Art Picks up Journalism’s Slack Again

I went on record a while ago saying that I will not be doing reviews here at Just Wrought.  However, in order to make a couple of larger points later, I will have to stipulate some things about Mike Daisey’s performance last night at the Seattle Rep’s production of his new one-man show, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.  Here’s why:  I was pressing my way out of the theatre after the show, doing my best to spare myself and Kurt Beattie the awkwardness that always ensues when we try to casually chit-chat, when I overheard an older and obviously well-off man say to his wife, “I’ll be interested to see how his [meaning Daisey’s] performance grows after a couple weeks.  I mean, this was only just opening night after all.”

Yeah. 

So let’s get something straight from the start: Mike Daisey’s performance was brilliant, alternatively hilarious and harrowing; funny and furious: one moment cannily manipulative and the next heartbreakingly earnest, and it only grew more compelling as the evening progressed.  Frankly, I expected no less.  Daisey is a brilliant performer.  Full stop.  What’s more, he’s a consummate professional, meaning that he will bring that brilliance to every performance he does of this piece or any other, night after night, week after week, venue after venue.  To engage in speculation about whether Daisey’s performance will improve or decline after a couple weeks is to indulge in the worst kind of aesthetic fetishism, and worse: it lets you off the hook of the message. 

Unfortunately, this hobbyist’s game has been getting played more and more here in Seattle.  “Hans Altwies’s performance was brilliant the other night,” says the canny theatre-goer, making plain that she not only knows Hans Altwies by name, but also understands the nuances of his work well enough to gauge when he’s brilliant and when he’s not.  Well, I got news for ya, knowing theatre-goer.  Hans Altwies is always brilliant.  Like Mike Daisey, Hans is a consummate theatre professional, and he’s going to give you the acting goods in great plays, okay plays and terrible plays alike.  What’s more, Hans is not the only brilliant actor in Seattle: we have at least a hundred world class actors in this town—way more than we can sustain with a living wage.  What we do not have in huge supply are shows that matter, right here and right now to our fellow citizens.  (Yes, I understand Of Mice and Men is moving.  But no, I do not agree that staging it yet again can make a wit’s worth of difference in most people’s lives.)   The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs is different.  In his show Mike is telling stories that you simply cannot and will not hear anywhere else—true stories about the lives of our fellow human beings who make, by hand, the “shit”—as Mike calls it-- that we consume.

If you are reading this on a digital device (and how could you not be?) Mike provides a journalistic investigation that is as intimately connected to your life as the technology you are using right now.  He did the risky leg work that no “professional reporter” was willing to do, and he got past the corporate obfuscation that no other journalist could breech.  If you want to hear these stories in the next few weeks, the only way you can do it is to show up at a specific place, the Seattle Rep, at a specific time and listen to Mike tell them to you.  If you say to me that the Rep’s tickets are too pricey, I will listen respectfully and sympathetically, but I will counter with a question of my own: how much did your phone cost?  Was it more or less than a ticket to Mike’s show?  And how can you really assess how much it really cost, unless you find out how it was made and by whom?

Comments

[Steven Gomez]

A frivolous but telling story: I went to audition for Annex's next show last weekend, and for this show they held auditions in Seattle Rep's rehearsal space. We auditionees waited for our call in their green room, and I was there for about half an hour so I spent a good chunk of time in that green room.

While I waited, Hans walks in, casually grabs some water and sits at the PC to check email or whatever. Knowing he's in the current Rep show, "This.", I didn't think anything of this... until I realized the timing of my 2:30 pm audition and it dawned on me that the dialogue I heard over the room speakers wasn't some TV or soundtrack recording, but was in fact the dialogue from the matinee run of the show, taking place at that very moment. Hans at the moment had a break between scenes, and was so casual-as-can-be that looking at him I didn't even realize he was in the middle of a show, let alone one where he had to carry a good portion of the dramatic load. He calmly walked out and moments later I could hear him through the monitors playing on stage.

The man is a pro, such a pro that he makes even the little things, like staying focused on the play while taking a break between scenes, look literally effortless.

[Llysa Holland]

Another thought - this might have been Mike's opening at the Rep, but the show has already had full runs at Berkeley rep and at Wooly Mammoth in DC. Something to consider - Mike doesn't do exactly the same show every night - he works from an outline - NOT a script - so every night, there might be slightly different stories, or nuances or focus. And he constantly retools. Always challenging.