Coffee With David Hauptschein and Joseph Fosco
By Justin Hayford
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Hauptschein is perhaps best known for his “found text” performances, in which he invites people to read letters or diary entries onstage. Earlier this year he teamed up with WBEZ’s Ira Glass to broadcast stories pulled from the Web. Now he’s teamed up with composer and performance artist Joseph Fosco to put onstage what they call a “nonvirtual chat room.” The two sit with anyone from the audience who cares to join them; on opening night that number ranged between 10 and 15. Fosco pulls a series of discussion topics from a hat, some written by the artists, some solicited from audience members before the show. Once the topic is announced, people discuss it until Hauptschein’s egg timer goes off. Then it’s on to the next topic.
Just before last year’s Democratic National Convention, ImprovOlympic staged a similar event, with performers Paul Krassner, Aaron Freeman, Del Close, and Jeff Dorchen sitting around talking. With these bold, unapologetic people onstage, the evening soared. But Coffee featured a dozen or so apprehensive, unenthusiastic audience members offering for the most part facile, unassailable assertions: all marriages involve sacrifice, corporate-franchise coffee shops are boring, people need to think for themselves. By comparison the self-described pagan Del Close, delighting in the Irish “troubles” because monotheists are killing monotheists, looked like an absolute freak.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Coffee with David Hauptschein and Joseph Fosco photo by Daniel Guidara; Jurua photo by Joe Zlolkowski.
