"The Agony And The Ecstasy Of Steve Jobs"

Actor Mike Daisey spent three weeks at an Apple factory to prepare for his one-man show. | Photo by Kevin Bern

Before your iPad bears your fingerprints, it picks up those of workers in Shenzhen, China. That's where storyteller Mike Daisey visited the Foxconn factory, a producer of Apple products. What he saw--overworked and underpaid workers--inspired his monologue, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, opening at New York's Public Theater. "I wasn't prepared for the institutionalized dehumanization," says Daisey, an admitted Apple fanatic who begs consumers to start demanding better corporate practices. "We're directly responsible for this."

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A version of this article appears in the October 2011 issue of Fast Company.