I had no inkling that Mike Daisey’s new monologue, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, is a call to action. But indeed it is. I don’t want to give too much away here, because this show runs for three more nights and I beseech everyone to fit it into their schedules. To give you a brief overview, this monologue, as do many of his others, flows between several narratives: Mike’s own obsession with his only hobby (technology), the exciting tale of Steve Jobs’ electronic genius and rise to success, and the report of Daisey’s brave journey to Shenzhen, China (fastest growing city in the world, w/ fourteen million residents and counting) to investigate the manufacturing plant of Foxconn International, where iPhones are made.
Whenever Mike Daisey comes to perform in Portland, trust that you should see him. This time, you may be additionally enticed by the otherwise unimaginable tales of the nightmarish scale and culture of this manufacturing plant in Schenzen. You will probably never hear a true story as similar to the urban dystopia in Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis. You may think you want to insulate yourself from the horrors of this story, but you don’t. Daisey’s report is riveting. You will hang on every word. He went all the way there and placed himself, and his willing translator, in unknowable and considerable danger to bring us this true story about our stuff. He will temper it for you, and crack you up, and at the end, he will give you the information you need to effectively promote the next “metaphor shift” in consumer culture: to bring humanitarian values to the electronics manufacturing business, starting with its tasteful leader, Apple.
Round up your friends and get to Washington High (through Monday 9/13). You need to see this.
For the TBA catalog description of this show, see http://www.pica.org/festival_detail_new.aspx?eventid=621.
Daisey is performing a different show at the same venue on Saturday 9/18 at 2:30 pm as well; see http://www.pica.org/festival_detail_new.aspx?eventid=622.
For further information on Mike Daisey, see his website, mikedaisey.blogspot.com.
Reporting from Portland,
Sara Regan, TBA Press

photo by:Kenneth Aaron

    Mike Daisey is loud, abrasive, and hilarious. Like any great comic, he finds the humor in the horrific aspects of our lives. If You See Something Say Something is a monologue about fear, and it is about the institutions we have built up to combat that fear. He focuses most squarely on Eisenhower’s “military industrial complex” and the Department of Homeland Security. He traces the the industrial military complex back to the birth of the atomic bomb and Samuel Cohen, the other main character of his monologue. He examines the absurdity of this structure through the career of Cohen, the creation of a new mineral by nuclear testing, and a retail establishment selling used weapons laboratory detritus. Daisey also gives the brief history of The Homeland Security Department. He details the incredibly quick creation of a huge bureaucratic agency charged with vast amounts of power.

   If Daisey is known for being loud, it is his quiet voice in between the gregarious moments that serve to accentuate his ravings. He portrays himself as an everyday slob in the monologues which serves the purpose of connecting himself to the audience. As he says in this piece, he hasn’t read the patriot act. Bits of his act sound familiar. Often there are sentiments and jokes that have been rolling around the culture in defiance of a new security order for the past seven years. His real achievement is bringing these ideas together with the histories of our security apparatus and creating a new frame of reference. He doesn’t do this to create an ideological statement or even to necessarily call the audience to action. Instead, he uses the new frame of reference to elicit our humanity. It is a gift to make people laugh for a couple of hours, but it is an art to revitalize them at the same time.

Rush N Disco is a man and a woman who perform various musical routines, mostly comic. The highlight and obvious crowd-pleaser was their lusty rendition of “Smell Yo Dick” but they also sang songs reminiscent of the 1920s, led breathing exercises, roared, and rapped. While their skits were hit and miss, they mostly scored with the audience.
A video of Tommy Smith, called “Tommy Smith on Playwriting,” brilliantly lampooned serious drama writers. Beginning with the premise that musical theatre and revivals are popular right now, he shuns authors who write “important” new plays that no one performs and are only “read by thirty people.” Clearly tongue-in-cheek, Smith nonetheless reminds us of an author’s intended audience and the (de)value of work that no one experiences, especially theatre that never sees the stage.
Mike Daisey hilariously and meanderingly rants about how “art can’t save you,” how “we like to make ourselves artists,” how we are self-indulged in our “remix culture,” and how we marvel at the “levels” of referential art pieces then blog about them. As he eviscerated bloggers, he also acknowledges that we all judge constantly. The purpose and fun of the theatre, he says, is to create and energize mobs. With that, he says we should all “man up,” put our dick on the table and cut it a little, see if it bleeds, because we don’t really know what will come out; which is to say, we need to take our own risks if we are going to judge the risks made by others.
tEEth thrilled and disoriented audiences with their Halloweenish performance. The actors made scared faces, horrified moans, and reiterated a few gestures. Then an ear-blasting white noise pounded our ears as bright strobe lights flashed in our eyes, faster and faster, until the initially tame fright became truly shocking.
Reggie Watts offered more of his tried-and-true improv comedy, featuring manipulated dialogue and looped songs. Shifting accents, his voice waning in and out, muttering and singing falsettos, changing subjects, varying his vocal pitch, running through identifiable genres of discourse, Watts does what he does best. At times unintelligible, and with some improvisatory scenes falling flatter than others, Watts still manages to be funny, inspiring, and charming. He carries the show with the force of his personality and the enormity of his talent.
Posted by Dusty Hoesly