“Joseph Knowles” was a theatrical piece I concocted for the Oberlin Dance Collective, back in 1977, back in San Francisco.  It was based on the story of Knowles, who stripped naked and entered the Maine woods one summer day in 1913, vowing to return after two months, fully dressed and in perfect health.  His progress was covered by the papers; he had to break game laws to survive; and he worked the vaudeville circuit after he emerged, dressed in his caveman get-up.  I was intrigued by the many social complexities simmering under his stunt, and put together an ensemble piece using press clippings, music, a gorilla costume, and much more.  Here are a couple of pages from my notebooks:

The performers wore t-shirts, each with a picture of Knowles.

And a couple of reviews; first from Dick Moore, San Francisco Bay Guardian, 3/10/77:

And next from Janice Ross, Artweek, 3/12/77:

I often performed this vent bit with Eddie back in the ’90s, including, if memory serves, a couple of TV appearances.  Here’s an excerpt:

Some drapery studies, from the sketchbook.

A skyline in Buenos Aires, from my hotel window.

These pinbacks are given to the first twelve who purchase Captain Cap, Volume 1.  I based the button on the only known photograph of Albert Caperon, the real Captain Cap.

Alphonse Allais was a peerless French humorist, celebrated posthumously by the Surrealists for his elegant style and disturbing imagination.  Among other things, he wrote a series of wonderful stories about his friend Albert Caperon.  In Allais’s hands, “Captain Cap” became an adventurer and inventor, with a disdain for bureaucracy and a heroic thirst for cocktails.  He collected the Cap stories in his last book, Captain Cap: His Adventures, His Ideas, His Drinks, in 1902.  It remains popular in France, but has never been translated into English.  So, I’m doing just that, in a series of chapbooks for Black Scat Books.

The first installment, Captain Cap Before the Electorate, contains Allais’s dossier on Caperon’s farcical run for parliament in 1893.  It’s published in a limited edition of 125, with illustrations and introduction by the undersigned, and comes with a free Cap campaign button for the first twelve customers.  You can cast that vote at Black Scat Books.