I’ve selected, translated, and annotated a choice selection of plays by Alphonse Allais for this book. First aired in the cabarets and theaters of Paris in the rollicking 1890s, these plays include satire, absurdism, he-she sketches, a burlesque operetta, even a play for dogs.  You’ll find ten monologues, three one-act plays, and twelve shorter skits drawn from Allais’s columns for Le Journal, Le Chat Noir, and other papers.  It also includes my introduction and notes, a frontispiece I drew, and photos from the original 1899 production of The Miserable Wretch and the Good Genie.  It’s 124 pages, and it’s available from Black Scat Books.  It’s proto-Dada at its most delicious!

(Posted by Doug Skinner)