Letter From John Moe

I’ve received thousands of letters, from the hateful to the incredibly supportive–this one is from an old friend, John Moe, a public radio host, recovering playwright, successful father, and man about town.

Mike,

So I watched the video of the religious folks walking out of your performance and read all your accounts and everything, and came away with one question:

MONOPOLY! is coming, INVINCIBLE SUMMER is going

It’s the final four performances of INVINCIBLE SUMMER at ART–the insanity of the last week has finally receded a bit, letting me surface long enough to post this before diving in to these final performances, and prepare to switch over to MONOPOLY! It’s strange to think that soon I won’t be telling this particular story every night, as I have grown very used to INVINCIBLE SUMMER over the last month, but that’s the rare joy of my particular form–it won’t die when I put it down, but simply sleep and wait until I tell it again in the future.

Theater offensive? – Arts – The Phoenix

Theater offensive? – Arts – The Phoenix:

Every night, prior to his monologue Invincible Summer , which runs at the American Repertory Theatre (ART) in Harvard Square through April 29, Mike Daisey says the audience is warned. He paraphrases: “Ladies and gentlemen, this show will be performed in the patois and idiom of New York City. Turn your fucking cell phones off or we’ll shove them so far up your ass you’ll never find them again.”

Point taken. But last Thursday night, Daisey, sitting at a spare table onstage with just a glass of water and a handwritten outline, was flabbergasted when, during a segment of the soliloquy about “fucking Paris Hilton,” a group of 87 students and chaperones from Southern California’s Norco High School, who’d been in Boston for a choral competition, simultaneously got up and filed out of the theater. As they did, one parent chaperone punctuated their exodus by pouring a bottle of water all over Daisey’s notes, destroying them.

Parabasis: My Younger Brother Responds to INVINCIBLE SUMMER

Parabasis: My Younger Brother Responds to INVINCIBLE SUMMER:

My quasi-Orthodox younger brother who is a library science masters student at Simmons in Boston went to go see Invincible Summer. I asked him to write a response to the show so I could post it on the blog. So… here you go… from Lee The Brother:

Aftermath and Confrontation

It has been an intense few days, and I would like to thank the thousands of people who have sent me emails, which have been overwhelmingly positive and supportive. They’ve come from everywhere, and in an age when we often seem terribly divided, especially in this country, it really means a great deal. Though now I will be answering email well into 2010, things could be much worse–when you let something explosive loose on the internet you can never predict how it will all go down. As of now I’m glad that I posted the video. I think it captures what it was really like in that theatre, and how incredibly chilling and incredibly dorky it was at the same time.

Video of the Disrupted Performance of INVINCIBLE SUMMER

A Night To Remember

Last night’s performance of INVINCIBLE SUMMER was disrupted when eighty seven members of a Christian group walked out of the show en masse, and chose to physically attack my work by pouring water on and destroying the original of the show outline.

I’m still dealing with all the ramifications, but here’s what it felt like from my end: I am performing the show to a packed house, when suddenly the lights start coming up in the house as a flood of people start walking down the aisles–they looked like a flock of birds who’d been startled, the way they all moved so quickly, and at the same moment…it was shocking, to see them surging down the aisles. The show halted as they fled, and at this moment a member of their group strode up to the table, stood looking down on me and poured water all over the outline, drenching everything in a kind of anti-baptism.

Review from Mass Media

The Summer That Changed Everything:

“A wise man once said never go to bed angry … stay up and fight,” the advice that Mike Daisey’s father offered on his wedding day. A clash of humor and sincerity, Daisey’s new monologue, “Invincible Summer,” is playing through this month at the Zero Arrow Theater in Harvard Square. Like all of Daisey’s monologues, “Invincible Summer” is a tightly woven tapestry of human emotion. Intricately united historical fact, humorous anecdotes, and personal reflections are what make up Daisey’s solitary masterpieces.

On Memorization vs Extemporization

We’re halfway through the run of INVINCIBLE SUMMER, and things are looking good–audience numbers are trending upward, and I’m delighted to be in the thick of the run. Due to an exceeding unfortunate encounter with some bad Indian food my day off on Monday wasn’t nearly the faerieland of fun I had anticipated–I’m only now fully getting back to myself. It’s amazing how much the body rejects food that isn’t good for it, and how *thoroughly* it does so–it’s a remarkable machine.

Jim Sullivan Interview

JimSullivanInk.com – Mike Daisey’s Reality: For Your Pleasure:

Mike Daisey does something on stage that everyone else does offstage: He tells stories. But these are not guy-on-a-barstool stories. Daisey, 34, is a pro, a prolific writer and teller of these stories and he’s adept at mixing comedy and tragedy. He’s doing this at the ART’s Zero Arrow Theatre through April 29 in a 90-minute show called “Invincible Summer.” These are vignettes taken from historical fact, current events and his own life.