Friday, January 06, 2012
Hello THIS AMERICAN LIFE listeners!
If you came to this site by way of this week’s TAL episode, I thought I’d give you a quick guide to information on my work and myself.
First, you may be interested in hearing the rest of the story: my monologue THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS. The show returns to New York City at the Public Theater on January 31st, and you can buy your tickets here.
I’m very proud of what Ira and I created for THIS AMERICAN LIFE, but if you’d like to experience the full story, being there live is the best way to do that. Some of the most fascinating, heartbreaking, and hilarious moments had to be cut for the radio, and it fleshes out the story fully in unexpected ways. For those of you who don’t usually go to the theater, I hope you’ll consider it.
If you’re curious about what I do, my monologues page has extensive details on my other works. A good example is THE LAST CARGO CULT, a show about my journey to a remote South Pacific island whose people worship America and its cargo,and that narrative is then woven against a searing examination of the international financial crisis. The show became well-known for the fact that I would give away all of the money I was paid for the show in every performance, only keeping money given to me freely in a bowl on the stage at the end of the show, as part of a way of examining the abstraction of money. Over hundreds of performances we didn’t lose money—people, when free to choose, chose to see that we were paid. You can view a trailer of that show here:
Most recently I created a monologue called ALL THE HOURS IN THE DAY, which was a 24 hour performance—a single braided narrative with many strands that lasts an entire day, and which I perform the entirety of. It happened in Portland at the Time Based Art Festival, and some great pieces about what that show was like for the hundreds of people who came on the journey can be found here, here, and here.
On the lighter side, here is a performance I gave at an Occupy Wall Street event which culminates with me disrobing and openly challenging Mike Bloomberg to a Mexican wrestling match:
This site is kept updated with where I will be performing, and you can subscribe through the sidebar to get occasional emails with updates and invitations to events the public doesn’t get to hear about. I don’t spam or sell your name or engage in any form of ass-hattery.
If you need to reach me directly, the best way is the email link at the top of the page—I don’t always respond immediately, but it does get to me.
Be seeing you,
md
