Mike Daisey

THE LAST CARGO CULT: A Workshop of a New Monologue

Tickets to this special performance are available ONLINE ONLY and will be available for purchase beginning Wednesday, JULY 22, 2009.

Click here to purchase tickets.

In THE LAST CARGO CULT, groundbreaking monologist Mike Daisey tells the true-life story of his time on a remote South Pacific island whose inhabitants worship America at the base of a constantly erupting volcano. In this riveting tale, Daisey explores their religion alongside our own to form a sharp and searing examination of the international financial crisis. Daisey wrestles with the largest questions of what the collapse means, and what it says about our deepest values. Part adventure story and part memoir, he uses each culture to illuminate the other to find, between the seemingly primitive and the achingly modern, a human answer.

MIKE DAISEY (TBA:08) has been called “the master storyteller” and “one of the finest solo performers of his generation” by The New York Times for his groundbreaking monologues which weave together autobiography, gonzo journalism, and unscripted performance to tell hilarious and heartbreaking stories that cut to the bone while exposing secret histories and unexpected connections. His monologues, fifteen and counting, include the controversial How Theater Failed America, the six-hour epic Great Men of Genius, the unrepeatable series All Stories Are Fiction, and the international sensation 21 Dog Years. His first film, LAYOVER, was shown at the Cannes Film Festival, and a feature film of his monologue If You See Something Say Something will be released this year. He’s been a guest on the Late Show with David Letterman, a contributor to WIRED, Slate, and Salon, a web contributor to Vanity Fair and Radar Magazine, and his work has been frequently heard on the BBC and NPR. His first book, 21 Dog Years: A Cubedweller’s Tale, was published by the Free Press and he is working on a second book, Great Men of Genius, adapted from his monologues about genius and megalomania in the lives of Bertolt Brecht, P.T. Barnum, Nikola Tesla, and L. Ron Hubbard. He has been nominated for the Outer Critics Circle Award and two Drama League Awards, and has been the recipient of the Bay Area Critics Circle Award, three Seattle Times Footlight Awards, and a MacDowell Fellowship. He lives in New York City with his director and collaborator, Jean-Michele Gregory.

JEAN-MICHELE GREGORY works as a director, editor, and dramaturge, focusing on unscripted, extemporaneous theatrical works that live in the moment they are told. Working primarily with solo artists, she has collaborated with monologuist Mike Daisey for the last decade, directing at venues across the globe including the Public Theater, the Barrow Street Theatre, the Cherry Lane Theater, the Under the Radar Festival, Yale Repertory Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Chicago’s Museum for Contemporary Art, American Repertory Theatre, the Spoleto Festival, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Noorderzon Festival, Intiman Theatre, ACT Theatre, Performance Space 122, the T:BA Festival, and many more. She also works with New York storyteller Martin Dockery (Wanderlust, The Surprise) and the Seattle-based performer and writer Suzanne Morrison (Yoga Bitch, Your Own Personal Alcatraz). Her productions have received three Seattle Times Footlight Awards (21 Dog Years, The Ugly American, Monopoly!), the Bay Area Critics Circle Award (Great Men of Genius), and nominations from the Drama League and Outer Critics Circle (If You See Something Say Something).

Venue generously donated by Wieden+Kennedy.

www.mikedaisey.com