How Theater Failed America May 4, 2008

Master storyteller Mike Daisey sinks his razor-sharp wit into a subject he knows well: the American theater, from the sublimely crass to the genuinely ugly. From gorgeous new theaters standing empty as cathedrals, to "successful" working actors traveling like migrant farmhands, to an arts culture unwilling to speak or listen to its own nation, Daisey takes stock of the dystopian state of theater in America: a shrinking world with smaller audiences every year. Fearlessly implicating himself and the system within which he works, Daisey seeks answers to essential and dangerous questions about the art we're making, the legacy we leave the future, and to whom it is we believe we're speaking.