Thursday, March 04, 2010

FrontRow » Blog Archive » Truth in Wit: Mike Daisey Brings His Juggernaut Monologues to Open the Out of the Loop Festival:

Daisey comes to Dallas this weekend with a scathing critique of American culture at large and its theater culture in particular. It is a culture, he said during a conversation Wednesday, that has allowed us to “corporatize” the American theater. Think of it as an actor’s revolt. His play, How Theater Failed America, takes on the theater world in Daisey’s trademark style: a wandering semi-autobiographic monologue that mixes storylines and farce, serious critical satire and his bombastic sense of humor. Daisey has been described as a cross between Noam Chomsky and Jack Black. Jokes about sex with Paris Hilton cozy up against serious reflections on the craft of Bertolt Brecht. What keeps it all together is Daisey’s dynamism as a performer, an individual with the charisma and charm to make a one-man show feel like a an ensemble epic. Daisey will perform two works at this year’s Out of the Loop Festival: Great Men of Genius, a four part “bio-logue” that tells the life stories of Bertolt Brecht, P.T. Barnum, Nikola Tesla, and L. Rob Hubbard, and How Theater Failed America.