Our series of dueling dispatches from the stage and the audience continues. Featuring a very enthusiastic Scientologist! And pussy! (More information on Mike Daisey’s monologues here.)

Mike Daisey (performer): Creating the outline and preparing today was easier than the first monologue, as I’ve figured out now how to navigate, and it showed in performance—we learned from the first night, and there was a lighter, defter touch to every moment, and because of this the show was much more delightful for me than the night before. One exception: in the blackout after the monologue and before the curtain call I ran into the table trying to get around it, which is embarrassing because it’s the only blocking I have. The first person I talked to after the show was a very enthusiastic Scientologist who is looking forward to Sunday’s show on L. Ron Hubbard immensely. I agreed that I was looking forward to the show as well.

Anthony Hecht (audience member): The theater was nearly full for the second night of Mike Daisey’s Great Men of Genius at CHAC, and, as my companion noted, “there are a lot of hair and earth tones in here.â€� A lot of corduroy too, and, for some reason, Hawaiian shirts. Before the performance began, the audience jabbered while one whole row of patrons quietly read books—one a hardbound graphic novel and one a smaller book, presumably the Communist Manifesto. They must have thought it was Brecht night.

Instead, Daisey focused his gaze on P.T. Barnum. We learned that Barnum gave the world terms like “jumbo sized,â€� “Siamese twins,â€� and was responsible for making opera popular in the United States. (Is opera popular in the United States?) Did you also know that Barnum’s family crafted an elaborate lie (a “humbugâ€�) that they told P.T. until he was a teenager, just for fun? Then they took him to a swamp and told him it was all a big joke, and they laughed and laughed. Good times! Or that he started his own newspaper called the Herald of Freedom soon after, but had to shut it down after he was sued for libel four or five times and briefly imprisoned? Me, I knew about the Siamese twins thing, but not the rest of it.

Daisey closely related aspects of Barnum’s personality and work to his own life and work, from his days as a Star Trek geek to his more recent work with the burlesque performers of New York. Barnum was first and foremost a showman, and, in Daisey’s eyes, much more than the huckster he’s commonly thought to be. Not only did Barnum never actually say “There’s a sucker born every minute,â€� but he believed the opposite. Barnum had deep respect for the intellect of his audience. He didn’t think they truly believed that the 80-year-old slave woman he was trotting around the country was actually 160 years old and had once been George Washington’s nurse, but he understood that they wanted to see her for themselves, and, more importantly, he understood they would pay him to do so.

Daisey returned to this last point several times throughout the performance—the money. “It is difficult and challenging work to be without shame,â€� he says, and, if done properly, it can be quite profitable.

For the record, I counted forty-nine swear words in tonight’s show—at least seven of those in quotes. I think that’s fewer than last night, and 60 to 70 percent of those were used for direct and great effect. I liked the swearing. The best use of swearing tonight: “Are you there God? It’s me, Judy Blume, spanking your ass,â€� followed closely by, “… and then her pussy says, `Hello, I love you.’”

Read the Great Men of Genius Debriefing #1: Bertolt Brecht here.