Steve Jobs' Mike Daisey, The Civilians and More Will Occupy Broadway in Dec. 2 Performance Protest

By Michael Gioia
01 Dec 2011

Mike Daisey
Mike Daisey
Photo by Joan Marcus

Mike Daisey, who currently stars in Off-Broadway's The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, and members from the Off-Broadway theatre company The Civilians will participate in Occupy Broadway Manifesto, a 24-hour performance protest, beginning Dec. 2 near Times Square.

The free performances, which will be set up in privately owned public spaces (POPS), will begin at 6 PM and continue through Dec. 3 at 6 PM.

Participating artists and theatre companies will also include Penny Arcade, The Working Groups of OWS, HERE Arts Center, Jenny Romaine and Great Small Works, The Foundry Theatre, The Church of Stop Shopping, Rude Mechanical Orchestra, NY Labor Chorus, The Yes Men, Ayo Jackson, April Yvette Thompson, The Living Theater, Bread and Puppet Theater, Tony Torn, Carlo Alban, Urban Research Theatre, Yolanda Kay, The Big Bank-A Musical, Rocha Dance Theater and Reno.

At Occupy Broadway, according to the group's petition, performers will use "public space to create an exciting mix with public performances, art, and music in vacant, lifeless corporate, bonus plazas. Through such art, New York artists re-imagine their city as a work of art, rather than a retail shopping mall. With capitalism gone amuck, foreclosures increasing, and bank crises consuming whole communities, we are demonstrating there is another, more joyful way of living."

Occupy Broadway is described as "a symbolic attempt to regain the space of theatre as an accessible, popular art form, bringing it back to where it all started - in a public space, for the common citizen."

For more information, click here.