International monologue royalty, Mike Daisey is performing two shows at Uno Fest.
There are few people in the world capable of captivating a whole theatre’s attention for two hours, and Mike Daisey is one of them. He is one of a kind, and so is his show, All Stories are Fiction.
Although there are two performances with the same title, they are “absolutely not the same shows,” Daisey says.
“It will be created that night. An hour before the curtain, backstage while the audience is coming in. I create an outline without premeditating it beforehand. Then I perform the monologue from that outline.”
Daisey draws his inspiration for the shows from current events and weaves them with other themes and motifs he calls “obsessions.”
“I like to make it specific and individual to the night and place where we are since none of these monologues are ever performed again. They are created for that one night alone,” he says.
There is no afterwards. “The act of theatrical creation is to create something in the moment—that lives in the moment that it's spoken— so in a sense there is no afterwards because it's enough to have created an evening where people exchange stories and this thing happens in a room.”
Daisey is looking forward to wrapping up a six month North American tour spending two nights performing new work for a “small but dedicated audience that is versed in the traditions of solo performance and that cares about it. It seemed like a fun way to end this particular tour.”
All Stories are Fiction
By Mike Daisey
(New York, NY)
Dramatic Monologue
PG14+
Wednesday May 25 8 p.m.
Thursday May 26, 8 p.m.
Metro Studio (1411 Quadra)