Can a Solo Performer Act Alone?

That’s the patho-tragedy of Daisey. He couldn’t get out of his own way. He couldn’t walk away from himself the way those marketing and artistic director types eventually walked away from him. He knew hard news was the way to go, but he couldn’t turn off that playwright voice, saying, “Dramatize more, Mike! Make it more personal-like!” He was, in the end, Mike Daisey, subjective man. Subjective Daisey made the best theater of the year—even if it was on the radio—the theater of his own unraveling. Could his play of (sort of) facts have been as heart-stopping as it was to hear him lying and covering and hemming and hawing and justifying and falsely testifying (pause) (silence) (way more silence) (Beckett half-smiles approvingly; Pinter smirks)?

Maybe the public agony of Mike Daisey was such great theater precisely because the contradictions and complications of human character are so darn rich, so compelling. I mean, Daisey’s undoing had it all—the private lie, the public coverup, the rise, the fall, the ambition and hubris, and tragic flaw. And like all really good stories, the faults of the protagonist were no less than an extension of the faults in the people—and institutions—around him. I mean push a playwright/performer close enough to the edge and pretty soon he’ll jump. Eyes on the prize, baby! Wait, though, whose hubris is it, anyway?

I was really glad to read Daisey’s heartfelt confession and his vow to “be humble before the work.” I just hope that the folks running theaters don’t try something like that. They would totally lose their edge.