Roy Cockrum, 58, was an actor and a stage manager before he took his vows of poverty and became an Episcopal monk. When Cockrum won a $153 million Powerball pot, he pledged to fund theater projects that would otherwise never see the stage. 

The Goodman Theater in Chicago is one of the first recipients of a grant from the Ray Cockrum Foundation. Its 2015-16 play lineup will feature a five-hour adaption of the "2666," led by the Goodman's artistic director Robert Falls and playwright-in-residence Seth Bockley. The show will be fully funded to the expected tune of $1 million by Cockrum's grant.

Both the length and the provocative imagery of the novel, whose most famous section contains exhaustive descriptions of the rape and murder of women, are bound to cause challenges in the adaptation.

“I had been struggling with it for years as a passion project, not knowing whether it could ever be staged,” Robert Falls said in an interview with the New York Times. “When Roy told me about the kind of work he wanted to support, I said, ‘Roy, you’re talking to the right guy.’ ”

"2666" was published originally in Spanish in 2004 following the Chilean authors death, and in English translation in 2008.