FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SALT LAKE ACTING COMPANY’S NEW PLAY SOUNDING SERIES PRESENTS A READING OF THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS BY MIKE DAISEY,
DIRECTED BY ALEXANDRA HARBOLD.
Salt Lake Acting Company is thrilled to bring Mike Daisey’s provocative The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs to Salt Lake City, even as the play is in its final extension at the Public Theater in New York.
SLAC’s New Play Sounding Series presents a free reading of The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs by Mike Daisey on Monday, March 12, 2012 at 7 pm with Actors Jason Bowcutt, Nicki Nixon, and Robert Scott Smith and Director Alexandra Harbold. Daisey’s writing is an improbable, alchemical mix – it is an obsessed fan’s love letter to Apple’s founder and his creations and an investigative reporter’s clear-eyed reckoning of accounts. Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore states that after The Agony & The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, “you will never look at your glowing screen the same way again."
After over 200 performances of The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs in 18 cities over 19 months, Performer/Playwright Mike Daisey and Director/Collaborator Jean-Michele began a radical experiment. They created a transcript of Daisey’s monologue and made it available for free download under an open license so that it could be performed by anyone, anywhere, royalty free. In his opening note of the download, Daisey writes, “We’ve been asked if we are afraid of what will happen when these words are free, if we’re afraid of what will happen to this work? One of the most powerful forces for humanism is that we are capable of doing things that are not motivated by profit—something corporations are incapable of. We’re delighted to throw away the royalties and control in favor of real openness, so that the work will bloom everywhere.”
On February 28, 2012, The Huffington Post reported that there have already been over 600,000 downloads of the transcript.
The New Play Sounding Series is a part of SLAC’s outreach programming and supports our mission to enrich the live theatre experience for both our audience and our theatre artists while making significant contribution to our community and to the American theatre. Through the NPSS we develop relationships with emerging local and national playwrights who are given essential testing ground on which they see their work in progress and receive insightful feedback from the audience in a post-play discussion. The NPSS allows SLAC to investigate works of interest in greater depth. We thank the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation and the Dramatists Guild Fund for their support of this vital program.
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
MIKE DAISEY has been called “the master storyteller” and “one of the finest solo performers of his generation” by the New York Times for his groundbreaking monologues which weave together autobiography, gonzo journalism, and unscripted performance to tell hilarious and heartbreaking stories that cut to the bone, exposing secret histories and unexpected connections. His latest work, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, was called “the best new play of the year” by the Washington Post, and was recognized as one of the year’s best theater pieces by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Seattle Times, Seattle Weekly, San Jose Mercury News, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and will return to the Public Theater in 2012.
Since his first monologue in 1997, Daisey has created over fifteen monologues, including the critically-acclaimed The Last Cargo Cult, the controversial How Theater Failed America, the twenty-four-hour feat All the Hours in the Day, the unrepeatable series All Stories Are Fiction, the four-part epic Great Men of Genius, and the international sensation 21 Dog Years. Other titles include If You See Something Say Something, Barring the Unforeseen, Invincible Summer, Monopoly!, Tongues Will Wag, I Miss the Cold War, and Teching in India.
He has performed in venues on five continents, ranging from Off-Broadway at the Public Theater to remote islands in the South Pacific, from the Sydney Opera House to an abandoned theater in post-Communist Tajikistan. A partial list: Cherry Lane Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Victory Gardens, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Barrow Street Theatre, American Repertory Theatre, the Spoleto Festival, Yale Repertory Theatre, Center Theatre Group, Intiman Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, ACT Theatre, Performance Space 122, the Noorderzon Festival, the T:BA Festival, the Under the Radar Festival, the Flynn Theatre, the Lensic, and Chicago’s Museum for Contemporary Art.
He’s been a guest on the Late Show with David Letterman, as well as a commentator and contributor to the New York Times, This American Life, WIRED, Vanity Fair, Slate, Salon, NPR and the BBC. His first film, Layover, was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010, and a feature film of his monologue If You See Something Say Something is currently in post-production. His second book, Rough Magic, a collection of his monologues, will be published in 2012. He has been nominated for the Outer Critics Circle Award, two Drama League Awards, and is the recipient of the Bay Area Critics Circle Award, five Seattle Times Footlight Awards, the Sloan Foundation’s Galileo Prize, and a MacDowell Fellowship. He lives in Brooklyn with his collaborator and partner Jean-Michele Gregory.
FACT SHEET
SLAC NPSS reading THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS
PLAYWRIGHT Mike Daisey
DIRECTOR Alexandra Harbold
CAST Jason Bowcutt, Nicki Nixon, Robert Scott Smith
DATE AND TIME Monday, March 12, 2012 @ 7:00 p.m.
SLAC NOTES:
The audience does not need a ticket in advance to attend this reading. The building will open one hour prior to the performance when general admission tickets will be distributed, and the theatre will open half an hour before the performance.
Salt Lake Acting Company is located at 168 W 500 N, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84103.
For more information call 801- 363-7522 or visit www.saltlakeactingcompany.org
NOW PLAYING:
DOTTIE – THE SISTER LIVES ON! A World Premiere by Charles Lynn Frost &
Christopher R. Wixom
DATES Extended again thru March 18, 2012
TIMES Thursday–Saturday - 7:30 p.m.
Sunday - 1:00 p.m. & 6:00 p.m.
Tickets for SLAC productions range from $15-$41 depending on performance and applicable discounts. Discounts available for students, 30 & under, and groups of ten or more. Tickets available at 801-363-SLAC (7522), at www.saltlakeactingcompany.org, or in person at 168 West 500 North, Salt Lake City, Utah 84103.
SLAC is a not-for-profit 501(c)3 professional theatre found in 1970 and is dedicated to producing, commissioning and developing new works and to supporting a community of professional artists. SLAC has been nationally recognized by the Shubert Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Edgerton Foundation, among others. SLAC operates under a STP Actors Equity Association contract. SLAC is a Constituent Member of Theatre Communications Group, a national organization for non-profit professional regional theatres, and the National New Play Network.
________________________________________________
Cynthia Fleming
Executive Producer
Salt Lake Acting Company
801.363.7522
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