MIKE DAISEY: THE GREAT
AND SECRET SHOW
Monday, November 12, 2007, 7:00 PM
Joe's Pub
Mike Daisey: Monologues
"Absolutely hilarious...one of the finest solo performers of his generation."
- New York Times
"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
"Just once, it'd be nice to see Mike Daisey and Garrison Keillor trade places, not so much to hear Keillor's nostalgically mellow take on Daisey's world, but to see Daisey rip the lid off Lake Wobegon and expose its wicked underbelly. For, you see, Daisey is very much the dark doppelganger of Keillor's soul. He is a Keillor for the seriously perverse."
- Oakland Tribune
Monologuist Mike Daisey presents a dazzling new work: four "bio-logues" about megalomania and desire constructed from the interleaved life stories of Bertolt Brecht, P.T. Barnum, Nikola Tesla and L. Ron Hubbard. Over four nights Daisey explores the nature of genius and wrestles with the pride, insanity and chauvinism that bind these men together, and reveals how the heights and depths of their gifts have much to teach us about ourselves. Each evening is unique and can be viewed independently, but all four together form an epic oral accounting of triumph and folly told with Daisey's dark and hilarious intensity.
November 5th: P.T. BARNUM: "The people like to be humbugged"
Gifted entrepreneur, showman, raconteur, hoaxster, freakshow and circus promoter who changed the face of nineteenth-century America through blatant, shameless lying.
November 12th: BERTOLT BRECHT: "Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it"
Playwright, poet, lover of women and certifiable cad who escaped Nazi Germany, sympathized with the Communists, failed in Hollywood, was persecuted by McCarthy, and redefined world theater.
November 19th: NIKOLA TESLA: "Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more."
Mad genius, brilliant scientist and visionary who sparred with Thomas Edison and died insane and penniless writing love sonnets to pigeons after bringing the world electricity as we know it.
November 26th: L. RON HUBBARD: "No man who is not himself honest can be free–he is his own trap."
Bigamist, occultist, and charismatic science fiction author-turned-guru who took 1950's popular psychiatry by storm and went on to create the Church of Scientology: the most celebrity-driven and litigious organization on Earth.
Mike Daisey has performed his monologues, which meld the bright spontaneity of the best comedy with the narrative skills of a master storyteller, to wide acclaim Off-Broadway and around the world. He has been a guest on Late Night with David Letterman, a commentator for National Public Radio, a contributor to WIRED, Slate and Salon, and a web contributor to Vanity Fair and Radar. His first film, Layover, is being distributed by Lars von Trier's company Zentropa, and he stars in the Lawrence Krauser feature Horrible Child. His first book, 21 Dog Years, was published by the Free Press and he is working on a second book, Great Men of Genius, adapted from his monologues about genius and megalomania in the lives of Bertolt Brecht, P.T. Barnum, Nikola Tesla, and L. Ron Hubbard.
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