Mike Daisey returns to Theater Wit

3 nights. 3 new pieces.

November 16 / 8pm

This is Not Normal

In this haunting sequel to his critical smash The Trump Card, Mike Daisey addresses the precariousness of our current moment. He crafts a portrait of the cultural and global forces that have helped lead America into the hands of a demagogue—and explains the push toward normalization that always accompanies the rise of strongmen. Part instruction guide, part historical warning, and part dark comedy, Daisey addresses the fever gripping all of us, and how quickly that fever becomes fascism.

November 17 / 8pm

The End of Journalism

In one brutal evening Mike Daisey tells the story of how journalism in America ended. From the rise of FOX News, to the disruption of newspapers, to how Facebook became the arbiter of truth, he peels back the layers to find the world we’ve made for ourselves. Built out of years of interviews with journalists, this monologue is no polemic or horror story. Instead, Daisey digs deeper at a pivotal moment—the moment we take stock of what has failed and why, and begin building new ways to make journalism matter in our lives.

November 18 / 8pm

The White Man's Burden

Like nearly a third of all Americans, Mike Daisey was born and has lived as a white man, which means he’s had the privilege of not examining what that means in his work until now. On this night he unpacks this legacy—a dark history of sexual and racial violence that defines every part of what it means to be a white man, and the uncomfortable questions it raises. Can there be manhood without violence and power? What does it mean to be a good man? What can we answer for? Beyond guilt and sorrow, Daisey tells an unflinching story about manhood, whiteness, and himself.

About the performer

Mike Daisey, who has been hailed as “the master storyteller” and “one of the finest solo performers of his generation” by The New York Times, is the preeminent monologist in the American theater today. He has been compared to a modern-day Mark Twain and a latter-day Orson Welles for his provocative monologues that combine the political and the personal, weaving together secret histories with hilarity and heart. He’s known for art that has reinvented the form, like his critically acclaimed 29-night live theatrical novel, All the Faces of the Moon, a 40-hour performance staged at the Public Theater in New York City.

He has toured across five continents, from remote islands in the South Pacific to the Sydney Opera House to abandoned theaters in post-Communist Tajikistan. He’s been a guest on Real Time with Bill Maher, the Late Show with David Letterman, a longtime host and storyteller with The Moth, as well as a commentator and contributor to The New York Times, The Guardian, Harper’s Magazine, Newsweek, WIRED, Vanity Fair, Slate, Salon, NPR and the BBC. In a brief, meteoric career with This American Life the two episodes dedicated to him are among the most listened to and argued about in that program’s history. He has been nominated for the Outer Critics Circle Award, two Drama League Awards, and is the recipient of the Bay Area Critics Circle Award, six Seattle Times Footlight Awards, the Sloan Foundation’s Galileo Prize, and a MacDowell Fellowship. His prescient monologue The Trump Card was presented by Theater Wit in 2016. Visit mike at mikedaisey.com