PRNYC, a modern day drama set in Manhattan PR Agency explores absurdity, power struggles, porous sexual boundaries, intense deadline pressure, conflicting messages, high stakes, obfuscation as a lifestyle, and brutal personalities that dominate the ecosystem of New York City PR agencies.

Peter Reilly works for the man known as The Beast, who reports to Simon Gurwitz, one of the most powerful men in New York. Simon has the ear of the Mayor, the Governor, Donald, Rupert, et al. What price will Peter Reilly pay to whisper in Simon’s ear and reflect the sheen of power to assuage his fears and lost identity? As Myron Mandelbaum  questions, will he “embrace The Beast or search for happiness over the rainbow?”

PRNYC is about the language we adopt to navigate difficult and highly pressurized situations in New York City professional offices. It may seem extreme to outsiders but to Peter Reilly it’s just another day in the office.

PRNYC was selected for a production in the 16^th Annual Port Townsend Playwrights Festival. It is presented at Key City Public Theatre as a one act, running approximately 40 minutes. It premieres February 9, 2012 and opens February 10 for a nine performance run, closing on February 26. It is on a bill with two other one act plays.

My hope is to try out the play on audiences unfamiliar with New York and PR, then expand the show into a full-length production, or combine it with another one act as part of the “Work America” series,  and seek a New York venue.

Background on PRNYC and the Port Townsend Playwright’s Festival: http://www.keycitypublictheatre.org/12_festival.htm | Playwriting Background:  http://markrosenyc.com/about-me/

Hello All,

As a new year dawns, we are delighted to announce a national tour for our monologue, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS, which opens this week in the Bay Area at Berkeley Rep, and will go on to major engagements in both Washington DC and Seattle, running from now until late May.

This is a very special show for us. I don’t think Jean-Michele and I have ever worked as hard as we have bringing this piece to light, or have poured as much of ourselves into the work as we have into this story. This monologue is the apotheosis of years of journalism, travel, research, investigation, sweat, and tears…and I believe it tells an untold and deeply necessary story for our time.

On the one hand is the story of Steve Jobs, his genius, his egotism, and his vision, a real life Willy Wonka whose obsessions have shaped our daily world. It explores the mysteries of the cult of Apple, the dream of a laptop so thin you can cut a sandwich with it, and the idea that if you control the metaphor through which we see the world, then in our age now, you can control the world itself.

This story of technology and its pleasures is told against the landscape of southern China, where I witnessed firsthand the true human cost of creating all of our marvelous tools. This behind-the-scenes journey into the heart of the forges where iPods, iPhones, laptops, and all our technology spills forth illuminates a place where workers throw themselves to their deaths from high-rises in modern-day workhouses, where workers die on the production line of overwork, where they sleep in cement cells with dozens of women and men crammed in rooms like labor camps—a landscape of our own making.

Today Steve Jobs announced he is stepping down from Apple for health reasons. It is almost impossible to imagine Apple without him, and there’s a palpable sense of loss and change as the tech industry struggles to know what this will mean for its future.

We stand at a crossroads, and it is my sincere belief that this story, capturing both his genius and his stubbornness, his brilliance and his ridiculousness, can help turn our attention to how the tech industry can grow up and begin to take responsibility for its decisions. Now is the best moment for us to look deeply and actually begin to see there’s something more significant than the next iPhone’s release, the next keynote presentation. Now is the moment to start waking up.

This is the best work I have ever created, and I hope you’ll consider coming to be part of the story.

Be seeing you,

md

THE AGONY AND

THE ECSTASY OF

STEVE JOBS

Created and Performed by Mike Daisey
Directed by Jean-Michele Gregory

At Berkeley Rep in the Bay Area
January 23rd to February 27th
http://berkeleyrep.org

At Woolly Mammoth in Washington DC
March 23rd to April 10th
http://woollymammoth.net

At Seattle Rep in Seattle
April 22nd to May 22nd
http://seattlerep.org

Stone Soup Theatre Downstage
4029 Stone Way North
Seattle, WA 98103
(206) 633-1883

Directions to Downstage Theatre
Buy tickets here (Brown Paper Tickets)

“Nicky Silver’s absurdist 1993 tragicomedy deftly sketches the disintegration of Philadelphia’s Duncan family, an elite clan hobbled by extremely bad judgment, narcissism, and emotional deafness the way the dinosaurs were hobbled by a dust-filled atmosphere….Andrew Tribolini seems so effortlessly creepy you wonder whether he’s even going for creepy.” — Seattle Weekly, April 28, 2010 review

Ben Brantley, The New York Times, 10/21/1993, review of NY premiere of Pterodactyls.

“Ain’t War Grand?” We ask you ironically in our marketing for this production of Henry V.

The play itself puts forth the question and brilliantly offers the many facets of a particular war from a variety of its participants. Among my favorite lines regarding War: “I am afear’d, there are few die well, that die in battle: for how can they charitably dispose of anything, when blood is their argument”Williams, IV,i

I have a first cousin I am crazy about.  Timothy McCarthy is 2 years and 2 days older than I am; we grew up celebrating our birthdays together on the day in-between. Timothy is an identical twin, an honest-to-god cowboy from Durango, Colorado: frighteningly handsome, alarmingly witty, and the father of five.  I have idolized him from birth. His phone calls bring me great joy, and we share incredible amounts of laughter.

We have always been close. Our families even lived together for a few years (our moms were sisters) because my Uncle Mac, a career Marine, was fighting in Vietnam.

In March of 2003, I began rehearsal of an all-male The Taming of the Shrew. It was going to be the most exploratory, risky, production of my life to date. I had been looking forward to it for months. Yet the only thing I remember about the first week of rehearsal was that the United States invaded Iraq.

My only son Conor Mac was 12. Timothy’s only son Brandon was 14.  They were too young for war; they were safe.  We were all sure this war would not last long, and Iraq was so very far away.

Seven years have passed; I have continually read in the paper of the sons and daughters from our region who have died in this war. I have wept many mornings over their pictures. I wept for the lost promise of their young lives and the unending pain of other mothers and of fathers.

With each successive year, the gap between Conor’s and Brandon’s ages and the age of the dead soldiers has closed. Now I read of boys dying that are my son’s age, 19.  Then, last year, Timothy’s son, Brandon, enlisted in the Army. The war marches closer and closer to home.

Over New Year’s, Timothy phoned to let me know that Brandon will be deployed to Afghanistan this spring. He will have just turned 21.

One of our boys is now in danger. The war has come home.

I wonder in the next several months, how I will react when I see Timothy’s name on my phone. Will I still welcome his call by breaking into a huge grin and leaping to answer? Or will there be trepidation and even cold fear for what he might have to say? How will any of us sleep soundly knowing Brandon is out there?How will I support this boy I love and his father whom I adore?

What I mourned from a distance is now suffocatingly close. “Ain’t War Grand?”

Perhaps after sharing this play with us you will be answering that question for your self. For me, my thoughts will be with Timothy and Brandon. There is nothing grand about this fear, and I’ll be praying each day as Henry V prays “Not today O Lord, O not today.” – Henry, IV, i