Doug Skinner

Doug Skinner, born January 7, 1955, is an American composer, writer, and performer whose work spans theater, music, writing, and puppetry. His Broadway appearance came in 1987 with The Regard of Flight.

A long creative partnership with actor and clown Bill Irwin has been central to Skinner's theatrical career. He wrote and performed the music for a series of Irwin productions beginning with Murdoch in 1981, followed by The Regard of Flight in 1982, The Courtroom in 1985, The Clown Lecture in 2002, The Harlequin Studies in 2003, and The Regard Evening in 2004. As a solo performer, Skinner has worked as an actor, monologist, and occasional ventriloquist, presenting full shows including Pay Attention in 1984, An Attractive Production in 1985, and Eddie Unchained in 1993. He has also created puppet shows and videos in collaboration with performance and video artist Michael Smith, and regularly presents cartoon slide shows at Robert Sikoryak's long-running Carousel series in New York City.

Skinner's musical work extends to composing for dance companies, among them ODC/Dance in San Francisco and the Margaret Jenkins company. He has performed his songs regularly at New York City clubs, and during the 1990s he gigged frequently with the ukulele and vocal trio White Knuckle Sandwich. His instrument range is broad: he has played piano on the BBC, cello at the White House, and ukulele on the Joe Franklin Show. He also appeared as the character known as Toilet Citizen in the 1988 film Crocodile Dundee II.

In more recent years Skinner has directed considerable energy toward writing and lecturing, with a particular focus on Fortean subjects. His articles have appeared in Fortean Times, Fate, The Anomalist, INFO Journal, Strange Attractor Journal, Weirdo, and Nickelodeon, covering figures and topics such as Richard Shaver, John Keel, John Dee, Boris Vian, the early Fortean Society, hoaxes, and the cultural history of Darwinism in the United States. He wrote the column Let's Ask Skinner for Crimewave USA and the comic strip It's Fortean for the children's paper ZUZU. He has spoken at International Fortean Organization Fortfests and at Fortean Times UnConventions. His translation of the alchemical text Three Dreams by Giovanni Battista Nazari was published in 2003 by Opus Magnum Hermetic Sourceworks in Glasgow.

Skinner has produced an extensive body of translated and original work through Black Scat Books. His French translations include multiple volumes of writing by Alphonse Allais — among them the four-volume Captain Cap series, Selected Plays of Alphonse Allais, I Am Sarcey, The Alphonse Allais Reader, 2 + 2 = 5, and Let's Not Hit Each Other — as well as Considerations on the Death and Burial of Tristan Tzara by Isidore Isou, The Zombie of Great Peru by Pierre-Corneille Blessebois, Charles Cros: Collected Monologues, Upside-Down Stories by Charles Cros and Émile Goudeau, and The Pope's Mustard-Maker by Alfred Jarry. His original publications include The Unknown Adjective and Other Stories, Horoscrapes, The Doug Skinner Dossier, Sleepytime Cemetery: 40 Stories, and The Doug Skinner Songbook. He also writes occasionally for the online magazine nth position.