NYCeattleties: Mike Daisey & Jean-Michele Gregory
Husband and wife theater team Mike Daisey (the monologist) and Jean-Michele Gregory (the director) met and began collaborating together in Seattle before moving to New York eight years ago. We spent an afternoon in their ground floor Brooklyn apartment, talking about the move, about how starting out in Seattle helped their careers, and what they miss about our town.
On what prompted them to move to NYC...
MD: One of the interesting things about it is that no one made the decision to come out here permanently. [Turns to Jean-Michele] How do we explain this?
JM: Yeah, it was pretty weird. Well, we were in Seattle doing 21 Dog Years, which was Mike's third monologue, and we were running it out of the back of Speakeasy.
MD: And the show's going really, really well. It's a phenomenon. Like a ridiculous not-measureable-in-the universe-we-were-in phenomenon. By the spring, there had been two different Entertainment Weekly articles on the show and it had been in Newsweek.
JM: South Africa Public Radio called to see if I could arrange an interview with "Mr. Daisey" and I was like, ummm, sure!
MD: And theater, as a whole, in America, rarely intersects with what's actually going on, and I have some real issues with that. But not only here do we intersect, but we were actually a story, we were part of this thing. Simultaneously, I was encountering a phenomenon that eventually would go on to become a big part of [Daisey's monologue] How Theater Failed America. Which is that we had this fantastically popular show--sold out, a month in advance--so under any rational universe, that show would transfer to a different theater. Not even because someone liked it. Just because there were obviously large buckets of money to be made by someone in Seattle. No one in Seattle wanted the show. No one in Seattle's theater establishment would even see the show.
JM: They know that they don't want the show, because we're of Seattle, and if you're from there you can't be good enough. [Laughs]
MD: All of the people I work with in the arts community of Seattle, the arts leaders, who bring us back to do things, were approached by me. John Longenbaugh [theater reviewer for the Seattle Weekly], on our behalf, went and talked to everyone at every one of the major theaters to let them know "You know, that there's a show, that is in Entertainment Weekly and in Newsweek, and it's like, right down the street." And no one would come. No one would even give it the time of day.
JM: We got close. [laughs]
MD: We got close. At ACT--ACT's literary manager's girlfriend's brother almost came.
JM: He said he was going to come. We held the ticket.
MD: We held the ticket...and they didn't come. But it was clear that the show had a life. And then lots of people were sending me emails. And if they didn't seem crazy I would write back, and I would actually just openly solicit advice: "Well, what do you think I should do?" And a lot of people had terrible advice, but there was this one guy who I'm still friends with today, who wrote to me and said, you know what you could do, you could do the New York Fringe Festival. And that was a better offer than I was getting anywhere in Seattle. We applied and they let us in. So coming to New York originally was just to do this run at the fringe festival.
JM: We knew we were going to come out in August of 2001.
MD: So that was sitting in the future, and I was getting the book deal, [which] was also sort-of based in New York, so then I started thinking, well maybe we'll go out before August. And then...Speakeasy burned down. It burned down the day after we closed the show. Which precluded any sort of return engagement, if anything went wrong.
JM: In addition to the monologues, our sketch comedy group performed there, just any time you had an idea to do something you had a space to do it in.
MD: It was so clear that we were totally fucked. No one was listening to me before. And I have not done nearly enough sucking up to all the different arts groups of Seattle. And it was actually that day that I remember after we looked at it we went and had a really sad breakfast and we were like we need to move up our timetable. I should go to New York right away. I should go first. And Jean-Michele, you were working on a project with your grandmother, you were interviewing her, so you stayed behind, and I went out early, and then she joined me a number of weeks later.
Comparing New York City to Seattle...
JM: It's such a welcoming place, which I hadn't expected. I was blown away by how friendly people were when we moved here, and how people I would run into would say "Oh my gosh, you just moved here? I know what it's like when you've just moved here and you don't know anybody. So give me a call if you want to go out." In college I had a friend who was from New York who moved out to Seattle, and he always said that Seattle people seemed so friendly, but they don't let you in.
MD: Moving to New York for me was very liberating, because people understood networking, which made me really happy. And I hadn't realized how much I missed that in my life. I remember being in Seattle, and I would say to people who work in the arts, like theater owners, even just people who work in the arts. "Let's get together and have coffee." And they'd be like "Why? What are we gonna talk about."
JM: What's your agenda?
MD: And then you have to explain...there is no agenda set. Why do I have to explain? It was always viewed with this vaguely puritanical suspicion. Like "There's no agenda now, but you're hoping maybe something will happen between us later." Well, yeah! And then of course, now when I go back, I have a new identity, right, I'm the "Artist from New York."
And as a consequence, all these people who didn't respond before, (now) take my calls, and now we have lunches, and there's no question about why we're having lunch. And I think that experience of having lived in what America considers a regional theater city and being beneath the glass bubble deeply informs the advocacy that I do with regards to theater now. It was so clear that, no matter what the work was, we were never, ever going to find purchase in Seattle. Now if we return to Seattle, it's like "Oh, we loved you when you were here!" And we're like "What are you talking about?"
How starting their theater career in Seattle helped them...
MD: What I think really was valuable was living in Seattle as a really young artist, and working together and finding our voice in an environment that is legitimate within the sphere of Seattle -- you're getting reviewed in the Times and people are paying attention -- but there isn't so much pressure. The monologues before 21 Dog Years, there was no chance of making a living performing the work. And that was incredibly valuable to develop the work and figure out what we wanted to do and how to do it, in a place where not only was there no chance that we could (make a living at it), but no one we knew was making a living. And that gives you a different lens for looking at what your work should be.
If you're in New York, on the other hand, and you go to NYU's Experimental Theater Wing or you're trained, and you jump right into it, you have very different pressures. Because you spend five or six years watching all the best work you possibly can see, and the sound of all that work can make it very difficult to find out what your voice is. And, on top of that, we often have that enfant terrible thing here in New York, so it's like, "There people are awesome because they're only eight years old! and they make the most amazing fucking work in this burned out dock, and it's so fucking amazing! It's like it's own low-rent version of Hollywood fame, where you want to get discovered young, and be a young, hot company doing hot shit.
JM: And there's so much pressure on you, you're 23, and you're directing your first thing that the Times comes to see, and it's The NEW YORK Times.
MD: And even the number of outlets, if the mainstream press comes in New York, you get like 41 reviews. That happens to you at 22, I think it changes the kind of work you make, and you spend less time thinking about how to develop your voice, you spend a little more time being like "There's a system here. How are we going to navigate the system."
JM: You can see a path. And that's what was so useful about Seattle, was that I started doing theater as a kid, and I always did theater, but I also knew that I would never make money doing theater, obviously.
MD: And you didn't even regret it.
JM: No, I wasn't upset about it at all, because that was just the way of things. Like, my senior year of high school, I directed my first play, and I learned how to produced, I called Samuel French, and called the theaters and negotiated the rent...
MD: But in New York, even in the small companies, it's often split among several people.
JM: Because they're developing their careers. So I think Mike and I, in addition to developing our aesthetics, we also really developed our producerial chops--like how do you get audiences and how do you stay connected with your audiences. And to this day, every single thing that we would be focused on for those little productions we did at Speakeasy, are the same things we do when we did the show in the Public season last year. Now we have more people -- talented people -- helping us, but we're still like "We need to see the press release, and we need to give our feedback.
MD: It doesn't change. The core rules.
JM: And I look at people that came up in New York, they don't have those same chops, because they haven't had to fight and do those things. So I'm immensely, enormously grateful for having had the chance to do those things.
MD: It's funny because theater is never seen this way, but there are people who have their chops from the street, and then there's like "high art." People who understand things like: How many people are on the books. What is your papering strategy? How exactly are you comping? What is your price point breakdown? Send me the spreadsheet.
I often call it micro-producing, where you're producing with very small sums of money, but it doesn't mean that they aren't important to you. We couldn't afford to LOSE money. The shows couldn't be done and attract no people, That's a good place to be in terms of developing your aesthetic, because it prevents you from being like "I had a vision of a fish floating..."
JM: It makes you very responsible to your audience, because you have to be creating stuff that people want to see.
On visiting Seattle, and what they miss about our town...
JM: We get to go back a couple of times a year. Family, friends. Because I grew up there, I took the things like the mountains, which are really spectacular, I took them for granted all through growing up. And every time I would go back I would be like "Have you guys noticed these mountains are really beautiful!"
MD: And I just have to interject that that's been a gradual process for her--because Jean-Michelle didn't leave for college, but kind of wanted to. But by the time we moved, I think she had an enormous amount of [singing]: "I need to get the fuck away from my family now."
So for me, Seattle is the first major city that I moved to as an adult. So I'm like, "I could move back, I like that place." And so I would be like: "What if we moved back?" and she'd be: "I'll cut you with a knife. Mountains? Fuck the mountains." And gradually, every time we go back, there's a little more distance from when you lived there as a kid. And you're like, "ah, these are nice mountains."
Whereas I, in the beginning, (missed Seattle) because Seattle has so many things New York doesn't. They're very diametrically opposed cities. I think Seattle is actually a tremendously comfortable city to live in. I think that's one of its defining characteristics. Whereas I think one of New York's defining characteristics is that it's uncomfortable. It's actually designed to be uncomfortable. There are too many people; it's too hot, it's too cold.
Doing live performance in Seattle is hard, because all live performance involves discomfort for your audience, because they have to all go somewhere, and they have to bring money, and sit next to people. So in New York, it's easy to get people out. What am I going to do, stay in my apartment, it's 100 square feet. Whereas in Seattle, it's like "My Tivo is so nice, it's so warm here, I've got three cats." We built incredible muscles in Seattle, trying to compel people to go see shows, and when we came to New York and used the same muscles, it was like being from Krypton. People were like "All right, we're coming. What the fuck?!"
JM: Let's do the hit list of everything we miss from Seattle. Everytime I go back, I grew up right next to Lincoln Park, so Lincoln Park for me, but also Discovery Park.
MD: Also that new park, the one next to the Hugo House.
JM: Oh, Cal Anderson.
MD: I've reverse engineered is so that in my mind it was there the entire time...I miss that, even though it's post my era.
JM: Than Brothers Pho.
MD: Oh my God, the pho.
JM: Actually, we got married in 2000, and for our wedding cake we just did tons of cream puffs.
MD: We had like 400 of them.
And Taco del Mar.
JM: Oh yes.
MD: We're very food-oriented.
ED: Everyone has their own. For me it's Dick's.
MD: Oh yes, Dick's.
JM: Yes, lots of Dick's. [laughs]
MD: The Rosebud, and a couple of others. I'm still a big Capitol Hill partisan. I go up and down and evaluate--because you leave for nine months, and you come back and it's "Well, everything's changed again."
JM: Certainly Vivace's foam.
MD: Yeah, the whole coffee thing. That was a hard one, when you're in a place where it's essential pride is incredibly good coffee, to a place where it's essential pride is incredibly bad coffee, it's hard. If you say to somebody, "It's real New York coffee." Then you're saying, "Oh, it tastes like shit and it will burn through my chest."
Mike and Jean-Michele will be back in Seattle this August, where they'll be workshopping a new show: "The Last Cargo Cult."
