527 Dog Years: Mike Daisey Tells "A People's History"

Class is in session. (Darrow Montgomery for the Washington City Paper)

Mike Daisey is an artist I've written about more often and in greater detail than only anyone else. He's certainly the artist with to whom I've spent the most time speaking directly. The reviews I've written of his monologues and the features I've reported about how he creates them and editorial I was once moved to write in his defense all reflect my great admiration for his work.

That has not prevented me from condemning him when I think he's deserved it, and he did do something that warranted condemnation, years ago. I will say that in the third year of a Donald J. Trump administration, it seems awfully quaint that so many journalists who had never publicly discussed theatre at all before they lined up to express their outrage at Daisey in the spring of 2012 got so steamed over a guy who tells stories in theaters for a living taking some liberties with one of them.

Anyway, Daisey's wildly ambitious current show A People's History—an 18 part retelling of American history circa 1492-to-now, based heavily on the work of Howard Zinn but also on Daisey's own life—is the subject of my second Washington City Paper cover story about him, available today wherever finer Washington, DC alt-weeklies are given away for free. My 2012 WCP story detailing the problems he created for himself with his show The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, and his effort to remedy them, is here. In fact, all of my writings about Daisey are mere clicks away! How much time do you have?

Fringe World: I wrote the cover story for this week's Washington City Paper

I'm a few days late posting this. For the past two weeks I've been taking part in the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center's National Critics Institute — a professional boot camp for early-to-mid-career critics under the command of Chris Jones, the Chicago Tribune's chief theatre critic and a fine teacher of the craft of criticism, too. It's been an intense couple of weeks of living in a spartan dormitory with a roommate, and hitting overnight deadlines almost every night. I'll write about that a bit more once I've recovered.

In the midst of all that, I had to finish the cover story in this week's Washington City Paper, about the 10th Capital Fringe Festival, which kicked off Thursday evening. I hope you will find it answers all your most pressing questions about Capital Fringe and co-founder/Executive Director Julianne Brienza's plan to take it higher. I mean that literally. She wants to add three floors to the building she bought last year in Trinidad on Florida Ave. NE.

I wrote a prior cover story about CapFringe in 2010, and I covered the festival every summer from 2010 through 2014 as the editor of Fringeworthy (née Fringe & Purge),  WCP's dedicated all-things-Fringe blog. This year, I decided I'd rather attend the NCI than run the blog a sixth consecutive time. I've handed off the keys to a very capable successor.

Capital Fringe on New York Ave. NW: -- 40 --

The Washington City Paper's Fringeworthy Action News & Commentary Sqaud

As it has every year since 2010, overseeing the Washington City Paper's coverage of the Capital Fringe Festival here in DC claimed most of my July. Here's my wrap-up of the festival from this week's WCP. 

On the FringeCasting Couch with Live Action Theatre

And this episode of The FringeCasting Couch was recorded lst Tuesday afternoon, during a brief interval between a depressing visit to my doctor's office and the two fitness classes I had to teach that evening; one boxing and one boot camp. This were necessarily verbal-instruction-only editions of said classes for me; doctor's orders. Nothing feels worse.

Anyway, I'm a big fan of Live Action Theatre. Their show in the 2013 Capital Fringe Festival, The Continuing Adventures of John Blade, Super Spy, was my favorite last year. I liked their new one, The Tournament, so much that I'm leaving to see it for a second time right now. Here's the original Fringeworthy post.

I had them on the podcast last year, too.

On the FringeCasting Couch with Twanna A. Hines.

For the fifth consecutive year, I'm running the Washington City Paper's coverage of the Capital Fringe Festival here in DC, manifest mainly through a blog previously known as Fringe & Purge that we decided this year to rename Fringeworthy. In 2012, I started The Fringe & PurgeCast to accompany that blog; its rebranding this summer forced me to rethink the podcast's name, too. The Fringe & PurgeCast is dead; long live The FringeCasiting Couch.

I'm not cross-posting most of the stuff I'm doing for Fringeworthy, but I'm going to put up a couple of recent episodes of the podcast that I thought were particularly fun. This one, which I recorded last night with Twanna A. Hines, whose show is called I Füçkèð Your Country, is one of those. The original post is here.