Last week I wrote about the horrible attack on performer Mike Daisey’s recent work “Invincible Summer” by a then-anonymous group of eighty audience members who walked out - one of whom deliberately poured water onto Daisey’s original notes for the show.
Daisey has since managed to locate the man responsible for the destruction, and spoke to him on the phone. I can’t even begin to describe the conversation with as much eloquence as Daisey does himself, here, but I wanted to at least call attention to these lines below, which come toward the end of his heartfelt post.
This really says it all:
And then I forgive him. He is very quiet--he is obviously shocked. And I tell him, "I want you to remember that a liberal atheist has forgiven you today. I don't want you to ever forget that, as long as you live, do not forget what happened here. I don't have God behind me, but I speak for myself, and I forgive you for myself, and for you. Never forget this."Man. Go Mike.
2 comments:
Playbill reported also that one of the members of the school group actually wrote to Daisey about the incident.
"One of the audience members who left the production contacted Playbill.com April 24 via e-mail. That correspondence from a student of Norco High School in Norco, CA, follows:
'I was a student that walked out. I did it because I had to. We aren't a religious group. We are a high school choir. We called several times and asked about the content [of the show] and whether or not it contained profanity. They lied and said no and that it was no worse than what you hear on TV. I'm sorry to say but on regular TV f*** isn't a common word. Another thing is before the show, when we heard 'Turn your f***ing cell phones off or we'll shove them up your ass,' [our teacher] went to the stage manager and asked him to pause the show so we could leave, and he refused.
'We were on a school trip, and school rules apply. Not only that, but [our teacher] truly cares about his students, and respects the fact that some students could be deeply hurt by something and he would never put them in that situation. I'm not scared to say I'm more of a liberal than many of the people in my group, and I did find it funny and would have stayed. I do apologize for the water, most of us didn't know about it until after. I screamed and said [Oh, my God], and you can hear it on the tape [that was being filmed during the performance]. But I don't think Mike should have yelled at the kids. Many kids were in tears of embarrassment and scared of him. [He] should have taken it up only with the adults and not screaming. We weren't protesting, it was simply that they wouldn't stop the show for us, it was against school policy. . . . Another thing is the entire group was disgusted with the water pouring. Like I said I screamed. We were all in shock. That's why we didn't [stay to] talk [afterwards].'"
Full Article here: http://www.playbill.com/news/article/107585.html
Thanks for digging that up, Shannon.
The Christian/public high school element of this thing is remarkable and it is very unclear exactly what happened from all of these slightly different interpretations.
One thing's for sure - it sucks to be one of the kids made to walk out by the adults who quite obviously didn't do a good enough job making sure the content of the show would be appropriate for a field trip.
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