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Friday, April 24, 2009
American Stage's Todd Olson vs. monologist Mike Daisey
Posted by David Warner on Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 1:51 PM
Mike Daisey (right) has struck a nerve in regional theaters across the country with his monologue How Theater Failed America, now playing at Joe's Pub in Manhattan. Depending on your perspective, Failed is either: 1) a necessary corrective to an increasingly corporate theater system that fails to support individual artists; or 2) a self-centered diatribe that ignores the realities of running a professional not-for-profit theater company.
Todd Olson, the producing artistic director of American Stage in St. Petersburg, lands decidedly in the latter camp, and he told Daisey so — in an email Daisey reproduced, and responded to, on his blog.
One theater blogger summed up the exchange this way: "Mike Daisey has been challenged to a cage match by Todd Olson, AD of the American Stage Theatre Company in Tampa FL [sic]. Olson says: balance my budget, wretched actor miscreant; Daisey says: bring it."
Well, yesterday came round two. Olson wrote back and Daisey printed that email, too, responding to it point by point.
The theatrical blogosphere is abuzz.
Still, despite the heated words (Olson calls Failed "a misguided rant," Daisey accuses Olson of anti-artist "bigotry"), the exchange has actually turned into something very interesting.
More than just a juicy he said/he said, it has become a fascinating debate on the complex challenges that face anyone making theater today, whether as labor (actors, directors, playwrights) or as management (producers, exec directors, marketing folks). In most theaters, where everyone's doing more than one job, the lines between those sides are often blurred.
It'll be interesting to see how far this dialogue goes — it's already gotten to the point where Olson is sharing his organizational chart and budget numbers with Daisey, and who knows? Maybe American Stage will wind up with the most unusual theater consultant ever.
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