Occupy Broadway Draws Artists, Protesters To Theater District:
Perhaps the most powerful moment came just before midnight on Friday when Mike Daisey, the monologist and author who is currently appearing in "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" at the Public Theater, delivered an impassioned speech about consumerism, Mayor Bloomberg and Occupy Wall Street. An enormous crowd of people formed as he took the stage.
"I'm very sympathetic to the desire to not only have there be protests, but also protests that incorporate an artistic movement and incorporate the skills of the artistic community," Daisey told The Huffington Post on Saturday between performances of his show at the Public. "And I think that it's a really exciting thing to see the arts become civically and politically engaged. I'm just intensely interested in all of it."
"I think it's an important moment for people to stand up," Daisey continued. "There's a huge number of people in New York who profess belief systems that coincide with or overlap with the concerns of the protesters, but they don't feel sufficiently stirred yet to go and have a conversation. And if they want to have a conversation, if people want to talk about the nature of equality and the lack of equality in this country, and if they want to talk about economic power and about corporatism, this is a platform to talk about those things. They're all topics that I've been talking about for years in my monologues."
"I think it's a really crucial time, and the more and more people sort of stand on the sidelines, gawking, the more they are going to find that they're on the wrong side of history."
