Tropic of Cancer and Naked Lunch had challenged literary censorship in America, but there would be many more in the new era of freedom of speech. Michael McClure was an integral member of the Beat scene in San Francisco in the fifties, (see page 31), and he segued easily into the new Psychedelic Era that was beginning to coalesce in San Francisco in the sixties. The Beard brought to the stage a raw, explicit look at sex, violence, and conventional morality, exploring a relationship between Billy the Kid and Jean Harlow in the afterlife. Performed in San Francisco in 1968, the cast members were arrested and jailed on fourteen consecutive nights, due to their depiction of simulated sex in the third act. Michael McClure continues to write plays, novels, and books of poetry.