The Ugly American

The Ugly American is Mike Daisey’s dazzling new tale about his misadventures as an exchange student in London. Having never lived anywhere larger than his hometown in the backwoods of Maine (population 300), he heads off to study acting in the world’s most cosmopolitan city – but his teachers insist that if he could just stop being funny, he might one day become a real actor. Expecting to be greeted by the ghosts of Shakespeare and Olivier, Daisey instead falls in with a post-modern, neo-feminist theatre group that creates idiosyncratic shows in an abandoned church on the edge of town. When he falls in love with an actress who, unbeknownst to him, is a member of the world’s oldest profession, the hilarity has only begun.