By Sharon RusSPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE
Mike Daisey, a well-known performance artist, spoke to Hofstra University students on Sept. 22 about his career path, and his passion. Daisey performed a monologue and held a question-and-answer session with students, during which he was questioned about his popular, and most criticized piece “The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.”
Houston Dougherty, vice president of student affairs, who organized and co-sponsored the event along with The Career Center said, “It was terrific to get a cross-section of students, faculty and staff to get to hear about someone’s vocation as an artist. Rarely do we get to hear of someone’s career path as an artist.”
During his monologue at Hofstra, Daisey spoke about his unconventional career path, and how he publicly masturbated while playing the Bishop in a production of Jean Genet’s “The Balcony” in Seattle. Daisey spoke about how there were two children present in the audience during one of his performances.
“I didn’t want to do [garage theater] anymore. I wanted a form of theater where the things were happening without scripts and what was being said was as much surprise to me as to the audience. That’s where the monologues came from,” he added. “They came out of the desire to get rid of the hierarchy of the theater and also came out of the desire to make something politically charged. I feel as though our arts are disconnected from our civic life.”
While Daisey has been called “one of the finest solo performers of his generation” by The New York Times, he has also been called “an unreliable narrator” by the Washington City Paper because “he exaggerated the number of factories he visited and workers he interviewed during a trip to Shenzhen, China” while performing a monologue.
In reference to his widely-criticized monologue, Daisey said, “In my monologue [“The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs”] I used dramatization because I work in the theater. And so I talk about things that are amply documented in human rights reports but that I did not personally see.”
After the performance, an audience member questioned whether Daisey was trying to imply that “the ends justify the means” and if that was why he had previously performed his story in what people believed was an inaccurate way.
“I’m saying that I did the things that I did and apologized for them repeatedly,” Daisey said. “I did these things and I pay for them. In fact I still pay for them, every single day. I would not take them back.”
Grete Kraus, a first-year psychology major said, “I felt that Mike Daisey’s apology for his past mistakes may come down to the matter that pursuing your calling as he did can be successful or unsuccessful. If he upset someone, the impact of that could only be defined by him. His actions will still be interpreted by others.”
Daisey closed his time at Hofstra by giving students advice about how to perservere in your career, even after you’ve experienced failure. He said, “I don’t tell people that the ends justify the means. I just did something. Yeah, we all live our lives, and we don’t do anything about our problems, but that was me doing something about a problem. You don’t like how I did it? Get in line. You know what? That problem is better now.”
After hearing his message, it was clear that Houston had a reason for picking Daisey out of the many possible options.
“He has a history of being a provocative speaker. Provocation causes learning,” Houston said, after experiencing the lessons and advice that Daisey provided students with throughout his monologue. “It’s exactly what these [events] should be about. Their willingness to talk about what they did successfully and what they would do differently.”