INTERVIEW: Mike Daisey’s latest monologue explores the theme of ‘Resistance’
Photo: Mike Daisey’s new show is called Resistance. Photo courtesy of Ursa Waz / Provided by Emily Owens PR with permission.
Mike Daisey, the monologist who has been dissecting a variety of topics over the years, has chosen the theme of resistance for his latest work. In many ways, the new 90-minute theatrical experience is a follow-up to his one-man show from a decade ago: The Trump Card, which centered on what he perceived to be some warning signs in the pending election of Donald Trump. In Resistance, which finishes its limited run tonight, Nov. 14, Daisey looks at the many facets of resistance in today’s society: political, personal and spiritual.
Daisey’s monologue is being presented as part of the Gotham Storytelling Festival, courtesy of FRIGID New York, with performances taking place at the wild project in Downtown Manhattan.
“It’s going well,” Daisey said in a recent phone interview. “I’ve been to the wild project many times, but I’ve never actually performed in it. It’s a lovely little space. I think it’ll be great.”
Daisey described the work as typical of his other pieces: It’s an extemporaneous monologue where he talks frankly about a topic, untangling its many circuitous routes.
“It’s in some ways sort of a spiritual sequel to The Trump Card, which I did a decade ago before he was elected the first time,” he said. “It’s sort of about the concepts of what resistance means, what it costs us to resist, and the delicate dance that exists for all of us between resistance and complicity.”
The work is always slightly changing, Daisey described, and that’s because he’s not working off a script. He usually has notes sitting on a table before him, but the path by which he arrives at each chapter heading can vary night to night.
“Yeah, it’s definitely still finding itself,” Daisey said. “It’s early days. Last night was the third time it’s ever been spoken aloud in any form. Since it’s not restricted to a script of any kind, it tends to shift more perhaps than a scripted work would.”
The monologist added: “Mostly I’m kept on track by the overriding objective of needing to tell the story that I’m telling, the same way that anybody is kept on track when they’re telling a story. Also, I create an outline that is usually on the table in front of me. Although in practice during performances, I don’t refer to it, but the act of making the outline I find really helpful in terms of focusing where I want to be. … If one end is scripted, frozen, dead text, and the other end is full improvisation, you actually want to be in the middle space where the words are new, and they’re spoken aloud. But the intent, the focus, and the imagery, the things that have been building as I do each successive run, you want those to get more and more clarified. I’ve been doing this a long time, and it’s sort of like that’s the process of finding a piece that’s supple and flexible but also specific.”
When Daisey talked about Resistance, he did convey a certain despondency, even using the word “sadly” when describing how he needed to create a follow-up to The Trump Card. That other piece was about a reality TV star engaging in a long-shot political campaign and how if successful at the polls, he could dominate the political space for years. For this project, he used the word “peace” to describe some of his intentions.
“One wants peace for everyone, to feel at peace and to understand the world, but I also think that the purpose is sort of to illuminate things for myself and then also the audience,” Daisey said. “To get to a place that neither of us could have gotten to on our own. … So, yes, I do think that a lot of it is trying to understand the times, but just to be clear, it’s not a show about the current moment.”
What Daisey means is that he’s expecting most of the audience members at the wild project to be well-informed about the current political times. He said it’s not his job to “give them the tip” because, in his mind, theater is not the best vehicle to inform a crowd. Instead of information, he’s after illumination.
“I think in terms of understanding what it means to live in resistance,” he said. “We have all been in that state since about 2016 to different degrees, including the fact that this term is so much more intense than the first term, so people really start to understand how much these kind of pressures can ratchet up.”
To ensure he’s focused on illumination, Daisey cut his piece down and removed any reference to information that people could discover outside of the monologue. That means Resistance presumes that theatergoers who buy a ticket are already engaged with the world.
“That gives us an interesting place to start because some of the most interesting things to talk about are like the complexities of trying to resist something when different groups have very different ideas about what resistance looks like and means,” he said. “I would say it’s maybe applied philosophy, but it’s not so abstract that it’s literally philosophy.”
Also, the piece is funny, which is a hallmark of Daisey’s works. There’s a dark humor that runs through the 90 minutes of Resistance, and that’s because the monologist usually finds comedy bubbling to the surface when he creates a piece.
“There’s actually a lot of comedy in it probably because the topic is so dark,” he said. “It’s more that it’s a genuine response that happens in the face of abject inhumanity that’s happening in real time. … But also I’m not terrifically concerned with that. I’m very concerned that people have a full-bodied experience in the room, and I’m concerned that we go on a compelling journey. But I’m never that concerned about whether it’s funny enough.”
Daisey has an extensive résumé of shows, including recent theatrical efforts like A People’s History and The Great Tragedies. Perhaps his most successful and controversial piece is The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, which has a particular focus on labor issues involving Apple. The controversy came after the monologue was broadcast on This American Life, but later was retracted by the radio show due to “numerous fabrications,” according to the official website of This American Life.
The monologist said that he toured The Agony for six more months after the controversy and after “changing four minutes of material.” The underlying issues in the monologue — the call for human rights for laborers — was proved right, Daisey said. He even referenced a talkback session after one of the monologue’s performances, where he was joined by Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple.
When Daisey is working on a piece, whether The Agony, Resistance, The Last Cargo Cult or The Story of the Gun, he generally doesn’t work on another monologue at the same time, but he can have multiple projects in different stages of development. Here’s how he described it: “In practice, you really can only work on one at a time, but on the other hand, because so much of the work happens when you’re literally with the people in the audience in that moment, it’s not as consuming as it might look.”
The relatively brief run of shows at the wild project for Resistance seems to be a testing of the waters, and perhaps a longer run will materialize — another time for Daisey to pull up a chair to a simple table, an outline of notes at the ready, and the audience only a few feet away, awaiting connection to a topic and a story.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Resistance, written and performed by Mike Daisey, finishes its limited run Friday, Nov. 14, at the Gotham Storytelling Festival at the wild project in Downtown Manhattan. Click here for more information and tickets.
