Saturday, April 21, 2007

Stop and pick this Daisey - The Boston Globe

I'm adding this to Fence Post because of the Globe writer's idea that Mike Daisey depends " On the kindness of strangers " in his audience. There is a social contract, or has been, in the theater. There's supposed to be a wall, an invisible wall separating the performer and those out there in the audience. That wall was breached the other night in Cambridge. Make no mistake, this actually happened. Daisey is no Andy Kaufman, who might have faked something like this. This happened. A group of people, reportedly upset that Daisey used the F word in his monologue, got out of their seats, walked onto the stage and " protested. " A couple of the morons poured water on Daisey's notes. On the one hand this might be framed as a passive aggressive act. But I don't know. This happened in a theater, four days after what happened at Virginia Tech. The cable news guys made theater of that. Made Cho the big star in their made for TV movie " Massacre in Virginia. " But what happened in Cambridge happened in a real theater. It wasn't a violent act, per se. But man. It was weird.

The kindness of strangers? That's supposed to be what performers expect of the crowd. What Mike Daisey got the other night was something else. I, for one, hope it was the first and last time this shit will happen in Cambridge.

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