More Mike Daisey follow-up...
Student protest has ART upset
Celebrated storyteller Mike Daisey had barely begun his 90-minute monologue at the American Repertory Theatre when much of the audience stood up and walked out. One of the put-upon patrons even picked up a glass of water used as an on stage prop and poured it over Daisey's papers. The problem? The posse, 87 students and staff visiting Thursday from Norco High School in Southern California, objected to Daisey's dirty language. (They left during a particularly profane riff about Paris Hilton.) Daisey, who's posted the episode on YouTube, invited the aggrieved audience members to talk to him, but they bolted. "None of you have the guts to stay here and talk to me," said Daisey. "Saying [expletive] is the least racy thing I do, so I'm a little flabbergasted." Daisey's handwritten outline -- he doesn't work from a script -- was soaked, but salvageable. "If a patron in an art museum objected to a painting and slashed it, we'd be clear that that's a criminal act," the ART's artistic director, Gideon Lester, fumed yesterday. Seems the school group did inquire about the content of the show, called "Invincible Summer," and was told it includes profanity and adult subject matter. They decided to buy tickets anyway. Daisey has since talked to Cindy Lee, Norco's activities director, and received a halfhearted apology. "They keep saying it was a 'security issue' . . . They had to get their children out because of these words," he said. "It's ludicrous." The show runs through Sunday.
Here's some original reporting from the Boston Globe on the incident. Like my pal Hodgman, I apologize for spreading the rumor that it was a Christian school group. Turns out it was a *public* school group, which is even worse.
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posted by Jesse Thorn at Tuesday, April 24, 2007
4 Comments:
DISCLAIMER: I think what the 1/87 people did in vandalizing his notes was wrong, wrong, bad, wrong, Wrongy-McWrongenstein. It should not have happened, and that patron's actions should have negative consequences.
Now:
I've now watched the clip a couple of times and I think Mr. Daisey is milking this incident for more than it's worth. 86/87 people left the theater relatively quietly and orderly, and since they were probably all in the same bus, they couldn't really leave 1 every 30 minutes until it was over. I feel bad he got flustered at the number of people leaving at once, but that's the best they could do. It was disruptive, but not malicious (except the 1/87 who is teh suxxors).
His continued diatribe against them, shouting for them to come talk to him was childish and nasty ("none of you have the guts" "I thought you were adults" "TO MY FACE!" etc). He didn't want the disturbance, surely he would not have wanted to start a long dialog about the contents of his monologue. he didn't really want a discussion to his face. He wanted to put them in their place and save face. He was simply trying to bait them into controlling the situation again.
Too f-in bad. Someone in charge of their group didn't like it and they left. His continuous self-martyrdom is unwarranted.
I hear you, N, but I disagree pretty much completely.
A) They were told ahead of time that it had adult subject matter and swearing. If they'd been told it was swear-free and caught by surprise, then it would be a different situation.
B) They didn't all leave during an act break or intermission. They left while he was literally in the middle of a sentence.
C) On the way out, somebody grabbed a stage prop and destroyed his outline, which is a pretty aggressive act, and would undoubtedly freak me out and piss me off.
D) Mike's performances are extemporaneous, so engaging the audience was not really a stylistic break.
E) Yeah, he got pissed when they ignored him after he tried to engage them, but what would you do if you were talking to someone and they were acting like you weren't there?
F) I know Mike and he would have certainly had a dialogue.
If they hadn't been warned, had left in an act break, had explained why they were leaving and hadn't destroyed Mike's notes, I'd say it wasn't too rude. But none of those were the case.
And leaving ostentatiously in the middle of a theater performance is definitionally malicious. There's just no way around it.
It seems to have been a Christian group from a public school, and since Mike Daisey has spoken with the man who poured water over his work it's obvious that religious conviction was a central factor at least in that part of the event.
I would accept that there could have been a misunderstanding between the chaperones of the group and the theater about what is appropriate for a group of (probably Christian) teenagers, in which case leaving the theater as a group wouldn't necessarily be malicious. The water guy pretty much admitted his hostile intent though.
I'm deeply impressed with the way Daisey handled this, his account of his conversation with his attacker is touching, not only because of how he confronts the issue of violence generally, even more because of what it says about what art means to him. I found it inspiring.
More here: Boston Globe and Mike Daisey's follow-up.
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