How Theater Failed America

I hadn't heard of Mike Daisey until I read a review of his show How Theater Failed America in the NYT.  It's a one man show.  A monologue.  Him sitting at a desk and talking.  Whatever you want to call it.  Since I wasn't sure if I could make his show, I found an audio version online.  I listened to the first 5 minutes and turned it off, unimpressed.  But then about a month later I couldn't sleep, and my thoughts kept coming back to the article I'd read about Mike Daisey, and so I turned on  my computer and googled him.  It turns out he is incredibly prolific.  He started doing these one man shows in Seattle in the early 2000's.   I also saw that his show had transferred to a different theater and was still running.  So tonight, I went.  

The theater was packed.  I couldn't believe it.  Before I went to the show, I saw a few clips of another Daisey show on You Tube, and I kind of had an idea of what I was going to see.  I knew he would be sitting down and telling a story.  I had no idea it would last 1:45 minutes.

It was the most memorable show I saw this weekend, by far.  What seems amazing to me is that Daisey doesn't write a script.  He keeps a few pages of notes on the desk, and then just pretty much rants off them.  The show is a scathing critique of regional theater in America, but the show itself is an inspiring example of what theater can be.  It's a comedy.  I didn't laugh much, but most people around me did.  

He ends his show by saying there is young person in the audience who is going to make a lot of failures but who is going to do great things, blah blah.  He manages to pull it off without too much cheese, and it was kind of neat to think he might be talking about me.  Why not?  I'm a young person in his audience.  

After the show there was a panel discussion.  I guess each week after his show there are panel discussions with different themes and new panelists.  This week's theme was do-it-yourself theater, and the panelists seemed to have an impressive resume - the guy who wrote the book to Urinetown, a woman who took her solo show Well to Broadway,  and various others.  Now, I  tend to love panel discussions.  I love how people on panels always seem like they have everything together.  The right clothes, the right hair, the right vocabulary.  But this group of panelists didn't fit the mold.  They looked pretty sad actually, and pretty tired.  They didn't seem like any kind of role models to me, and I actually started feeling scared I'd end up like them.  I'd convinced a friend to stick around for the panel discussion, citing how much I loved panel discussions as a reason he should stay.  But in the middle of tonight's discussion I couldn't take it anymore and ditched my friend and left. It's such a shame.  Daisey's show was so inspiring.  I'm trying to erase the panel discussion from my head, but I can't really.