Miscellany

Jim Knable is an Experimentalist, meaning he likes to try things rather than think about trying them.

Herman Melville writes "I try all things; I achieve what I can." Jim Knable believes that Moby-Dick is a great American novel in the same way that The Brothers Karamazov is a great Russian Novel.

Jim Knable is a Pseudosymbolist. He wrote a manifesto about it when he was 23. In summary: Duality is for symbolists, symbols are for pseudosymbolists. We are all pseudosymbolists.

Jim Knable's work tends to be about the divine in human beings, without necessarily acknowledging the presence of the divine. He is interested in the mythic in the mundane, the epic in the intimate, and the development rather than just the birth of the soul.

Jim Knable is also a college and independent high school teacher. He has taught American Literature, English Comp, Expository Writing and Public Speaking at Marymount Manhattan College, Pace University, Fordham University, LIM College, Berkeley College and Yale and has mentored young playwrights and screenwriters through Young Playwrights, Inc. and Playwrights Project. Currently, he is teaching Television History at Pace.

Jim Knable has his BA from Yale University and MFA from NYU. At Yale, Jim was a proud member of The Society of Orpheus and Bacchus, a singing group cult.

Jim Knable was born in Tucson, Arizona, but left when he was 2 so has almost no memory of it.

In the spring and summer of 2000, Jim Knable was in Dresden, Germany with a few other Americans and lots of Germans to work on a collaborative theatre project. Due to disagreements between leadership and most of the group, the project collapsed on itself. In the meantime, Jim Knable, Shaun Neblett and other Americans and Germans organized a weekly Soul Kebab, an apartment-based party and performance venue, a chance for American, German and young artists of many other nationalities to express themselves and collaborate more effectively. When Jim Knable returned to New York, he continued the Soul Kebab tradition with friends and friends of friends. The need was different, the spirit was the same. The Soul Kebab celebrated 10 years of kebabing in 2010. It has also been held in Los Angeles by Steven Klein, once or twice in simultaneity with New York. The name Soul Kebab goes back to Dresden, where there are many Turkish Kebab houses, and many souls in development.

Jim Knable's younger brother is Sunny Knable, a tremendously talented composer and musician living in New York, as well. They have collaborated on a musical and a children's opera so far.