nicer, but as our anonymous model columnist Tatiana has discussed before in this space, the people governing a model's fate are no less predatory and self-interested, and the experience is only slightly less anonymous.
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globeandmail.com: How I stopped worrying and learned to love the Fringe:
Though the Toronto Fringe's 148 shows are selected by random lottery, the majority of the theatre, comedy and dance festival's programming has become quite predictable.
You can always count on at least one Something Unlikely: The Musical! (this year's edition includes Fart Factory, Hockey and Floozy: The Musicals!), a feminist twist on Shakespeare (this year: 'Beth), a couple of plays about the jobs actors work in between gigs (The Reservation, set in a restaurant, and Silver and Stinky, about bike couriers), as well as more autobiographical solo shows than you can shake a microphone stand at.
As an example of how much of an artistic echo chamber the Fringe has become, note that the 2008 edition has not one, not two, but three shows with titles that riff on Dr. Strangelove: How I Stopped Worrying and Learnt to Love The Mall, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Abortion and, last but not deceased, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Zombie Master. (The zombie play is another Fringe mainstay.)
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Letter to the Editor of American Theatre Magazine | New York Acting & Theater Blog:
I believe the title of Teresa Eyring’s article “How Theatre Saved America, Part I” is misleading. “How Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble saved Bloomsburg, PA,” would have been entirely more appropriate. I applaud Eyring for highlighting BTE, but this topic is too massive to be covered in a two-part, two page article. To highlight only one of seven listed theatre ensembles and then tell readers that the American theater is “saving America” is incredibly insufficient. If American Theatre magazine and TCG are truly concerned about this problem they should devote an entire issue to it. Interview both sides talking with everyone involved including board members, artistic directors, actors, playwrights, etc. A good place to start is the blogging community as there are many artists, practitioners and educators sharing their struggles and points of view. Also highlight more theaters outside the major metropolitan hubs showing how they are accomplishing ensemble work and providing a living wage for the artists. As well, if permission is granted, the issue should also include Mike Daisey's monologue How Theatre Failed America, which would serve as an additional source for this contentious issue.
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AT&T Whistleblower: Spy Bill Creates 'Infrastructure for a Police State' | Threat Level from Wired.com:
Today’s vote by Congress effectively gives retroactive immunity to the telecom companies and endorses an all-powerful president. It’s a Congressional coup against the Constitution.
The Democratic leadership is touting the deal as a "compromise," but in fact they have endorsed the infamous Nuremberg defense: "Just following orders." The judge can only check their paperwork. This cynical deal is a Democratic exercise in deceit and cowardice.
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Five Myths About the New Wiretapping Law:
Sometime today, the Senate is likely to approve the most comprehensive overhaul of American surveillance law since the Watergate era. Unless you're a government lawyer, a legal scholar, a masochist, or an insomniac, chances are you haven't read the 114-page bill. Don't beat yourself up: Neither have most of the 293 House members who voted for it last week. Ditto the mainstream press, who seem to have relied chiefly on summaries provided by the same lawmakers who hadn't read it.
To be fair, wiretapping is so classified, and the language of the bill so opaque, that no one without a "top secret" clearance can say with any authority just how much surveillance the proposal will authorize the government to do. (The best assessment yet comes from former Justice Department official David Kris, who deems the legislation "so intricate" that it risks confusing even "the government officials who must apply it.")
Out of the echo chamber of ignorance and self-serving political cant, a number of myths have begun to emerge. We may never know for sure everything that this new legislation entails. But here are a few things that it most certainly doesn't.
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One more short interview—this one is from Performance New Mexico with Spencer Beckwith. You can listen to it here.
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Preview article on IF YOU SEE SOMETHING SAY SOMETHING from the New Mexican:
Read the whole thing here.
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Mike Daisey’s Final Roundtable: Ideology vs. Experience | New York Acting & Theater Blog:
Out of all the highly experienced panel members I was drawn most to the ideas of Oskar Eustis, the Artistic Director of the Public Theater. One idea mentioned was the fact that the American theater should go the way of the American public libraries. Free for all. As talked about all over the theater scene the budget to run the American theaters is a drop in the hat of the national budget. I appreciated that he made sure to say that this was not going to get any artists rich, but that it would be a healthy alternative to the capitalistic view that is running the current non-profit theater system.
Naturally he used the example of the Delacorte theater in Central Park. The current play Hamlet recieved bad reviews from the New York Times, but is still “selling out” shows because of the very fact the tickets are free and the production value is of quality. He presented to the Public’s board the idea of having free tickets for the shows in the downtown space. The board could not imagine such a thing. Which brought Eustis to the crux of his point. That ideology will always trump experience. Experience says that when tickets are free people will come to the Public’s productions, but the ideology says that theater can not be run on this model as it has to make money and there are no other options but to sell tickets. Eustis said the national ideology surrounding how theater is run in America must change. He has hope because the current administration in the big institutional theaters will soon be gone and the next generation can “take them over” and issue reform.
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Here's our first interview for IF YOU SEE SOMETHING SAY SOMETHING: it's with the Santa Fe Radio Cafe, recorded at a great bakery in Santa Fe, at a table as people ate and worked around us--very neat idea for a show. The host Mary-Charlotte was really sharp--we covered a lot of ground about the new piece.
Listen to the interview here.
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The Playgoer: My Night With Daisey:
It's a deft balance he achieves in the monologue, since the connection between the two strands remains unspoken. It's up to the audience to contrast in their own minds the thrill of creating theatre "by any means necessary" and the deadness we encounter so much in our larger nonprofits. The solution of course is NOT necessarily to return to Daisey's 5-person college rep-company adventure "Theatre on the Pond". But to find some medium in between, one could say. Allow for a company to have the energy and purpose of Theatre on the Pond with just a little more budget, and audience. But one without the other just won't do it anymore.
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Technology Liberation Front » Archive » FISA Capitulation: Bad Policy, Bad Politics:
Barack Obama is supporting the FISA bill. That pretty much seals it: Russ Feingold and Chris Dodd may filibuster, but we already know that there are enough Democrats willing to break ranks to reach cloture, and with the party’s figurehead on board, none of them are likely to switch sides. Obama says he’s going to try to strip out the immunity provision, but this is obviously so much political theater. If he were serious about doing that he’d be saying he planned to oppose the “compromise” until the immunity provision got stripped out. The fact that he’s committing himself to support the overall bill whether or not it comes with immunity is proof that he doesn’t really care about getting rid of immunity. And why would he? A few angry liberals may decide not to give to his campaign, but he’s already got a lopsided fundraising advantage over John McCain, and in the long run he probably wants to stay on the good side of a powerful lobby that could prove useful to him once he’s in the Oval Office. Same goes for Steny Hoyer: Obama will need his support when it comes time to nationalize the health care system, so why risk alienating Hoyer just to make Glenn Greenwald happy?
We are, in other words, right back to the narrative where being “strong” on national security means trashing the constitution. Within that frame, Democrats are always going to lose because they’re never going to be as enthusiastic about Constitution-trashing as the Republicans (well, I hope so anyway. Bill Clinton did his best). So by conceding the premise and saying, in effect, “we can trash the constitution too!” the Democrats were setting themselves up for future political problems. Because if the Democrats are carbon copies of the Republicans on national security issues, why not go for the real thing?
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Obama's support for the FISA "compromise" - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com:
In the past 24 hours, specifically beginning with the moment Barack Obama announced that he now supports the Cheney/Rockefeller/Hoyer House bill, there have magically arisen -- in places where one would never have expected to find them -- all sorts of claims about why this FISA "compromise" isn't really so bad after all. People who spent the week railing against Steny Hoyer as an evil, craven enabler of the Bush administration -- or who spent the last several months identically railing against Jay Rockefeller -- suddenly changed their minds completely when Barack Obama announced that he would do the same thing as they did. What had been a vicious assault on our Constitution, and corrupt complicity to conceal Bush lawbreaking, magically and instantaneously transformed into a perfectly understandable position, even a shrewd and commendable decision, that we should not only accept, but be grateful for as undertaken by Obama for our Own Good.
Accompanying those claims are a whole array of factually false statements about the bill, deployed in service of defending Obama's indefensible -- and deeply unprincipled -- support for this "compromise."
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This Artist's Life: Making it work in NYC: How Did Theatre Fail America?:
Saw Mike Daisey's "How Theater Failed America" last night at the Barrow Street Theatre. Brilliant. If I had seen it before its closing night, I would have probably been back several times. There was an excellent roundtable to follow the performance, which included Oskar Eustis (Artistic Director of the Public Theater), Richard Nelson, Jayne Houdyshell, Gregory Mosher, Aaron Landesman, John Eisner and Garrett Eisler. I definitely look forward to applying some of the issues and suggestions to reclaim the theatre, to COTE. Mike Daisey will be back in New York in the fall with a new monologue called "If You See Something, Say Something".
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Theatre de la Jeune Lune:
In 1978 Barbra Berlovitz, Vincent Gracieux, and Dominique Serrand began an adventure called Theatre de la Jeune Lune. They were soon joined by Robert Rosen and eventually Steve Epp and innumerable other collaborators. Over the past 30 years we have created nearly 100 productions, performed for hundreds of thousands of people in cities across the United States and in France, but primarily and most importantly in Minneapolis. For the first 14 years we were itinerant, making the most of any venue we found ourselves in. Then in 1992, with an amazing groundswell of support, we purchased and renovated the Allied Van Lines building in the Minneapolis warehouse district. We excavated the interior of this historic building to create a stunningly innovative and award winning performance space, opening our new artistic home to the public on November 18th of that year.
Sixteen years later we are faced with an excruciating decision. With the organization burdened by mounting and unmanageable debt, the Board of Directors has voted to put Jeune Lune's home up for sale. After much soul searching and extensive fundraising and debt management efforts, we have determined it to be the only prudent and fiscally responsible choice. What has been acclaimed, as one of the most striking and unique theatre spaces in the country will go dark. It is a huge loss, a loss for us, for all of the artists who work with us, for our audience and for the community at large, both locally and nationally.
And with the building, we have decided that the time has come to bid adieu to the theatre ensemble we have all known as Jeune Lune.
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9:53 AM
George Carlin, Splenetic Comedian, Dies at 71:
George Carlin, the Grammy-Award winning standup comedian and actor who was hailed for his irreverent social commentary, poignant observations of the absurdities of everyday life and language, and groundbreaking routines like “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” died in Santa Monica, Calif., on Sunday. He was 71.
...
Although some criticized parts of his later work as too contentious, Mr. Carlin defended the material, insisting that his comedy had always been driven by an intolerance for the shortcomings of humanity and society. “Scratch any cynic,” he said, “and you’ll find a disappointed idealist.”
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Tonight is the last performance of HOW THEATER FAILED AMERICA at the Barrow Street.
It's been six months since we launched the show at Under The Radar in January, which seems like a lifetime ago--it's grown and refined so much, and I'm indebted by all the people who have done so much to make that possible. It's really a list that could go on and on: Mark Russell, Shanta Thanke, Oskar Eustis, AJ Epstein, Scott Morfee, Nicole Borelli Hearn, Jenny Werner, Theresa Eyring, Cris Buchner and many, many more.
We're putting this one to bed tonight--there are no dates booked for it in the future, though there is talk, and hopefully it will be back one day...but it is moving to think that this could be the last time I perform it.
My old professor Dick Sewell used to say, "Let's put this pig in the meat grinder!" before shows sometimes, and he'd laugh maniacally. No one ever understood it, but it was totally infectious--and the older I get, and the more shows I have under my belt, the more and more it makes sense to me.
Now I will go and put this pig in the meat grinder!
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The Woman Who Fell in Love with the Berlin Wall:
Like millions of sweethearts across the globe, Wall Winther has found true love. Her husband, in his prime, was a stalwart of immense stature, a domineering presence who was feared throughout his homeland and infamous the world over. Events haven’t been too kind to his physical state, but the couple’s love remains strong. You might think Wall Winther is lucky to be attached to such a celebrity, but it’s unlikely the couple will be gracing the cover of Hello! any time soon. That’s because Wall Winther’s other half is the Berlin Wall.
Wall Winther (whose original name was Eija-Riita Eklaf) is an Objectum-Sexual, or OS for short. Most OSes harbour their passions in private, terrified of rejection by society. But they can still form meaningful relationships, even if their partners might be considered unconventional. “It’s an orientation, like hetero or homosexuality,” explains Kiowa, a US-based OS who moderates an internet forum for like-minded souls. “We’re emotionally and physically attracted to objects. Replacing the term ‘hetero’ with ‘object’ would accurately describe OS.”
Wall Winther agrees. “We see things as living beings,” she says. “That’s a must. Otherwise you can’t fall in love with an object.” Wall Winther is attracted mostly to constructions with plenty of parallel lines – buildings, fences, bridges, gates and, in one case, a guillotine. But other OS fetishists might be turned on by the intricate workings of a turbine or television set, the delicate curves of a shiny sports car, the rigid harshness of a railtrack, or the bell end of a trumpet.
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I'm delighted to announce our first national tour--we'll be performing IF YOU SEE SOMETHING SAY SOMETHING, a monologue about the secret history of the Department of Homeland Security, what it means to be secure, and the price we are willing to pay for it.
SANTA FE
Lensic Performing Arts Center
June 26th to 28th
WASHINGTON DC
Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company
July 11th to 20th
PORTLAND, OR
Time-Based Art Festival
September 11th to 14th
MAINE
Colby College
October 3rd
CHICAGO
Museum of Contemporary Art
October 10th to 12th
NEW YORK
The Public Theater
October 15th to November 30th
We're ecstatic to birth the monologue next week in Santa Fe, where it will be seen by many who know intimately the work of the Los Alamos weapons labs, and then travel to DC so that those who run the Department of Homeland Security can have it in their backyard. After stops in the Northwest, my alma mater, and Chicago, we'll end the tour with a full production at the Public Theater.
Details and ticketing links can be found at mikedaisey.com, and a longer description of the show follows at the end of this email.
This is also the final weekend to see HOW THEATER FAILED AMERICA at the Barrow Street Theater. We're booked up for the foreseeable future, so see it now or see it never.
http://www.barrowstreettheatre.com/whats-on/daisey.asp
Be seeing you,
md
***
IF YOU SEE SOMETHING SAY SOMETHING
A New Monologue
Created and Performed by Mike Daisey
Directed by Jean-Michele Gregory
About the Show:
Called “the master storyteller” by the New York Times for his groundbreaking monologues, 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 Mike Daisey:
"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
"The insightful hostility of the best comedy."
The New Yorker
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The EsoCritic: Theater Review: How Theater Failed America:
Having worked in theater in a variety of performance, writing, and yes, administrative jobs, I was surprised to learn how common my experience must be, judging from Daisey’s own trajectory. Less surprising is how universal the desire for a Reformation Movement in the American theater is… or at least a very public gossip session. It’s too early yet to say whether Daisey will be the industry’s Martin Luther, but it is impossible to confuse him with Thomas More, and he’s certainly no gossipy hen.
The fact is How Theater Failed America is more sophisticated than any manifesto, far funnier and more entertaining than an excommunication, and unlike the average Union Square zealot or university stowaway, Mike Daisey knows what of he speaks. Many times his performance made me think that if South Park’s Eric Cartman grew to adulthood and used his powers for good instead of evil, this is what it might look like.
11:58 PM
11:58 PM
Obama Supports Telecom Amnesty Bill | Threat Level from Wired.com:
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama supports the spy bill compromise passed by the House Friday, despite having opposed retroactive amnesty to telecoms that helped with the President's secret, warrantless wiretapping.
The measure expands the government's ability to install blanket wiretaps inside domestic communication infrastructure and frees the nation's phone and internet companies from lawsuits accusing them of massive violations of their customers' privacy. The Senate is expected to take up and pass the Bush-approved bill next week.
The bill is widely perceived as a victory for the White House, and was agreed to by Democrats out of a fear of being labeled soft on terrorism in the upcoming elections.
2:28 PM
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2:29 AM
Parabasis: YouTube is Changing Everything (For the Better!):
When blogging became a widespread phenomenon there was the hope, the promise, that people's standards for paid writing would perhaps get higher. After all, if there's a hundred really great film reviewers (or political commentators) regularly churning out high quality material for peanuts, why should we listen to Richard Roeper? In reaction to this, the mainstream media regularly unleashed a series of stories about blogger ethics, blogger meanness and other blogger badness to try to delegitimize it's closest competitor. I remember thinking that the theotrosphere had arrived when the Times did a piece on how corrupt bloggers (whom I'd never heard of) were given special treatment to review plays, including celebrity access etc. These stories became common for awhile (mostly in political realms) but now that the blogosphere is an accepted reality everywhere except spellcheck, the Times itself now hosts a large numbers of great blogs and has gotten rid of TimesSelect, which limited people's access to their online content.
And now, perhaps, the same thing is happening with YouTube. YouTube is changing the way we think about film. If a movie is meant to be just entertaining well... then it has to be more entertaining than 90 minutes of entertaining YouTube clips, or else it's not worth your money. The more free stuff is out there, the more value must be added for each dollar you spend on something. Our standards as a culture may actually be changing for the better.
10:25 PM
10:25 PM
House passes wiretap telcom immunity bill - Boing Boing:
House Democrats covered themselves in shame today, joining with Republicans to pass a bill granting amnesty to the cowardly telephone companies who helped the President's office with its illegal bulk-wiretapping campaign that spied on every American call and email without any judicial oversight. What's more, the bill also allows this to continue going on in the future. Who needs the fourth amendment?
4:44 PM
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George Bush's latest powers, courtesy of the Democratic Congress - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com:
Perhaps the most repellent part of this bill (though that's obviously a close competition) is 802(c) of the telecom amnesty section. That says that the Attorney General can declare that the documents he submits to the court in order to get these lawsuits dismissed are secret, and once he declares that, then: (a) the plaintiffs and their lawyers won't ever see the documents and (b) the court is barred from referencing them in any way when it dismisses the lawsuit. All the court can do is issue an order saying that the lawsuits are dismissed, but it is barred from saying why they're being dismissed or what the basis is for the dismissal.
So basically, one day in the near future, we're all going to learn that one of our federal courts dismissed all of the lawsuits against the telecoms. But we're never going to be able to know why the lawsuits were dismissed or what documents were given by the Government to force the court to dismiss the lawsuits. Not only won't we, the public, know that, neither will the plaintiffs' lawyers. Nobody will know except the Judge and the Government because it will all be shrouded in compelled secrecy, and the Judge will be barred by this law from describing or even referencing the grounds for dismissal in any way. Freedom is on the march.
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Prelude to a gangbang / Violet Blue asks Chuck Palahniuk about his new porn novel, 'Snuff':
We're standing in a Mission bar, and Tristan Taormino has just finished poking my cleavage with her index finger and giggling, when she says, "So. The story goes like this. One night, Hunter S. Thompson calls up Susie Bright. It's late, and he says, 'It's Hunter. Tell me everything you know about statistics on bestiality. Details.'
"Except Hunter had the wrong number. He hadn't called Susie, but some other woman whose number was a digit off. But the minute the woman realized who was on the phone, she hopped on her computer and started researching for him. The next day she got a hold of Susie and said, 'You wouldn't believe this, but ...'"
10:18 PM
10:18 PM
Theater Talk's New Theater Corps: How Theater Failed America:
Mike Daisey quickly gets to the point in How Theater Failed America, because his monologue has more important goals than the schaudenfraud desire to see Charles Isherwood, Disney, and the lot get theirs. His goal isn’t some global-warming summit filled with hot air and no answers (though he does get aboil): it’s How Theater Failed Mike Daisey. His vibrant drop-of-a-dime storytelling—always sincere—lands between the steadfast directness of Spalding Grey and the manic energy of Chris Farley.
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Congress set to vote on telecom spying immunity TOMORROW -- write to your rep NOW! - Boing Boing
After weeks of empty rhetoric about coming to a "compromise" on new spying laws, the House of Representatives is set to vote on telecom immunity tomorrow. The bill is HR 6304 and contains the exact same blanket immunity provisions, only with a few cosmetic changes so that political spin doctors can claim that it actually provides meaningful court review.
Whether or not Congress decides to offer immunity for telecoms that cooperated in warrantless spying programs is a key part of the broader battle over the Bush Administration's legal doctrine of unchecked executive power.
If you live in the US, please visit stopthespying.org, find your Representative's phone number in Washington D.C., and tell them to oppose immunity for lawbreaking telecoms!
6:53 PM
4:32 PM
DramaBiz magazine -Web Exclusive:
There may be no better way to infuriate those in the theatrical community than by creating a show called “How Theater Failed America.” In the one-man show, which recently moved from Joe’s Pub to off-Broadway’s Barrow Street Theatre, veteran monologist Mike Daisey makes the case that the regional theatre movement has lost its way by abandoning locally-based, community-nurturing theatre to focus instead on wasteful building projects.
Unsurprisingly, the response from many in the theatre has been dismissive. In The New York Times, The Huntington Theatre Company’s Nicholas Martin called some of Daisey’s proposed solutions, including creating endowments for local actors that would cover salary and health insurance, “facile and often naive,” and Kurt Beattie, artistic director of Seattle’s A Contemporary Theatre, referred to the show as “shallow” and “inapplicable to my theatre community.”
DramaBiz New York correspondent Larry Getlen met with Daisey in their downtown Brooklyn neighborhood to further explore Daisey’s take on the state of theatre today. (Note: Daisey will also be holding panel discussions about these issues after his Barrow Street shows with participants including Eric Bogosian and Robert Brustein.) This article is Part I of an edited excerpt of that conversation.
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4:02 AM
Deals with Iraq are set to bring oil giants back - International Herald Tribune:
Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.
Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq's Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq's largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.
The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.
4:01 AM
4:01 AM
The Arts | Intiman's Bartlett Sher takes home his first Tony | Seattle Times Newspaper:
Sher's win catapults him to the top of the A-list of Broadway directors. Though he moved recently from Seattle to New York, and has various Big Apple projects in the works (including a new musical about martial-arts superstar Bruce Lee), Sher is contracted through 2009 to head Intiman, where he just staged the new play "Namaste Man."
Asked if his win helps his hometown company he said, "Of course it does — it helps us attract better artists, better producers and other things down the road." He also mentioned that Intiman will develop "a big Disney musical next year," with the title to be revealed later.
Thank God Intiman is doing their part to help develop the next Disney musical--I was concerned that Disney might not have the energy and resources to make that happen. It's good that we have regional non-profit theaters, working for the public good, to ensure that megacorporations like Disney can have their voices heard. That is exactly where I like to see our arts funding going.
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Slashdot | Wikileaks Gets Hold of Counterinsurgency Manual:
"The document, which has been verified, is official US Special Forces doctrine. It directly advocates training paramilitaries, pervasive surveillance, censorship, press control and restrictions on labor unions & political parties. It directly advocates warrantless searches, detainment without charge and the suspension of habeas corpus. It directly advocates bribery, employing terrorists, false flag operations and concealing human rights abuses from journalists. And it directly advocates the extensive use of 'psychological operations' (propaganda) to make these and other 'population & resource control' measures more palatable."
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Steve Jobs and Apple's $19 billion sneeze | Chris Ayres - Times Online:
So what happened? The problem, it turned out, was the video of Mr Jobs's presentation that circulated on YouTube. Bloggers noticed that the Apple chief looked a bit thinner than usual, which - naturally - led to speculation about his imminent death. I say naturally, because Mr Jobs recovered from pancreatic cancer a few years back, but didn't announce it publicly until he was in the clear. This time, Apple went on the offensive, announcing that Mr Jobs had a “common bug”. Alas, that wasn't enough to stop $19 billion vanishing from the company's stock market value.
Which proves, I think, that the description of Mr Jobs as a “rock star” is no longer accurate. After all, dying is usually a good career move for a rock star. No, he is a deity - a messiah in Apple's corporate theocracy. And when God catches flu, people get worried.
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The L Magazine, How Theater Failed America :
But Daisey takes aim at something other than the crucifixion of theatrical products. His real target is us, i.e. anyone making, viewing or passing judgment on the theater. Secondly, and much more vocally, the regional theater movement. A movement that, like its biggest funders, is of the Baby Boom generation. Born in the early 1950s, the thing has now grown gray and fat, spending indiscriminately, with the gutless assumption that the money will just magically keep coming in even after the funders die, that somehow their own children will manage to pay off their outsized debts. Daisey is interested in taking regional theater back down to size, reminding it of its original prime mover — the idealistic urge to train and nurture local theater artists and build committed and long-term relationships not only with those artists but also with the audience.
5:00 PM
5:00 PM
For personal reasons I will be offline for the next few days--I've set up the blog to post some articles automatically, but I may not actually be posting or responding for a while.
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Equity Flees SF - lies like truth:
The American Actors Equity Association (AEA) is pulling out of San Francisco.
On June 5, members of the Equity Bay Area Advisory Committee received a letter from Equity's headquarters advising them of the organization's decision to close San Francisco's AEA office. "Over the next several months we will transition the administration of San Francisco/Bay Area Equity companies to our Los Angeles office," the letter, signed by AEA President Mark Zimmerman and Executive Director John P Connolly, read.
Bay Area actors are reacting strongly to the news.
"There has been no consultation with the local membership regarding problems maintaining the office, no discussion about why there has been a problem maintaining a local rep, and no conversation at all with local membership," says Bay Area Equity member, Steven Pawley. "The decision was announced to us by staff members only and it was presented as a decision already made."
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Geoff and Dan Hoyle make a life onstage:
You might not pick them out of a crowd, even a small one, and peg them as father and son. Geoff Hoyle, 62, has a native Englishman's fair complexion and thinning rust-colored hair and wears an expression poised between quizzical perplexity and antic madness on his almond-shaped face. Dan Hoyle, 28, with a shock of dark hair and teeth gleaming brightly in his firm-jawed wide smile, projects the open-faced confidence and self-effacing modesty of a happy San Francisco hometowner on the rise.
Both Hoyles have made their life on the stage, Geoff as a multifaceted actor, solo performer and Pickle Family Circus clown and Dan as creator of bravura solo shows that include "Tings Dey Happen," about Nigerian oil politics. But even there the similarities aren't so apparent.
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A Celebration, And Indictment -- Courant.com:
"Why did you come?" asks Mike Daisey at the start of his off-Broadway show, "How Theater Failed America," a provocative monologue that skewers and celebrates the not-for-profit theater.
