The Tyranny of the Written Interview: A Transcribed Conversation with Monologist Mike Daisey

Mike Daisey. You can trust the man who wears the beard, as long as he isn't singing.

I've written about monologuist Mike Daisey a lot in the last four years, but especially last year, in the wake of damaging revelations about his show The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.

He and I met again at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, his performing home here in DC since 2008, last Friday to talk about his new piece, American Utopias, which I review in this week's Washington City Paper.  I've just posted an edited, partial transcript of that talk up on Arts Desk.

FURTHER READING: Hoo boy.  My 2009 review of Daisey's How Theatre Failed America. My 2010 preview of The Last Cargo Cult. My initial reaction, from March 2012, to The Agony & Ecstasy of Steve Jobs controversy, and my reaction to Daisey's reaction.  Finally, my July 2012 City Paper cover story about Daisey's return to Woolly Mammoth to perform a revised, fabrication-free version of Agony & Ecstasy.

It Takes Brass Balls to Direct This Play: Round House’s Glengarry Glen Ross, reviewed

This is why I never wanted a real job. Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross: The Motion Picture.​

No stage production of Glengarry Glen Ross feels complete to me without the speech David Mamet added for the movie version, eight years after his play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1984.  But Round House Theatre’s Mitchell Hebert-directed version is solid if not revelatory. Reviewed in today’s City Paper.

The Grand Parade: It Takes a Lot of Chagall

Photo by Maria Baranova; courtesy Arena Stage.

I reviewed Double Edge's Theatre's The Grand Parade (Of the 20th Century) at Arena Stage.

Yippie kai yay, Motherfucker with the Hat: Studio's trash-talking triumph. Plus, Kafka on the Shore

Unhappy motherfuckes: Drew Cortese and Quentin Maré. (Photo: Teddy Wolff / Studio Theatre)
 

Embarrassing admission: I didn't realize until after I'd filed my review of Studio's superb production of The Motherfucker with the Hat that its playwright, Stephen Adly Guirgis, is the selfsame motherfucker who wrote The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, the best thing I saw on a DC stage in 2008.

Also reviewed: Spooky Action's Kafka on the Shore, DC's second Frank Galati-scripted stage adaptation of a Haruki Murakami story or novel in four months.  This one is looser and more wobbly than the last one. Your mileage may vary.

Today's Washington City Paper is, as always, available wherever fine newspaper are given away for free.

Rorschach's The Minotaur: Reflections in a Bull's Eye

Sara Dabney Tisdale and David Zimmerman play half-human half-siblings.

There's at least one good reason to see Rorschach Theatre's co-world premiere production of Anna Ziegler's The Minotaur: the eponymous beast his own surprisingly rational, philosophical, well-spoken self.

I review the show in today's Washington City Paper.

You Gotta Move: Synetic's A Trip to the Moon and A Commedia Christmas Carol, reviewed

A Trip to the Moon, 1902

I was a big admirer of writer/director/illustrator Natsu Onoda Power's Astro Boy and the God of Comics at Studio Theatre earlier this year, and also of Martin Scorcese's 2011 film Hugo, which was in part about pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès. So I was excited to see Power's new stage adaptation of Méliès’ most famous film, A Trip to the Moon -- which I found promising but underdeveloped.

I review it in today's Washington City Paper, along with a Faction of Fools' A Commedia Christmas Carol.

Psilocybin Tea and Sympathy: Studio Theatre's The Aliens, reviewed.

Scot McKenzie and Brian Miskell in The Aliens. Photo: Scott Suchman.

Wherein I gradually fall under the under the slow-burning spell of Annie Baker's The Aliens, the pausiest third of her Vermont Trilogy. I reviewed its other two-thirds already: Theater J's production of Baker's Body Awareness back in September, and Studio's production of her Circle Mirror Transformation two years ago.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

This Band Is Your Band: Woody Sez, reviewed.

His life was short and sad, but his songs will live forever.

I reviewed the bio-musical Woody Sez: The Life and Music of Woody Guthrie, which is at Theater J this month.