‘Is He Dead?’: Mark Twain’s short story comes to life
Fast-paced comedy opens Thurs. at AWC
Arizona Western College’s Theater Department will present a play adapted from a short story written in 1898 by Samuel Clemens, whose pen name was Mark Twain.
The play, “Is He Dead?” will be performed Thursday, Friday and Saturday, at 7:30 each night, in the AWC Theater, and again Sunday at 2:30 p.m., also in the theater.
The short story lay undiscovered inside a dusty notebook until 2002 when it was found and adapted into a play by David Ives. That
IF YOU GO
“Is He Dead?” WHEN: Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 p.m.
WHERE: Arizona Western College Theater
COST: Tickets purchased at the door for $5: free with AWC ID
same year, it was produced on Broadway and gained critical acclaim as an entertaining comedy.
Clemens, AKA Mark Twain, was a jack of all trades when it came to writing. He was a novelist, humorist, short story author and essayist. He is best known for his novels, “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn”, which have remained popular for generations.
The play’s cast found it exciting experiencing another side of his writing. The play transports the audience to Paris during the late 1800s and invites them into the comical world of Jean-Francois Millet, the main character.
Ann Wilkinson, the play’s director, explained the plot this way: “The play was definitely ahead of its time by about 100 years. The story centers around a young painter named JeanFrancois Millet who has a girlfriend, Marie Leroux. Millet owes a good sum of money to the villain in the play, art dealer Bastien Andre. The villain forces Millet to either pay his debt or allow him to marry Millet’s girlfriend, Marie.
“In order to escape the villainous dealer’s threats, Millet fakes his death and becomes Widow Daisy Tillou, his ‘twin sister,’” she said. “The play moves