La Jolla Playhouse to Present Mike Daisey's THE TRUMP CARD This October

La Jolla Playhouse announces a special engagement of the critically-acclaimed solo piece, The Trump Card, created and performed by Mike Daisey, directed by Isaac Butler, to run October 4 - 9 in the Mandell Weiss Forum. Tickets and information are available at LaJollaPlayhouse.org or 858-550-1010.

Mike Daisey takes on the reigning world heavyweight of self-mythologizing, the short-fingered vulgarian who captured a nation's heart through bullying, charm, one-syllable explosions, and occasionally telling the brutal truth: Donald J. Trump. Daisey tells Trump's story from his earliest days, tracking him as he makes himself into a new American archetype - the very first rich man famous exclusively for being rich. Instead of dismissing Trump as a simple con artist and huckster, Daisey breaks down what makes Trump tick - and in doing so illuminates the state of our American Dream and how we've sold it out.

"Following his acclaimed The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, Mike Daisey has created yet another arresting piece centered on one of the most controversial figures in recent American history," said Playhouse Artistic Director Christopher Ashley. "Daisey is one of the nation's preeminent solo artists with an important and insightful voice, and in these final months of the presidential campaign, we couldn't resist bringing his probing and deeply funny new piece to San Diego."

Mike Daisey, who has been hailed as "the master storyteller" by The New York Times, is the preeminent monologist in the American theater today. He has been compared to a modern-day Mark Twain and a latter-day Orson Welles for his provocative monologues that combine the political and the personal, weaving together secret histories with hilarity and heart. He's known for art that reinvents the form, like his critically acclaimed 29-night live theatrical novel, All the Faces of the Moon, a forty hour performance staged at The Public Theater in New York City. He has toured across five continents, ranging from remote islands in the South Pacific to the Sydney Opera House to abandoned theaters in post-Communist Tajikistan. He's been a guest on Real Time with Bill Maher, the Late Show with David Letterman, a longtime host and storyteller with The Moth, as well as a commentator and contributor to The New York Times, The Guardian, Harper's Magazine, Newsweek, WIRED, Vanity Fair, Slate, Salon, NPR and the BBC. In a brief, meteoric career with This American Life, his appearances are among the most listened to and downloaded episodes of that program's history. 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, six Seattle Times Footlight Awards, the Sloan Foundation's Galileo Prize, and a MacDowell Fellowship.

As a playwright, Daisey's transcript of The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs was downloaded over 100,000 times in the first week it was made available. Under a revolutionary open license it has seen more than 150 productions around the world and been translated into six languages. Years later there are productions being staged all over the world every night from in Germany to Sao Paolo to mainland China. He is currently at work on his second book, Here at the End of Empire, which will be published by Simon and Schuster, and a 25-night full-length theatrical monologue adaptation of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. You can find him on the web at mikedaisey.com, and listen to his free podcast All Stories Are Fiction, where you can hear many of his stories, on Soundcloud or at iTunes.

The Tony Award-winning La Jolla Playhouse is internationally-renowned for creating some of the most exciting and adventurous work in American theatre, through its new play development initiatives, its innovative Without Walls series, artist commissions and residencies, including BD Wong, Daniel Beatty and Kirsten Greenidge. Currently led by Artistic Director Christopher Ashley and Managing Director Michael S. Rosenberg, The Playhouse was founded in 1947 by Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire and Mel Ferrer, and reborn in 1983 under the artistic leadership of Des McAnuff. La Jolla Playhouse has had 25 productions transfer to Broadway, garnering 35 Tony Awards, among them Jersey Boys, Memphis, The Who's Tommy, Big River, as well as Billy Crystal's 700 Sundays and the Pulitzer Prize-winning I Am My Own Wife, both fostered as part of The Playhouse's Page To Stage Program. Visit LaJollaPlayhouse.org.

Pictured: Mike Daisey in THE TRUMP CARD; photo by Ursa Waz.