Mike Daisey & Jean-Michele Gregory

October 21 2013

3B Development Series

IN RESIDENCE: October 21 2013

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

In this controversial new work, Mike Daisey is telling the most important story we’re not allowed to talk about: the story of secrets. Why we make things secret, how we keep secrets, and the power that secrecy has over our world. From the personal to the political, Daisey talks about three men who were driven to reveal secrets: Edward Snowden, an NSA contractor who exposed how America spies on its citizens, Bradley Manning, imprisoned for years after revealing war crimes and atrocities, and Daniel Ellsberg, who released the Pentagon Papers that changed the course of the Vietnam War. These men are polarizing figures—all have been called traitors and heroes, whistleblowers and villains, as many struggle to define them. By focusing on the human, Daisey provides a startling look at how we all keep secrets—and the price we pay for them.

“Enthralling and supremely theatrical. Why be a journalist if you can spin stories like these?”
—Chicago Sun Times

Mike Daisey, hailed as “the master storyteller” by The New York Times, is the preeminent monologist in the American theater today. He has been compared to a modern-day Mark Twain for his provocative monologues that combine the political and the personal, weaving secret histories with hilarity and heart.

“The master storyteller…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.”
—The New York Times

THE SECRET WAR is the first part of Daisey’s WAR TRILOGY—three groundbreaking linked monologues created over the next three years that directly confront how America’s relationship with war has changed all of us. The second monologue, LIFE DURING WARTIME, focuses on the lives of war veterans after they come home and Daisey’s father, a veteran’s counselor. The final monologue, NO MAN’S WAR, is about the corporatization and contractorization of war as our nation’s biggest business—and about drone warfare as the ultimate triumph of impersonal, business-driven warfare.

“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