“How Theater Failed America” Benefit Performance for Intiman Theatre

Theaters are closing left and right all across America, including the Tony award winning, Intiman Theatre. Mike Daisey is an acclaimed storyteller and author and he is staging a benefit performance of his conversation engaging monologue about the failure of the American theater to help sustain and support the workers in this failing industry. The performance will be followed by a roundtable discussion between theater professionals, artists and funders including Jerry Manning, Hans Altwies, Allison Narver and Charlie Rathbun. Daisey will moderate this roundtable about the state of theater in our time and the audience and community are invited to participate in this conversation. The proceeds from this benefit will be distributed as grants to the artists who were expecting to receive work at Intiman Theatre but were not yet contracted and received no severance upon cancellation of this season. These grants will be administered by Artist Trust.

“How Theater Failed America” is a monologue, with master storyteller Mike Daisey as he sinks his razor-sharp wit into a subject he knows well: the American theater. From gorgeous new theaters standing empty as cathedrals, to “successful” working actors traveling like migrant farmhands, to an arts culture unwilling to speak or listen to its own nation, Daisey takes stock of the dystopic state of theater in America: a shrinking world with smaller audiences every year. Implicating himself and the system he works within, Daisey seeks answers to essential and dangerous questions about the art we’re making, the legacy we leave the future, and who it is we believe we’re speaking to.

“A funny, surprisingly supple performance about life in the theater, the ecstatic highs and the aching, humiliating lows, rendered here with explosive humor and a dark edge of tragedy.”

-Washington Post

Tickets are $25, and can be bought at this link: http://tinyurl.com/3g53xeh