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Published Work

Theatre Publications:

“The Decline Of Spengler” (New Directions 48, New York)
“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.

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

Salon Magazine

"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

"[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

"The perfect Joe Frank experience is driving down an unfamiliar highway alone at night. You turn on your radio and are greeted by a lush, resonant voice that lulls you into a seemingly simple tale of love: a man at an airport saying goodbye to his wife over the phone, which abruptly turns into a vision of betrayal, alienation and death - often from obscure disease - all brought about by some profound personal failing, which is redeemed at the last moment by a nearly transcendent moment of joy."

Salon

"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

"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

"A strange, different, wondrously offbeat, frequently hilarious, altogether brilliant piece of work..There's never been anything quite like it...Joe Frank is an audio Fellini."

The Los Angeles Times

"You don't have to close your eyes to appreciate Joe Frank's dense audio universe cascading out of your radio. It helps, though, because there are so many layers - of sound, philosophy, of reality-coursing through his dramas... Come to think of it, after awhile, you won't want to close your eyes because in Frank's short stories for the radio, the tension and pathos are as enveloping as they are intriguing... "

The Washington Post

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