Mike Daisy: A Night To Remember
Last night's performance of INVINCIBLE SUMMER was disrupted when eighty seven members of a Christian group walked out of the show en masse, and chose to physically attack my work by pouring water on and destroying the original of the show outline.
I'm still dealing with all the ramifications, but here's what it felt like from my end: I am performing the show to a packed house, when suddenly the lights start coming up in the house as a flood of people start walking down the aisles–they looked like a flock of birds who'd been startled, the way they all moved so quickly, and at the same moment…it was shocking, to see them surging down the aisles. The show halted as they fled, and at this moment a member of their group strode up to the table, stood looking down on me and poured water all over the outline, drenching everything in a kind of anti-baptism.
The video captures Daisy as he gets wound up in a racy take on what's going through your head if you happen to be ****ing Paris Hilton, and what's going through her head in return (OMG! I'M Paris Hilton!). Then he pauses, looks puzzled, and you start to see and hear people moving out of the theater. Some of them were clearly seated toward the front and can be seen on camera. Then one young man comes up and ceremoniously dumps the contents of his water bottle all over Daisy's handwritten notes. You can hear one of the stage/theater people off to one side exclaim "That's SO RUDE!!" as she rushes over with towels and starts to mop up. Another stage manager guy lifts the notes gingerly by the edge and says "what do you want to do with this?"
I'm no big fan of monologuists, although Daisy seems to be pretty entertaining. After attempting to interact with the protesters (some shouting, and then an honest attempt at dialogue), he scores on his own naivete' – earlier in the day, he had been tickled to hear that two high school groups had booked in and the show was sold out. Sold out! Two school groups! He remarked how proud he was that his work was reaching young people. Then after the walkout, he realized he'd been had, and hollered after their leader something about "next time you book a school group for a show, check on what you're going to see!"
But I suspect that he knows he was targeted – the walkout was too well orchestrated and went too smoothly, within moments of Daisy's Paris Hilton punchline.
I'm not impressed with the "school group"'s walkout. It does sound like the kind of bratty, holier-than-thou, heavily staged behavior that a Christian youth group might come up with to "protest" something they've been led to believe is sinful, bad, wrong, whatever.
[tags]Mike Daisy, walkout, holier than thou[/tags]