Salem native and author Lance Schaubert is bringing a performative reading of his novel Bell Hammer to the Salem Community Theatre Saturday night.
Schaubert has already done performances at the New York City Poetry Festival and at a Joplin festival and wanted to bring this type of performance back home to Salem.
“Essentially you want to go into this expecting a one-man show. It is going to be a one-act length. It is not just going to be a dude with a podium and a book droning on like poetry reading in a coffee shop. It will be a performance. If you buy the $5 guaranteed seats you will get discounts on all six of the books we will have there. But there is no reason to do that, it is free. Probably not for kids. There is some profanity in the novel. It’s about blue-collar workers in Southern Illinois.”
Schaubert says the book looks at the consequences of an oil company poisoning a water aquifer.
“It is four generations of carpenters kinda chasing an oil company out of Southern Illinois because of that derrick situation. It grows out of this fun-loving good ole boy we prank each other in the breakroom. So it is lots and lots of stories your grandfather may have told you about pranks he played on their neighbors and things like that. It grew out of stories from Jerry Schaubert and Dean Wiggins and also my wife’s grandparents. About 50 to 60-percent of it is true. The rest is made up. It is a novel.”
The Salem Theatre opens at six. The performative reading is at seven. The book signing will follow.
Schaubert is an artist chaplain in New York City. He plans to continue writing and working on other multimedia projects.
