Program note maybe

This is something I wrote last week. It could be a program note.

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I am lying to you.

I know that my performance is a bit shit. I’m not a trained actor like Colin Friels. I don’t like acting, I find it embarrassing. But I love theatre. I think that’s because other people hate it, because it’s so UnAustralian, like a dark anti-beach. Sometimes things happen in the world which I take personal, and then I go kind of nuts, filled with rapture or whatevs. Then it’s time to go on stage.

I encountered Mike’s story after it was published on a blog called Superflueties Redux which is written by a blogger called George Hunka, I think he lives in Vienna but not sure. He talked about the ‘scandal’ that had unfolded with Mike’s confession on This American Life and the retraction which the program had to make, some of which is V/O at the start of the show today. I became interested about this. It seemed that this Mike Daisey guy, this fat American storyteller, had lied for some reason about the working conditions in China, which seems like a weird subject to lie about.

Anti-Acting

In my current sphere, acting in an artform that is treated with dual suspicion and fondness by the "public", this grouping created by the theatre artist's removal of his/herself from others, for whom both feelings happen at the same time. So when you tell someone you are acting, the conversation generally follows a certain line, the assuption being that you are acting to be more famous. They start at Heath Ledger, and work downwards. "Are you in TV? Oh, the stage. Musicals? Oh, theatre. Which theatre? Oh, a small one. And what are you doing? Oh, it's a play. How interesting. I'd come, but..."

You can break this conversation, and I do, by telling people that you don't like acting. Which I don't. I find the scrutiny excruciating. It's not a journey I'm interested in. And from hanging out with actors, and seeing some of them act, I know that I'm also not good at it.

When you tell people you don't want to act, it raises a conundrum, due to the fact that embedded into the assumption that you are acting to become more famous is the desire to act. There's no such thing as a RESPONSIBILITY to act. Theatre; art; is optional. If you don't want to do it, just... don't do it. Go to the beach.

The Undertaking

It has been many nights awake until sunrise following the unfolding of the Mike Daisy saga, not knowing why, not knowing at all why.

Pulled by some mysterious force etc.

Some elusive idea is tugging at my subconscious etc.

It's like I'm drawn to it etc.

The artists journey. Mike felt it and it pulled him to Shenzhen. Unlike everyone else - he chose the extraordinary path. Not to say that he was extraordinary or superior! He just chose the path.

Not to say I am extraordinary or superior, either. But I am going to perform Mike Daisey's molologue, The Agony and the Ecstacy of Steve Jobs, for which he has recently been exposed to an absolute media shitstorm, at La Mama Theatre, for six weeks of Sundays, beginning on the 20th of May, which is in 6 weeks time.

I hope that people will be encouraged to take the extraordinary path.

I will begin and end with an analysis of the material at hand.