Public Theater's THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS to Begin Previews as Scheduled

The Public Theater will begin previews as scheduled for the New York premiere of THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS. Previews begin on Tuesday, October 11. Created and performed by Mike Daisey and directed by Jean-Michele Gregory, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS will continue through Sunday, November 13 with an official press opening on Monday, October 17 at 8 p.m.

"All of us at The Public send our sincere condolences to the family and friends of Steve Jobs, and we wish them courage and comfort at this time of loss," said Artistic Director Oskar Eustis. The Public is a theater committed to creating work that exists in vibrant discourse with the way we live now, and we support and encourage artists who take on the task of ‘showing the age its form and pressure,' to quote Hamlet. Mike Daisey is such an artist, a brave and brilliant practitioner of theater that matters. For such an artist, and such a theater, it is inevitable that reality and drama will intersect in surprising, sometimes uncomfortable ways. This isn't to be regretted; it's to be celebrated."

"Steve Jobs had an enormous impact on our lives; in many ways, the world he has left to us is his world. This is a perfect moment to contemplate that world, its values and practices, and decide what parts of his legacy we should embrace and what parts we need to reject. THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS is a complex and profound meditation on Jobs and his world; The Public is immensely proud to be presenting it," said Eustis.

"Many of us feel a deep intimacy with Steve's passing, because Apple's design language and Jobs' obsessions blur the lines-in a real sense many people's intimate history with Apple has been a decades-long conversation about industrial design with Steve Jobs himself," said Mike Daisey.

"This moment is an opportunity to peel back the surface and get at the secret heart of our relationship with Steve Jobs, his devices, our labor, and China itself. We live in denial about China: a relationship that so disturbs us that we pretend our devices are made in magical Willy Wonka-esque factories by space elves instead of the real human cost we all know in our hearts has been paid. Steve Jobs was famous for his unsentimental directness, his ability to ignore nostalgia and demand the unvarnished truth, however difficult. I admire that, and these performances at this precise moment are an opportunity for us to together rediscover out how alive theater can be when we don't know all the answers," said Daisey.

Following the success of The Last Cargo Cult, Mike Daisey turns his razor-sharp wit to America's most mysterious technology icon in this hilarious and harrowing tale of pride, beauty, lust, and industrial design. He illuminates how the CEO of Apple and his obsessions shape our lives, while sharing stories of his own travels to China to investigate the factories where millions toil to make iPhones and iPods. Daisey's dangerous journey shines a light on our love affair with our devices and the human cost of creating them.

Mike Daisey (Creator and Performer) has been called "the master storyteller" and "one of the finest solo performers of his generation" by the New York Times for his groundbreaking monologues which weave together autobiography, gonzo journalism, and unscripted performance to tell stories that cut to the bone, exposing secret histories and unexpected connections. His monologues include the critically acclaimed run of The Last Cargo Cult at The Public Theater, the controversial How Theater Failed America, the six-hour epic Great Men of Genius, the unrepeatable series All Stories Are Fiction, and the international sensation 21 Dog Years. He has performed across five continents, from Off-Broadway to remote islands in the South Pacific, from the Sydney Opera House to abandoned theaters in post-Communist Tajikistan. He's been a guest on the Late Show with David Letterman, as well as a commentator and contributor to WIRED, Vanity Fair, Slate, Salon, NPR and the BBC. His first film, Layover, was shown at the Cannes Film Festival last year, and a feature film of his monologue If You See Something Say Something is currently in post-production. His second book, Rough Magic, a collected anthology of his monologues, will be published in 2012. He has been nominated for the Outer Critics Circle Award, two Drama League Awards, and is the recipient of the Bay Area Critics Circle Award, four Seattle Times Footlight Awards, the Sloan Foundation's Galileo Prize, and a MacDowell Fellowship. Most recently he premiered his 24-hour monologue All the Hours in the Day, an epic story that spans the globe, at the TBA Festival in Portland, Oregon.

Jean-Michele Gregory (Director) works as a director, editor, and dramaturg, focusing on extemporaneous theatrical works that live in the moment they are told. Working primarily with solo artists, for the last decade she has collaborated with monologist Mike Daisey, directing at venues across the globe including The Public Theater, the Sydney Opera House, Yale Repertory Theatre, the Cherry Lane Theater, the Under the Radar Festival, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, the Barrow Street Theatre, Chicago's Museum for Contemporary Art, American Repertory Theatre, the Spoleto Festival, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Noorderzon Festival, Intiman Theatre, Performance Space 122, the T:BA Festival, and many more. She has also directed New York storyteller Martin Dockery (Wanderlust, The Surprise) and the Seattle-based performer and writer SuzAnne Morrison (Yoga Bitch, Optimism). Her productions have received four Seattle Times Footlight Awards (21 Dog Years, The Ugly American, Monopoly!, The Last Cargo Cult), the Bay Area Critics Circle Award (Great Men of Genius), and nominations from the Drama League and Outer Critics Circle (If You See Something Say Something).

The Public Theater (Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director; Joey Parnes, Interim Executive Director) was founded by Joseph Papp in 1954 and is now one of the nation's preeminent cultural institutions, producing new plays, musicals and productions of classics at its downtown home and at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. The Public Theater's mandate to create a theater for all New Yorkers continues to this day on stage and through extensive outreach programs. Each year, more than 250,000 people attend Public Theater-related productions and events at six downtown stages, including Joe's Pub, and Shakespeare in the Park. The Public Theater's productions have won 42 Tony Awards, 158 Obies, 42 Drama Desk Awards and four Pulitzer Prizes. Fifty-four Public Theater Productions have moved to Broadway, including Sticks and Bones; That Championship Season; A Chorus Line; For Colored Girls...; The Pirates of Penzance; The Tempest; Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk; The Ride Down Mt. Morgan; Topdog/Underdog; Take Me Out; Caroline, or Change; Passing Strange; the revival of HAIR; Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and The Merchant of Venice. www.publictheater.org.