Kockroach: Tyler Knox flips Kafka

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Hate roaches, but I love noir. And Kafka. So I couldn't resist Kockroach, Tyler Knox's quirky, well-written, utterly original spin on Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis. In Kafka's story, a traveling salesman wakes up one morning to discover that he has turned into a roach. In Kockroach, the metamorphosis goes the other way.
It is the mid-1950s, and in a fleabag hotel off Times Square, Kockroach, perfectly content with life as an insect, awakens to discover that somehow he's become, of all things, a human. This tragic turn of events would be enough to fling a more highly evolved creature into despair, but cockroaches know no despair. Firmly entrenched in the present tense, they are awesome coping machines, and so Kockroach copes. Step by step, he learns the ways of humans—how to walk, how to talk, how to wear a jaunty brown fedora.


Check it out.

Comments

Colleen Thompson said…
A roach in a fedora. All I can say is "RAID!"
7:45 PM
TJ Bennett said…
I saw Metamorphasis on stage, staring Brad Davis, back in the 80's in Los Angeles. It was weird even then, in a very interesting, experimental way. Nothing like seeing Brad Davis wiggling and squirming around on the stage floor, sweating copiusly, legs and arms up in the air. No, nothing like it at allll.

TJB
10:55 PM
Joni Rodgers said…
Off topic, but Brad also shows up in a book I worked on last year -- Rue McClanahan's memoir MY FIRST FIVE HUSBANDS...AND THE ONES WHO GOT AWAY. Brad was one of the ones who got away. They had a little fling and remained dear friends until he died (which was, sadly, not long after he did that play.)
7:56 PM
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