So I watched this documentary recently with the title of this post. It's not a very good documentary, but it deals with this diphtheria epidemic that hit during 1890-1900. The stories from those events were amazing, and there were two characters that I thought had to be used in a show at some point:
-The first was Mary Sweeney. This one's amazing; short and sweet. Basically, she's crazed from diphtheria. All she does all the time is take lots of cocaine and smash windows. Perfect! Eventually, she was institutionalized for her actions.
-The other character is a woman who was a famous opera singer in Europe. When her career began to wane, she moved to Wisconsin with her son to live in the country. She attempts to reignite her career by staging performances for the remaining wealthy class in the area. Very Chekhovian, right? Get this, though. It was said that she still had a beautiful, powerful voice, but since she lost her teeth and they had been replaced with wooden dentures, they would rattle when she sang. Soon, with progressive downfall, she begins to hear the voices of spirits. In an effort to entertain her delirium, her son makes a custom Ouija board for them to channel the voices. As there stagehouse begins to crumble and leak badly, the son steals four bags of concrete to patch the roof, and he's caught and summoned to court. At the hearing, when the mother rants and raves about spirits and anti-christian nonsense, she is institutionalized herself! Okay, this is a good part: so, she excapes, and is said to have fled to Chicago. Later, she pops up in a lawsuit, I believe, claiming that her neighbor is disturbing her by rehearsing his ventriloquist routine! Apparently, she was right.
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