Pushing Daisey

 An interesting thing happened on Friday. Of course, to my managing editor and editor-in-chief, it was a face-palm-worthy thing. For me, it was interesting, because it called to question the nature of full disclosure statements.

Mike Daisey's The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, which I blogged about as an example of provocative, on-the-ball, anxiety-inducing work, turned out to be partially fabricated. Consequently, "This American Life," which had aired a portion of the monologue and posited it as truth, aired a retraction episode to clear up the, what we journalists call, "factual errors."

Understandably, the Internet blew up, especially the theater people on Twitter.

Terry Teachout of Washington Post called it "unforgiveable." Issac Butler told everyone via Twitter to chill out until TAL aired the retraction episode.

And even Roger Ebert called that Mr. Daisey is a "fraudster." That made me sad because it simplifies the issue.

My American Theatre colleague Rob Weinert-Kendt summed up the kurfluffle as this (and I couldn't phrase it better):

Chubby Apple gadfly in hoity-toity theater show bent facts about Chinese labor practices to make dear departed St. Steve look bad. Nothing to see here; back to our collective orgasm over the new iPad.

And indeed, when I was listening to the "This American Life" Retraction Episode, Ira Glass asked Charles Duhigg, who co-wrote that New York Times front-page article about the horrific Foxconn working conditions, if he should "feel bad" about his Apple products now.

As if the factual errors in Mike's monologue were enough to clear Apple's good name. As if the big things in the story that were true (and corroborated by the Times) - the 24-hour shifts, the suicides at the factories - were now obsolete because certain facts (Mike claimed he met dozens of underaged workers when he only met one; or that Mike never met the man whose hand was destroyed and withered from assembling iPads) were exaggerated or fabricated.

Should Mike have been clearer, to the TAL listeners and to his theater audience, that the work was partially fiction? Should he have put in a disclaimer saying that he was not a journalist? Should he not have lied to Ira Glass about the factually of the work?

Of course. Lying, even if it is for a good cause, is not way to change people's minds.

But for me, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs is still a magnificent piece of theater. It's stirringly told, it's well-structured dramatically, and (this is the most important thing) it makes people care about issues that have been told time and time again by newspapers without any effect. And then came this one piece, told by this one theater artist, and suddenly, these Chinese workers overseas became real people, who deserved rights...

And when it comes to theater, that's the goal. And Mike Daisey did that.

More theater artists should do that, or continue doing that. Though it will probably help to have a disclaimer beforehand if that work is not exactly journalistic in its presentation of true events.

And as for Agony and Ecstasy, there's now a prologue. Will it influence reception of the work by new audiences? Let's wait and see.