The agony and the ecstasy of a storyteller who bleeds in six colors

Mike Daisey's "Great Men of Genius"

"If you are a tech journalist writing about 'The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,' " begins Thursday's entry in Mike Daisey's long-running blog (first entry: August, 2001):

1. My last name is spelled Daisey.
2. I will not be playing the "role" of Steve Jobs. The monologue concerns Steve Jobs' rise and fall and rise, Apple, industrial design, and the human price we are willing to pay for our technology, woven together in a complex narrative. I play no one but myself, speaking to the audience.
3. I'm a monologuist. What I perform is a monologue, not a play.
4. You can visit Wikipedia, or use Google, and even some of the links on this site to quickly get a sense of my work.
5. This one is for the old-schoolers: If you cut me, I always bleed six colors.

That pretty much sums up the problems Daisey is having with the flood of publicity surrounding his one-man show about Apple's (AAPL) CEO, scheduled to open next January at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. The program notes describe Steve Jobs as a "real-life Willy Wonka," which may be where the tech press went off the rails.

In fact, Daisey is a veteran actor with a long and funny track record. More