Woolly Mammoth's THE LAST CARGO CULT Opens 1/11

Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company continues Season 30, the 2009-10 Season, with a four-week run of The Last Cargo Cult, the newest monologue created and performed by acclaimed monologist Mike Daisey (If You See Something Say Something, How Theater Failed America), directed by Jean-Michele Gregory. (The Last Cargo Cult recently opened at The Public Theater in New York and plays there through December 13).

The Last Cargo Cult runs January 11 - February 7, 2010, with Pay-What-You-Can performances on January 11 and 12 at 8pm. PRESS DATES are Wed, January 13 and Thurs, January 14 at 8pm. Woolly Mammoth is located at 641 D Street, NW (7th & D).
"How does Mike Daisey do it? Show after show, he spins a new true story that has us screaming with laughter and gasping at his caustic insight," stated Artistic Director Howard Shalwitz. "We're bringing him back for the third time because this next story is something you absolutely must hear. Among a people fascinated by American power but outside the reach of the global economy, Mike looks for a new way to understand our own financial dysfunction. We couldn't be more thrilled to make his story a part of Season 30 at Woolly Mammoth."

SYNOPSIS

Fearless autobiographer and gonzo journalist Mike Daisey has traveled to a tiny South Pacific island to take part in the annual festival of the "Jon Frum Cult." The islanders living at the base of a constantly erupting volcano worship America through the cargo left behind by American G.I.'s. Part adventure story and part memoir, their religion is explored alongside our own to form a sharp and searing examination of the international financial crisis. Using each culture to illuminate the other, Daisey asks: What does the economic collapse mean to them, and what can they teach us about wealth and wishful thinking? The Last Cargo Cult was developed in conjunction with Woolly Mammoth.
"The way Mr. Daisey makes his arguments, more than the arguments themselves, is what makes him ONE OF THE ELITE PERFORMERS IN THE AMERICAN THEATER." (New York Times).

"Almost nobody brings to mind Noam Chomsky and Oliver Hardy simultaneously, but Mike Daisey can pull it off. An incredibly ballsy and humble indictment of the banking system, American materialism and the audience. THE END PRODUCT IS HILARIOUS." (Variety).

FROM Mike Daisey

"A year after the financial crisis began to spin out of control we still have no real answers about what the collapse means. The news cycle constantly urges us not to think too deeply on it. Today our banks are running record-breaking profits once again, unemployment is surging, and real work is running dry. We are told this is the face of the recovery. Perhaps it is. But a recovery for whom?

This new piece asks the most important questions about the shape of the religion of finance, our complicity in the system we breathe every day, and the true human cost we pay to keep things the way they are. It is an adventure story, a memoir, a travelogue, and a kind of prayer for the possibility of change. It is set on an island in the South Pacific, where I lived beneath an erupting volcano with a people just beyond the reach of money. It is also set on the island of Manhattan, where Wall Street opens every day to establish the price of all the things of man that can be owned."

PLAYWRIGHT

Mike Daisey 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 hilarious and heartbreaking stories that cut to the bone, exposing secret histories and unexpected connections. His monologues, fourteen and counting, include 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. Over the past decade he has performed his unique extemporaneous monologues at venues such as the Public Theater, American Repertory Theatre, the Spoleto Festival, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Cherry Lane Theatre, Yale Repertory Theater, the Noorderzon Festival, the T:BA Festival, Performance Space 122, Woolly Mammoth (World Premiere of If You See Something Say Something; How Theater Failed America), and many more. He's been a guest on the Late Show with David Letterman, a commentator for PRI's Studio 360 and NPR's Day To Day, a contributor to WIRED, Slate and Salon, a web contributor to Vanity Fair and Radar Magazine, and his work has been heard on the BBC, NPR, and the National Lampoon Comedy Hour. His first film, Layover, is being distributed by Lars von Trier's company Zentropa, and a feature film of his monologue If You See Something Say Something will be released this year. His first book, 21 Dog Years: A Cubedweller's Tale, was published by the Free Press and he is working on a second book, Great Men of Genius, adapted from his monologues about genius and megalomania in the lives of Bertolt Brecht, P.T. Barnum, Nikola Tesla, and L. Ron Hubbard. He has been nominated for the Outer Critics Circle Award, two Drama League Awards, and has been the recipient of the Bay Area Critics Circle Award, three Seattle Times Footlight Awards, and a MacDowell Fellowship. He lives in New York City with his director and collaborator, Jean-Michele Gregory.
DIRECTOR

Jean-Michele Gregory works as a director, editor, and dramaturg, focusing on unscripted, extemporaneous theatrical works that live in the moment they are told. For the last decade she's been engaged in a long-term collaboration with Mike Daisey, directing and conceiving their many monologues at venues across the globe, including the Barrow Street Theatre (How Theater Failed America), Yale Repertory Theatre (Invincible Summer), the Cherry Lane Theater (21 Dog Years), Berkeley Repertory Theatre (Great Men of Genius-winner of the Bay Area Critics Circle Award), Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (If You See Something Say Something), the Noorderzon Festival (The Envoy's Dilemma), American Repertory Theatre (Monopoly!-nominated for an Elliot Norton Award), the Under the Radar Festival (Invincible Summer), Performance Space 122 (All Stories Are Fiction), ACT Theatre (The Ugly American-winner of the Seattle Times Footlight Award), Portland Stage Company (Barring the Unforeseen), and many more. She recently directEd Martin Dockery's Wanderlust at the Barrow Group Theatre and SuzAnne Morrison's Yoga Bitch at London's Theatre 503. Fascinated by storytelling in all its shapes and forms, she is at work on a memoir about her family's exodus from eastern Poland and what it means to forgive.

Now in Season 30, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company continues to hold its place at theatre's leading edge. Acknowledged as "The hottest theatre company in town" (Washington Post), "known for its productions of innovative new plays" (The New York Times), Woolly Mammoth is a regional and national leader in the development of new plays, and one of the best known and most influentiAl Small theatres in America. The Company garnered this reputation by holding fast to its unique mission:
...to ignite an explosive engagement between theatre artists and the community by developing, producing and promoting new plays that explore The Edges of theatrical style and human experience, and by implementing new ways to use the artistry of theatre to serve the people of Greater Washington, DC.

Currently under the leadership of Artistic Director/Co-Founder Howard Shalwitz and Managing Director Jeffrey Herrmann, Woolly Mammoth is a member of the National New Play Network, Theatre Communications Group, The League of Washington Theatres, and The Cultural Alliance of Greater Washington, and a participant in the A-ha! Program: Think it, Do it, funded by MetLife and administered by Theatre Communications Group, the national organization for the American theatre. The Theatre's programs are supported in part by The National Endowment for the Arts, the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the National Capital Arts and Cultural Affairs Program/United States Commission of Fine Arts, and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Photo credit: Peter James Zielinski