Josephine: The Mouse Singer

ISBN: 0811207552

Author: McClure, Michael

Condition: New

Michael McClures Josephine: The Mouse Singer, a play in verse, is based on a story of Franz Kafkas, 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. McClures exuberant, inspired adaptation, in fact, reminds us of the bizarre whimseys Kafkas tales were originally intended to be. The first New York production of Josephine: The Mouse Singer, in November 1978 at the WPA Theatre, received The Village Voices prestigious Obie award for the Best Play of the Year. As so often happens Off-Off-Broadway, the Voices 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.