Wednesday, June 20, 2007

East Bay - Arts & Entertainment - Genius Tales - Storyteller Mike Daisey offers four addictive monologues on noteworthy men.:

Having buzzed through with his autobiographical solo shows 21 Dog Years and The Ugly American, storyteller Mike Daisey returns to Berkeley Rep with four new biographical monologues called Great Men of Genius, gathering such unusual suspects as P.T. Barnum, Bertolt Brecht, L. Ron Hubbard, and Nikola Tesla.

Sitting at a wooden table on an otherwise bare stage, the storyteller pauses only for audible chapter breaks as he bounces back and forth between biographical tidbits about historical oddballs and embarrassing personal anecdotes of his own. Directed by his wife Jean-Michele Gregory, Daisey works from an outline rather than a script, so details may vary.