play and ideas: Give My Regards to Occupy Broadway: Times Square as a Place Where Stories Start (once again)

play and ideas: Give My Regards to Occupy Broadway: Times Square as a Place Where Stories Start (once again):

Mike Daisey stood up around midnight. “On the subway up to the show,” Daisey mused he had no idea of how many people he would be performing for. He confessed he had no idea what he was getting into. “And I’m delighted you’re here,” he explained, with a humble gentleness, as the crowd cheered. He immediately established a rapport with the crowd. To hold a space really is about connecting with the crowd and hearing what they need, what are their concerns, etc. . “Its an amazing thing to try to hold a space. Cause that’s what we do in the theater, we hold spaces. But one of the tricks they never tell you is, to not hold it at all, but to give it back to the people, to give it back to the audience. They are the source, the thought, the source. You don’t do anything. You take what you are given, you mediate that and give it back to them.” His monologue really was a highpoint. In a way, he was talking about what Talen was talking about, the links between audience and self, community and city, the collective experience of stories, dreams, unconscious desires, reflections on the tragicomic continuum of human experience, all of which is necessary to truly say we are living democratically. It was that contract of experience which produced Kusher in Times Square out of the AIDS crisis.