A Gift of Madness at Hatbox Theatre

Written and performed by Nancy Knowles, A GIFT OF MADNESS is a solo play with masks and song about two artists, two traumas, and one family’s legacy of laughter.
By turns hilarious, heartbreaking, and transcendent, A GIFT OF MADNESS is a woman and her mother juggling grief, the absurd, and each other. Choosing how over if, two gritty artists swing fists at fate, thumb noses at demons. After tragedy, if you dare hope, the rest is strategy….
Friday and Saturday at 7:30, Sunday at 2:00.
Knowles explains: “Home alone during World War II while Dad was in the Army in Burma, for four years my mother nursed her dying firstborn, only to bury her at war's end. Weekly shock treatments (pregnant) helped her cope. A quarter century later, alone at home with my little brother, I was cooking our dinner when I heard the shot with which my little brother (the youngest of five) took his own life.”
“Madness begets art, just as art begets madness. Together they release story. This play is about what we pass on. It explores my hunch that of all my mother gave me, the most important to my art, and hence my survival, could be A GIFT OF MADNESS. It’s taken me decades to be able to tell our tale. I promise the resulting play's as entertaining as the subject matter is challenging.”