His father was a scientist and, at an early age, David Hauptschein harbored dreams of becoming an inventor. But he also longed for a profession with more of a "personal touch." His quest for finding an outlet that would illuminate the intricate workings of the inner mind resulted in his own invention of reality through painting, film and writing.

Hauptschein, known throughout Chicago for his spoken-word performance pieces and psychologically intense plays that have the capacity to leave a trail of bloody stream-of-consciousness reflections, ventures into the sketchy realm of out-of-body experiences in his latest play, Breakdown and Out. It runs through Aug. 27 at Mary-Arrchie Theatre.

But beyond our introspective universes, the playwright explores the complex–even frightening–reality of our physical being. To understand Hauptschein, one must explore the unconventional path he took to find an outlet for self-expression.

While growing up in the Philadelphia area, he often felt like an outsider. "I was a little bit dyslexic," admits Hauptschein, "but I tested for a pretty high I.Q. So instead of dealing with my problem, teachers assumed I was lazy. They put me in the back of the class and let me flounder."

Despite his traumatic educational experiences, Hauptschein decided to pursue a college degree. After changing majors and bouncing around a few schools, he signed up for art courses at the Philadelphia College of Art. Earlier a friend had shown him a book of paintings by Salvador Dali–a catalyst that spurred Hauptschein into the surreal sphere of accessing the unconscious.

"I knew I wanted to be creative," he says, "but I didn’t know how to channel it. I had always thought painting was stuffy. But when I saw Dali’s work, I had a profound experience. I realized what you could do with your imagination."

He was particularly moved by Dali’s disturbing yet empowering painting, Soft Construction of Boiled Beans: Premonition of War. Its central image is a human body pulling itself apart. Hauptschein got an early glimpse into the tangled mass of sinews and psyche. Today he continues to illuminate the world of the mind.

Another revelation followed when, during a drawing class at the Philadelphia College of Art, he plunged into an abstract-geometric drawing exercise and got lost in the process for several hours.

"At the time," says Hauptschein, "I knew nothing about art. I knew Van Gogh cut off his ear. That was about it. But, by doing this exercise, I knew I could make patterns and be imaginative."

He received his BFA from the Philadelphia College of Art and moved to the Chicago area in 1978 to attend graduate school at the University of Illinois-Chicago, where he received his MFA in art. He has lived in Riverside for the past 22 years. His art encompassed painting, drawing and experimental filmmaking.

Then an unexpected condition pushed him deeper into the dark caverns of the mind. By the early 1980s, Hauptschein began experiencing excessive eye strain and was forced to stop doing visual art. To this day, the source of his visual sensitivity to light has remained undiagnosed. He cannot watch films or read for any great length of time. But he believes he was "saved" by books on tape. Hauptschein was quickly exposed to classics ranging from Dickens to Nobokov and discovered that, despite his minor dyslexia, he had no comprehension problems.

He decided to transfer his creativity to writing. "The medium didn’t matter," notes the writer. "It wasn’t about the medium. It was about how I expressed myself as an artist."

With the assistance of his wife and friends taking dictation, Hauptschein published his first novel, Group Plastic Surgery (dealing with dreams and fantasies), in 1993 on computer disk by Spectrum Press. He continued to perfect his writing skills and, by the mid-1990s, became a fixture on the local spoken-word circuit.

Among his innovative works are a 1995 Pig American production of No One Goes Mad: From Writings of the Insane, based on found texts; his 1996-97 Letters and Cyberspace Shows, inviting ordinary people to read their most intimate correspondences (later broadcast on WBEZ’s This American Life); and Coffee with David Hauptschein and Joseph Fosco, a theatricalized forum of java and conversation triggered by topics pulled from a bag.

In 1995 at Live Bait Theater, Hauptschein premiered his two complex dramatic mindscapes, Lucid Dreamers and Trance–the latter delving into the mental manipulations related to the Charles Manson murders. One year later, Trance traveled to the Edinburgh Theatre Festival, where it received a Fringe First Award. It was featured at the 1997 Arts Festival in Brighton, England. That same year, Hauptschein’s The Persecution of Arnold Petch, a twisted look into the paranoid mind of a man believed he is being pursued by government assassins, debuted at A Red Orchid Theatre.

When asked to track his interest in the less tangible machinations of the brain, the playwright recalled seeing a production in the 1970s of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming in Philadelphia. He was struck by Pinter’s delving into internal realities. Hauptschein even expressed an interest in writing a college term paper on schizophrenia. But, for the most part, the playwright is naturally drawn to the power of the imagination–an interest that has manifested itself in a variety of forms.

"To me, the blank page is the most exhilarating thing there is!" he exclaims. "I want the audience to enter into my fantasy world."

Hauptschein might be inspired by a found text, a dream or an overheard conversation. His writing process is still evolving. Most recently, he hooked up with a writing partner, David Vlcek. Together, they critique each other’s work and seek out ways of probing deeper into characters’ motivations. They meet twice a week at a coffee shop and recently completed a play, Son of Man, about a self-ordained preacher coming to terms with his alcohol addiction.

At this stage though, Hauptschein is moving out of surrealism and into more profound explorations of different levels of reality.

"I’m always looking for ways to expand," he says. "There have been some shifts. I’ve been increasingly preoccupied with truth. I wrote a play about double lives. I believe everyone leads a double life. We all have what we project outward, and then there are our inner thoughts. I’m curious about where does the reality lie–in the inner or outer self?

"I’m getting to the point where I’m focused more on eliminating anything that would distract the audience from the ideas at hand. Surrealism can be distracting. There’s still the over-riding concern of inventing reality. I take my imagination through an act of will so that an imaginary thought becomes visually real on stage."

In Breakdown and Out, Hauptschein weaves together elements of mental telepathy and family bickering as three heirs to a deceased woman’s home brutally horde their recently acquired possession. One of the characters, an ex-convict, speaks to the dead woman’s mentally unstable sister through a solitary red rose. He believes he can transfer her consciousness to another dimension.

"I wasn’t after anything New Age-y," the playwright clarifies. "This whole out-of-body thing–I’m more interested in people who think they’ve had an out-of-body experience. I don’t believe you can leave your body. But I think you can believe you leave your body. I’m examining that fine line between what is real and what is perceived to be real.

Hauptschein commends Breakdown and Out’s director Rich Cotovsky for allowing the audience to "pay attention to the story, the characters and the ideas rather than to the director, playwright or actors." He adds, "Rich never did anything that drew attention to himself." Hauptschein also gives a director a huge amount of control. He theorizes, "As the playwright, I know what I know. Now I want the director to show me what he or she knows."

The playwright’s own view of reality is rooted in existentialism. He believes we become who we are through interacting with our environment. "What I have in me eternally," explains Hauptschein, "seems to be as far as I can go in terms of reality. I don’t know what happens after we die. This idea ties into my calling to find a way to be creative while I’m here. It’s my motivation for being an artist."

So when he speaks of out-of-body experiences, Hauptschein moves into the realm of metaphor. Through art, he wants to "get my consciousness out of my body and let it percolate in the world."

He expounds, "Because Picasso got out of his body, his consciousness is all over the place. Just step into the Museum of Modern Art–it’s like Picasso is walking around. He lives through his art."

In Breakdown and Out, the meditative ex-con character proclaims, "As long as you’ve got your mind, you’re free." But that’s not enough for the playwright. "I want to manifest my thoughts in a physical form," insists Hauptschein.

If he has one major complaint about the modern state of theatre, it’s that more writers are resorting to adapting existing work rather than creating their own plays addressing terrifyingly real issues–like the deeply embedded roots of racism.

At the same time, Hauptschein calls himself "apolitical."

"I don’t know where this idea came from that artists are supposed to be good, moral people," he argues. "It’s more important for an artist to reflect truth than to try to moralize. I don’t see myself as that good of a person. I’m interested in exposing the psychology and, hopefully, through that sort of honesty we can start learning more about who we are.

"I don’t have a mission to change the world. I have a mission to express myself. And, because I believe that only good things can come out of art, by default I feel I’m doing something good–even if the subject matter is uncomfortable."

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