This arrived in my inbox this morning. I am assuming it was sent by Mike Daisey himself. He lives in Carroll Gardens and maybe he or his publicist reads OTBKB. His performance piece INVINCIBLE SUMMER tells the story of "the last glorious summer before everything changed. Starting with the bizarre history of the MTA’s epic subway system, Daisey crafts a startling vision of his Brooklyn neighborhood before and after one terrible day, setting an intensely personal story of a family in crisis against the backdrop of massive social upheaval. Invincible Summer is a tale of loss and democracy for our time brought to life by one of the theatre’s fiercest and funniest storytellers."
THE lights went up too early, the cramped theater was swelteringly hot and Mike Daisey, looking a bit nervous alone onstage, could see himself sweating profusely in the mirror on the wall behind the audience. It was going to be one of those shows.
“Camus once said that the only real philosophical question is whether or not to kill yourself,” he said in a recent workshop performance at Collective Unconscious in TriBeCa of his new monologue, “Invincible Summer,” currently running at the Public Theater as part of the Under the Radar festival. “I’ve always wanted to start a wedding toast with this.”
It’s a good line that had received huge laughs the last time he delivered it, half a year ago at the Spoleto Festival in South Carolina, but this crowd merely chuckled. “All I was thinking then was that I wanted to kill myself,” he said the next day.
Since he burst on the scene at the 2001 New York International Fringe Festival with “21 Dog Years: Doing Time @ Amazon.com,” an expertly constructed monologue about the madness behind the Internet boom, Mr. Daisey, 34, has been one of the hardest-working and most accomplished storytellers in the solo form. His plays, which include multiple narrative threads, echoing off one another and intersecting in the most unexpected ways, have received consistently good reviews, earning comparisons to premier yarn-spinners like Spalding Gray and David Sedaris. But what Mr. Daisey does is considerably different in at least one respect: He works without a script. Read more HERE.
MORE IN THE CONTINUATION OF THIS ARTICLE…
I N V I N C I B L E
S U M M E R
Created and performed by Mike Daisey
Directed by Jean-Michele Gregory
NEW YORK PREMIERE
Jan 18 – Jan 28, 2007
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
"Mike Daisey is a brainy, manic hoot, a cross between Noam Chomsky and Jack Black."
— Seattle 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
"One of the finest solo performers of his generation."
— New York Times
Monologuist
Mike Daisey tells his story of the last glorious summer before
everything changed. Starting with the bizarre history of the MTA’s epic
subway system, Daisey crafts a startling vision of his Brooklyn
neighborhood before and after one terrible day, setting an intensely
personal story of a family in crisis against the backdrop of massive
social upheaval. Invincible Summer is a tale of loss and democracy for our time brought to life by one of the theatre’s fiercest and funniest storytellers.
Mike Daisey has earned wide acclaim for his monologues which have been performed nationally and internationally, including 21 Dog Years, The Ugly American, Monopoly!, and TRUTH. He’s a commentator for National Public Radio’s Day To Day, and a contributor to WIRED Magazine, Slate, and Salon. Currently he is working on his second book, Great Men of Genius, adapted from his monologue about Bertolt Brecht, P.T. Barnum, Nikola Tesla and L. Ron Hubbard.
Running time: 90 min
$15
TICKETS:
http://www.publictheater.org/UTR/invinciblesummer.php
or 212.967.7555
The Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street
Remaining Showtimes:
22-Jan MON 9:30PM
24-Jan WED 9:30PM
25-Jan THURS 9:30PM
26-Jan FRI 9:30PM
27-Jan SAT 9:30PM
28-Jan SUN 4:00PM