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Published Work

Theatre Publication:

“A Tour Of The City” (Tanam Press, New York)

Three of Frank’s radio plays were produced for theatre:

“A Tour of the City” by Theatre Anima in Montreal, Canada, translated into French, which included performers from Cirque du Soleil.
“Rent-a-Family” by Stages Trilingual Theatre in Los Angeles.
“Jerry’s World Onstage” by Infernal Bridegroom Productions, Houston, Texas

“The Decline Of Spengler” published in New Directions in Prose and Poetry 48, published in 1984, New York)

Joe Frank is also the author of “The Queen of Puerto Rico and Other Stories,” a collection of short stories based on his radio work published in 1993 by William Morrow.

Reviews of Joe’s Work

"Joe Frank is a singular voice in radio. What he has done is hypnotic, psychotic, neurotic, sad, terrifying, and some of the funniest stuff I have ever heard anywhere. I can't think of another radio performer who has come close to achieving this kind of alchemy."

Charlie Kaufman, filmmaker

"Joe Frank's often bizarre scenarios for the mind are decidedly offbeat radio fare...part surreal satire, part bizarre meditation, part fever dream."

Los Angeles Daily News

"Frank [is] the apostle of radio noire... His free-form radio dramas... are sometimes moving, often funny, but always manage to confound the listeners' expectations. A maestro of verité, Frank exploits the power of radio..."

Rolling Stone

"Frank has created a series of dead-pan radio monologues so sharp and intelligent that during the quiet bits you can almost hear God taking notes."

The UK Guardian

"In an arena in which formats are sacrosanct, Joe Frank has charted new territory with his literate, frequently bizarre, wildly funny essays and parodies... He can be funny, poignant, serious and off the wall - sometimes within the framework of the same piece. Unique is one word to describe it. Brilliant is another."

Los Angeles Times

"Joe Frank is an invaluable warrior who stands in defense of our fears, our vanities and our forever-eroding sense of ourselves. He transforms the everyday banality of the human comedy into an inspired weirdness that feeds on pathos and irony, and feels a lot like revelation. Sartre would have called it nausea; Frank makes it art."

Spin Magazine

"[Joe Frank is] the most imaginative, literate monologist in radio today... If a microphone could capture the nether recesses of the modern psyche, it would sound like Frank's absurd comical excursions: Radio Vertigo."

The Village Voice

"Frank wanders deeply into the unconscious, producing Dionysian stories with a fairy-tale intensity whose effect is often funny, disturbing and deeply memorable."

Salon Magazine

"Radio's Prince of Darkness Rules the Freeways. [Frank is] alternately dark, bizarre and very funny - but always hard to turn off."

The Wall Street Journal

"[Frank] travels in the emotional landscape of Bergman and Fellini; there's a tension and sense of mystery halfway between Kafka and Chandler... and a satiric edge worthy of Firesign Theatre and Woody Allen... No one else in radio is doing what Frank does."

The Washington Post

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