Mike Daisy is in the Bay Area with a new show, Great Men of Genius. I write that as if I actually am an avid follower of Mr. Daisy's career, but in fact, I'd never heard of him until this morning. He was on KFOG, promoting his show, but the conversation soon turned to an episode from a performance of his previous piece. You can check it out for yourself here.
Essentially, during a show in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a school group from Riverside, California abruptly stood up and left in the middle of the performance. On the way out of the theater, an adult chaperon of the group poured water over Daisy's original performance notes. After the scene was over, Daisy engaged the audience in a discussion of what had happened, then was able to continue the performance. What's cool is that he didn't leave it at that, but instead found out how to contact the man who had destroyed his notes and called him in order to try and reach some closure around what had happened. There were revelations of "anger management" issues and an apology, but what I found chilling was the man's explanation of how he was a "strong Christian" and that he tended to react dramatically in response to profanity and other cultural corruptions. Even scarier was his assertion that not only was removing the students from the show a moral imperative, but a security imperative as well.
How scary is that? There are people who appear to be so devout yet so in doubt of their beliefs that they react violently to any perceived threat to the bubble they've constructed for themselves, that comfortable cocoon of their spiritual community, where no one swears or cheats on their spouses or hates other people for being different or reads occult books like Harry Potter. It chills me to think that we're heading into an era where the term "cultural terrorism" may hit the mainstream. As Daisy pointed out this morning, we find ourselves in an America where public discourse defaults to a shouting match, rather than any semblance of an exchange of ideas.
Woo hoo.
A postscript: One of the comments on the YouTube site is very encouraging:
"Mariesa Acosta
Norco High School, Class of 2005
I would just like to say that I am embarrassed and ashamed to be an alumnus of an organization where students and staff have the audacity to disrespect you as a performer. All I can say is that I am sorry"
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