The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs: a one-man play at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre

John Brownlee ()

The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs: a one-man play at the Berkeley Repertory TheatreTo Be Or Not To Be… Steve Jobs. That is the question.

Well, actually, that’s not the question at all: the real question is whether you will pay good money to see “one of the elite performers in American theater,” Mike Daisey, be or not be the reclusive Apple CEO in a one-man show titled The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre.

Don’t expect a flattering portrayal of Jobs. The official description of the monologue declares that Daisey will follow the “epic story of a real-life Willy Wonka” along his “trail to China where millions toil in factories to create iPhones and iPods.” Did you get that? Forget Oompah-Loompahs, Jobs apparently has millions of his own diminutive ethnic slaves to work at his Wonka factories.

We’re guessing that Dickey isn’t going to be afraid to play fast and loose with the facts in order to embellish the internal struggle of a charismatic tech leader and grand poombah of the Cult of Mac… but it’s not like he doesn’t have the credentials. Daisey’s first big theater break came from a show focusing on his employment at Amazon.com, and he’s also done a one-man show in which he portrayed another enigmatic cult leader: the one great nemesis of Lord Xenu himself, “Commodore” L. Ron Hubbard.

If a questionably sourced monologue about Jobs piques your interest, you’ve got plenty of time to pick up tickets: The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs won’t hit the stage until January 14, 2011.

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[via Valleywag]

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About the author

John BrownleeJohn Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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Posted in News, Steve Jobs |

  • http://mikedaisey.com Mike Daisey

    Mike Daisey here. I just wanted to clarify that I’m a monologuist–you can check my wikipedia page for details–so I don’t “play” people–I do a monologue about L. Ron Hubbard, but I do not play Hubbard, for example. And I perform a monologue about Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison, and don’t “become” either of those people.

    Similarly I will not be playing Jobs–the monologue is about Steve Jobs, industrial design, Apple, and is woven against where our technology is made, and at what cost.

    There’s also some irony to the fact that you’re quick to judge that my monologue will be filled with inaccuracies and falsehoods in a post that manages to misspell my name three times in the course of 250 words.

    Best,

    md

  • http://www.twitter.com/daiglebox Michael Daigle

    I listened to Mike read his book “Twenty-one Dog Years: Doing Time at Amazon.com” when I picked it up from Audible.com, and enjoyed both the material and his reading of it. If I were going to be in Berkeley in Jan 2011, I’d buy a ticket. (Hey Mike – let me know if you bring it to Portland).

  • Peter Madsen

    There is a video of Mike on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9W4bQgixuc&feature=related) – very good stuff.

    It seems childish to me that you would choose to so blatenlty misspell his name.

  • John Brownlee

    It actually wasn’t intentional, although I’m not quite sure what happened in my brain to bring things that misspelling about. Regardless, the post has been fixed, with my apologies.

  • cschack

    I saw one of Daisey’s earlier shows at Berkeley Rep in 2004, about his time at Amazon; It was hilarious. Wish I could see this…

  • C Mcmurtry

    I wonder why you describe Mr. Daisey’s monologue as being “questionably sourced.” There is hardly a better source for journalists, anthropologists, or historians, than first-hand observation. One of the key points Mr Daisey makes about coverage of the same issues by journalists and bloggers is that material has been written without either personal observation or unmediated observation. Mr. Daisey actually went to Shenzhen. Moreover, that is his customary practice: for a previous monologue about cargo cults, he traveled to the South Pacific and observed one. Prima facie, it is the foundation of your post that seems questionable.