The Lucid Dreamers
Two of Hauptschein’s plays–the first of his scripts to be produced, running at Live Bait as part of the Annual David Hauptschein Theatre Festival–reveal the extremes of his abilities as a playwright. The Lucid Dreamers, a “kitchen sink surrealist play” about a stereotypically myopic American family plagued by disturbing dreams, mysterious illnesses, and noxious odors, is as flat and lifeless as its sterile suburban setting despite Hauptschein’s repeated attempts to keep things freakily unpredictable. Trance, by contrast, is a mesmerizing family tragedy solidly constructed in the traditional ways; only when Hauptschein again tries to inject heavy doses of freakiness does he lose focus.
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Trance, on the other hand, holds together with the tenacity of a family on the brink of collapse. That family is the Fleeglers, led by the luckless but bighearted entrepreneur wannabe Howard, who understands reality solely through statistical analysis. After his wife’s disappearance nine months ago, his daughter Toby mysteriously lost the use of her hands, leaving him and his bitter, unemployably punked-out daughter Mercury to save the crumbling family. Howard has sunk most of his life savings into “fortune pencils,” which have messages tucked underneath the erasers, and he puts Mercury to work stuffing little slips of paper into tiny wooden tubes all day. He’s also invited an old friend of his wife–a hypnotherapist–to his home in a last-ditch attempt to cure Toby of her infirmity.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Laura Furniss.
