This one-man literary portrait began as a senior thesis project under the tutelage of Dr. Edward Strother at Ball State University in 1986. I previously discovered Hal Holbrook's brilliant Mark Twain Tonight! as a schoolboy, and made good on the opportunities to attend performances and meet Mr. Holbrook in 1980 and 1990.
I began fashioning my own play in 1981 and have not stopped tinkering with it since. It debuted at a YWCA camp in 1981, and has since been performed in schools, churches, in summer stock, and regional theatre.
Act One takes place onstage in 1895, as Twain embarks on his "debt tour". In Act Two, we find him in his study, working on his "Autobiography". The primary difference between my version and Holbrook's is that blessed second act. 1905 marked Twain's seventieth "escape from the gallows", and by setting him offstage, minus his Twain celebrity persona he so happily adopted, we meet Mr. Clemens. Act Two covers some biographical material, The United States of Lyncherdom, the loss of his wife and daughter, fusing into the shattering Eve's Diary. It is material that Twain never used onstage -and it's undiluted Twain social commentary, and universal expressions of loss, the meaning of life, and Man's relationship to God.
Over the years, as the photos indicate, the stage makeup has progressed as well. I hope to continue portraying him well into my own seventies, as Mr. Holbrook has so brilliantly done. Nothing has surpassed the joy of portraying Twain onstage.