Friday, February 18, 2011

March Issue of 'Wired' Goes Bravely Where Mike Daisey Has Already Gone -- Culture Fiend:

See the new Wired cover story for March 2011? About workers literally killing themselves to make iPhones in China? This is what monologist Mike Daisey will talk about in his one-man show at Seattle Rep Theatre in April, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. He just got to the story first.

“Fifteen years late, and missing the point that it’s about work conditions not suicides, but WIRED finally wakes up. It’s beginning,” Daisey wrote on his blog yesterday. After spending three weeks in and out of an iPhone manufacturing plant in Shenzhen, China (he posed as a prospective client to gain access), the former Seattleite turned the life-changing experience into activist theater. He workshopped the play at the Rep last summer, in addition to trial runs in Boston, DC, and India, and it got great early buzz. You’ll never look at that tiny glowing screen the same way again. The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs opens on April 22; more on the play later this spring.