The Public Theater Issues Updated Statement on Mike Daisey Controversy

Mike Daisey's THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS, which has celebrated sold-out and extended runs across the country and twice in New York, has been admittedly 'embellished.' Mike Daisey made a statement about the show's fabrications on THIS AMERICAN LIFE. Listen to the retraction here.

The Public Theater, home to the show's NY run has now issued a statement noting that:

Every performance creates a contract, implied or explicit, between the stage and the
audience. That contract directs how the audience should view the performance, what the
rules of engagement are. It covers everything from the physical relationship between
actors and audience to the border between fiction and fact contained in the performance.

Our job as a theater is to create that contract anew with every performance, and then to
fulfill it.

We did not do that with THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS. We would
not have called it nonfiction had we known that incidents described in the piece were
fabricated. We didn't know, and the result was that our audience was misled. The piece
had a powerful, positive impact on the world, and we are proud of that. But that doesn't
relieve us of the responsibility of honoring our contract with our audience.

As artists, we know that truths do not always hinge on facts. However, when we present
pieces whose power depends on their claim to authenticity, we must hold ourselves to a
different and higher standard of accuracy. We must ascertain, to the best of our ability,
that the facts presented in the piece are, in fact, facts. We will do so in the future.

The public questioning began in January when a portion of Daisey's theatrical monologue aired on This American Life public radio broadcast. On January 6, the program ran “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory,” which included a 40-minute excerpt from The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, tailored and performed specifically for broadcast.

Within hours of its release, “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory” broke the record for most downloaded episode of This American Life, which is consistently the most popular podcast in the country. After hearing the broadcast, TAL listener Mark Shields was moved to start a petition calling for better working conditions, and soon delivered almost a quarter-million signatures to Apple. A week after the broadcast, Apple released its list of suppliers for the first time ever. In another first, the company also announced that it will start allowing an outside third party to check on working conditions at those factories, and to make its findings public. Twenty days after the broadcast, The New York Times ran a massive, front-page investigative report about Apple’s overseas manufacturing. A month and a half after the broadcast, Foxconn, the company that Daisey visited and chronicles in his show, announced a 25% salary increase for many workers.

Created and performed by Daisey and directed by Jean-Michele Gregory, Daisey endeavored to illuminate how the former CEO of Apple and his obsessions shape our lives, while following the trail all the way to China to investigate the factories where millions toil to make iPhones and iPods. Now in its second, extended run at The Public Theater, Daisey is scheduled to perform through the weekend and play his final show on March 18. (Visit www.publictheater.org for more information).

For more on Daisey, visit www.mikedaisey.blogspot.com.