Mike Daisey

November 16-23, 2009

3B Development Series

Written and Performed by Mike Daisey
Directed by Jean-Michele Gregory

Groundbreaking monologuist Mike Daisey returns with the true-life story of his time on a remote South Pacific island whose inhabitants worship America at the base of a constantly erupting volcano. Their religion is explored alongside our own to form a sharp and searing examination of the international financial crisis. Daisey wrestles with the largest questions of what the collapse means, and what it says about our deepest values. Part adventure story and part memoir, he uses each culture to illuminate the other to find, between the seemingly primitive and the achingly modern, a human answer.

THE LAST CARGO CULT will be produced Off-Broadway at the Public Theater this December, and will tour in 2010 to fifteen cities across the globe in North America, Europe, and Australia.

ARTISTS

MIKE DAISEY (Creator and Performer) has been called “the master storyteller” and “one of the finest solo performers of his generation” by the New York Times for his groundbreaking monologues which weave together autobiography, gonzo journalism, and unscripted performance to tell hilarious and heartbreaking stories that cut to the bone, exposing secret histories and unexpected connections. His monologues include last season’s critically acclaimed If You See Something Say Something, the controversial How Theater Failed America, the six-hour epic Great Men of Genius, the unrepeatable series All Stories Are Fiction, and the international sensation 21 Dog Years. Over the last decade he has brought his work to venues including the Public Theater, the Cherry Lane Theater, the Barrow Street Theatre, Yale Repertory Theater, the Spoleto Festival, American Repertory Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Center Theater Group, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Noorderzon Festival, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Perseverance Theatre, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Intiman Theatre, the Under the Radar Festival, Melbourne’s Victorian College of the Arts, Performance Space 122, and many more. He’s been a guest on the Late Show with David Letterman, as well as a commentator and contributor to Studio 360, WIRED, Vanity Fair, Slate, Salon, WNYC and the BBC. His first film, Layover, is being distributed by Lars von Trier’s company Zentropa, and a feature film of his monologue If You See Something Say Something will be released next year. His first book, 21 Dog Years: A Cubedweller’s Tale, was published by the Free Press and his second book, a collected anthology of his monologues, will be published by TCG in the fall of 2010. He has been nominated for the Outer Critics Circle Award, two Drama League Awards, and has been the recipient of the Bay Area Critics Circle Award, three Seattle Times Footlight Awards, and a MacDowell Fellowship. He lives in New York City with his director and collaborator, Jean-Michele Gregory.

JEAN-MICHELE GREGORY (Director) works as a director, editor, and dramaturg, focusing on unscripted, extemporaneous theatrical works that live in the moment they are told. Working primarily with solo artists, for the last decade she has collaborated with monologist Mike Daisey, directing at venues across the globe including the Public Theater, the Barrow Street Theatre, the Cherry Lane Theater, Center Theater Group, the Under the Radar Festival, Yale Repertory Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Chicago’s Museum for Contemporary Art, American Repertory Theatre, the Spoleto Festival, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Noorderzon Festival, Intiman Theatre, ACT Theatre, Performance Space 122, the T:BA Festival, and many more. She also works with New York storyteller Martin Dockery (Wanderlust, The Surprise) and the Seattle-based performer and writer Suzanne Morrison (Yoga Bitch, Your Own Personal Alcatraz). Her productions have received three Seattle Times Footlight Awards (21 Dog Years, The Ugly American, Monopoly!), the Bay Area Critics Circle Award (Great Men of Genius), and nominations from the Drama League and Outer Critics Circle (If You See Something Say Something).