Meet Mark Twain! The great American man of humor and sardonic wit is coming to Washington, NC’s TurnageTheater August 11 at 3 p.m. with “Day and Night,” a one-man show featuring Bill Hand as the immortal Samuel Clemens.
If you only know Mark Twain through his “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn,” you are in for some surprises. Twain moved easily from pure fun to gentle satire to scathing rage and commentary on the human race.
The program will list various works that Hand will draw from, but you never know exactly what that program will be, as he often selects them as the night develops. But the play is balanced between his lighter, more comic works in the first act and his more pointed, sharper commentaries on life and the world in the second.
“’Day,’ the first act, focuses on Twain’s earlier and best known works,” Hand said. “We’ll include a little biography and some of his more popular tales form excerpts of Tom Sawyer to his most famous short stories such as the Jumping Frog of Calavaras County or the ‘Wounded Buffalo’ tale from his book ‘Roughing It.’”
“Then, in the second act, we’ll visit more of his critical writings and observations – they’re full of wit and irony, and sometimes barely-controlled rage. It’s an act with some very powerful moments.” Among possible selections will be The War Prayer, On Being the Chief Love and Delight of God, and “A True Story,” about a slave woman who lived in New Bern during the Civil War after her children had been sold away from her.
Hand has performed as Mark Twain for many years and said he feels a close kinship to the author’s sensibilities and life. “Twain was a fierce friend and a dangerous foe,” he said. “His mind was always racing and for all his cynicism he loved life, despite the tragedy of his later years. And no one was a greater lover of their family than Twain was.”