A monologist whose story about Apple and factories in China has come under fire took questions from the public about the controversy Tuesday night in the Washington theater that held the debut for his piece.
Solo artist Mike Daisey has had plenty to say since it was revealed that he made up some things in “The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” his tale of horrid labor conditions inside the Chinese manufacturer that makes Apple products.
A lot of it has been: “I’m sorry.”
The public radio show “This American Life” had run a version of his story, adapted from his theater show, and then retracted it this month after learning that he had fabricated information about his visits to the factories. Daisey has since taken a pummeling in the news media.
He now says his story was theater, not journalism, and that he regrets having represented his piece as journalism. Washington's Woolly Mammoth Theater, which debuted his show last year, billed the work as nonfiction, as did New York's Public Theatre.
So it was something to see Daisey confront his theater audience face to face at Woolly Mammoth. The theater had invited the public to ask Daisey questions about the revelations, and about 150 people attended.
“How do we know that what you say now is the truth?” one middle-aged man in a button-down shirt asked Daisey. “How do we believe you?”
Daisey said that people can decide whether to trust someone even after that person has said he or she has erred. It’s all about trust, he said.
“And when someone lies, that trust is broken,” the man shot back.
Daisey got more sympathy from most of the questioners.
Some people said that they didn’t care that he’d stretched the facts.
One man said Daisey had told “the immutable truth.”
“We can’t all be upset about what you did,” T.D. Smith, 27, told Daisey. “I’m not that upset about what you did. It has to be about a bigger idea – and that bigger idea is the truth.”
Woolly’s artistic director, Howard Shalwitz, approached the event as a kind of cleansing ritual, meant to acknowledge wrongs and seek truth – if not reconciliation – among creator, theater and audience.
“We’re still sorting through this,” Shalwitz told the audience.
In his opening remarks, Shalwitz apologized “for representing the show as a work of nonfiction.”
“This is how Mike represented the show to us, we did not question it, and in hindsight we should have done so, and we will certainly do so in the future,” Shalwitz said. “After exploring this in-depth with Mike, I don’t believe he intended to mislead Woolly or our audiences – in fact, I think he was overzealous to make us hear the full truth of the situation in China, even beyond what he had witnessed himself.
“But the revelations on ‘This American Life’ made many audience members feel betrayed. They have every right to feel that way, and this could have and should have been prevented.”
Shalwitz said the theater isn’t giving up on Daisey. He said that Daisey is too gifted for the theater to do that. The theater has decided to bring back Daisey’s work this summer – billed, this time, as theater.
“We believe in the essential truth of Mike’s storytelling,” Shalwitz said.
But some people said they wouldn’t come to see it.
“I think you’re a great fabricator,” Sara Hope Franks, a social worker and therapist in Washington, told Daisey. “I don’t know how to trust you again. I don’t understand why the immutable truth needs embellishing.”
© 2012 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
| Advertising practices | Advertise with us | About us | Work for us | Help
What would one expect from a monologist who revels in a soliloquy. Guess he'll have no problem adjusting to absent audience.
I heard his retraction in the interview with Ira Glass. He sounded more like a lawyer choosing his words and almost taking no personal blame or fault in boldly lying to This American Life.
China does have some awful problems with worker rights and conditions, but things like this don't help them but rather worsen the problem.
It's a classic situation of crying wolf and I do not know how Daisey can face people after boldly making things up and accusing Apple of doing things they didn't. A man that lacks the basic feelings of shame, embarrassment and guilt has a screw loose and, in my opinion, has committed professional suicide.
What a dork.
In 2010 I caught Mike Daiseys perfomance at UT! Immediately I grasped the idea that he is a solo performance artist w/ a socially concsious theme! Not for a minute did I believe he actually lived among the people, on the small Pacific island, who were being westerized against their will! He is an actor! I'm sure he gathers material from many sources, personal experience, news accounts & word of mouth! Unless he stated all accounts were from his own experience, in which case he deserves all & any negativity coming his way, people are going a bit overboard here! Here are key words to focus on: performance, theater, actor, artist! Taken in that context we have to see his monologue for what it is; a theater piece that is in your face enough to make you think! Looks like Mike Daisey succeded a little Too well!! PS. Since most of the uproar is from the raido show, I'm reminded of when "War of the Worlds" was read on the radio & the panic that ensued! Oh well, a little controversy puts Mike Daisey on the map!!
Your kidding yourself if what you think he did was "theater". He was representing what he was saying as fact. He had no disclaimer saying "I've taken some dramatic license with this or that." This American Life showed in their retraction show clearly showed in emails that the story had to be held to "journalistic standards" and Daisey responded that he understood. If he was so honest they why was he so evasive on giving them information about his interpreter. His evasiveness proves his guilty conscience.
Why do we care about this story? Some guy we never heard of lied to a few hundred people during a theater production and it has made the news for weeks? Seriously???
you tell us... why did you care enough to click on the article, read it and then comment on it?
Actually, no one would have cared if he would have continued to do just the theater. What he did was put his story on a station affiliated with NPR, and it was listened to by millions of people, many of them who could see through his lie. Especially since the show he did was known for journalism, not a complete lie somehow told as theatre. Also, if you would have seen the retraction show he did, you would see that he apologized very much for the lies, and then 3 days later came back (apparently after he spoke to a PR attorney) and took his apology back and said what this article is now saying, that he meant it as theatre.
By taking the time to read the story and then leave a comment, you also answered your own question.
I saw this clown slandering Amazon.com about 10 years ago. Same schtick. Made up a bunch of BS to make that firm look bad. Typical fat liberal, just like Michael Moore. Maybe they can go to McDonald's together and go at it.
I think he refused to turn down appearances because he wanted media attention to his show and to the conditions at Apple. It's just sad he felt the need to embellish a situation that was already bad.
http://www.koroberi.com/2012/journalism-and-this-american-life/
Hello! babedag interesting babedag site! I'm really like it! Very, very babedag good!
Hello! egeccfc interesting egeccfc site! I'm really like it! Very, very egeccfc good!
Hello! kfeecbk interesting kfeecbk site! I'm really like it! Very, very kfeecbk good!
Fox News gets away with it time after time but one person does it....LOOK OUT, it's the end of the world!
This guy is probably an adviser to the OWS movement. Nothing they whine about is believable either
Lied, got caught, got his 15 minutes. Time to just move on. Actually, the TAL story about the investigation and subsequent retraction was pretty interesting. I heard them both.
Yeah, it was very interesting. I learned more about what was fact + what was fiction.
It wound up to be quite enlightening in the end, as well as fascinating, all along the way.
Saying that he is sorry is not enough. Did he really think that the truth would never come out?
The kind of things that he put in his monologue are serious and he should have stayed with with real story. It is very short sided of him to have done this and I hope he will loose credibility. What a waste of time this has been.
I already knew what is going on there a while ago. I am never buying another Apple product or any electronic made in China especially the Foxconn plant. I will make sure it's from somewhere else