Josephine

Michael McClure’sJosephine: The Mouse Singer, a play in verse, is based on a story of Franz Kafka’s, “Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk.” Kafka and McClure? And yet the combination is bound to work, for in essence both writers in their different ways ponder the trials of the artist in an arbitrary universe. McClure’s exuberant, inspired adaptation, in fact, reminds us of the bizarre whimseys Kafka’s tales were originally intended to be. The first New York production ofJosephine: The Mouse Singer, in November 1978 at the WPA Theatre, receivedThe Village Voice’s prestigious Obie award for the Best Play of the Year. “As so often happens Off-Off-Broadway,” theVoice’s citation reads. “it is a play that was performed for only three weekends, but it is a play of extraordinary wit and grace and wisdom, at once utterly charming and almost unbearably painful, a play which tells us that the relationship between artists and their society is often intolerable, but which also tells us that for a society to endure without its artists is impossible.”

Author Biography

Michael McClure, a founding member of the Beat Generation, has long been noted for the popularity of his dynamic poetry performances. At twenty-two he gave his first poetry reading at the legendary Six Gallery event in San Francisco, where Allen Ginsberg first read Howl. He is the co-author of the song “Mercedes Benz” and often performs with musicians, notably Ray Manzarek and Terry Riley.