David Hauptschein’s interest in “outsider” literature–writing by eccentrics, social misfits, the mentally ill–began about five years ago, when he was looking for source material for his own writing. “I had been exploring the underbelly of the mind: the subconscious, dreams, delirium,” he explains. “I came across a magazine called Kooks, which specialized in “insane’ writing.” He was so intrigued by what he read in Kooks that instead of incorporating it into his own work he put excerpts from the magazine onstage as part of “The Outsider Cabaret,” a performance series he was curating at Club Lower Links.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
But he considered his additions to “The Outsider Cabaret” so successful that a year or so later at Chicago Filmmakers he devoted an entire show to “insane” writing. The one-night show, Delirious Illuminations, was culled for the most part from an anthology called In the Realms of the Unreal, which had just been published.
At an after-show get-together for Illuminations, Hauptschein learned that Jennings and Sauer had been looking for the next project for P.A. (formerly Pig American) Productions, the small theater company the two of them and a third actor, Dawn Sassmann Gmitro, had founded two years before. Hauptschein had seen their previous production, Timberlake Wertenbaker’s The Grace of Mary Traverse, and was impressed enough by Sauer’s direction to suggest that the two of them collaborate on a fictional piece based on the material.
“It’s not like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” says Hauptschein, who’s been regularly attending rehearsals. “That’s the last thing we want to do.”
No One Goes Mad . . . From Writings of the “Insane” opens tonight at the Neo-Futurarium, 5153 N. Ashland, and runs through July 24. Show time is 8:30 Thursdays through Saturdays; tickets cost $8. Call 769-6136.
