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How Mark Twain’s lost play got produced
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Fantasies do come true. Ask Shelley Fisher Fishkin, the Mark Twain scholar who discovered the manuscript of an unproduced and unpublished play by Twain while conducting research at UC Berkeley. She not only got Is He Dead? published, she saw it through to a Broadway production in an adaptation by David Ives, the cockeyed wit behind All in the Timing. With the West Coast premiere of Is He Dead? at International City Theatre in Long Beach, now through May 24—and both Twain and Ives unavailable for comment—I talked to Dr. Fishkin about the play.
JY: Your discovery of the manuscript is so serendipitous it almost sounds like a hoax.
SFF: My father used to say "accident favors the ready mind." The play was not unknown—a handful of scholars had read it over the years and had commented on it. But I was the first to see its potential and to be determined to realize that potential. Also, it's nice to think of it as my reward for "eating my spinach" as a scholar: only after plowing through nearly an entire file draw full of pretty awful stuff did I come upon this gem. The manuscripts were filed chronologically and this was the penultimate play in the drawer.
JY: Did you meet with any resistance at first, in attempting to get the play produced?
SFF: The Mark Twain Foundation (which owns the dramatic rights to Mark Twain's works) was happy to have me seek a production, but I had no idea how to get a play produced. The real serendipity in this train of events was probably my having a friend who knew Bob Boyett and suggested that I send him the manuscript. When Bob invited me to lunch a few months later when I was on the East Coast, I assumed it was to give me advice on how to find a producer. To my surprise—and delight—he said he wanted to produce it himself.
JY: Did David Ives "get it right" on the first try? Did you—or the producer—have input on the adaptation?
SFF: Nobody (except maybe Noel Coward when he wrote Blithe Spirit) gets it all right on the first try—but David Ives was brilliant at adapting this work for today's stage. There were two kitchen-table readings with actors of various drafts of Ives' adaptations in Bob Boyett's office. Boyett, Ives and I (and director Michael Blakemore, after he signed on) discussed what worked and what didn't. I was delegated by the Twain Foundation to monitor every aspect of the script and had to sign off on every change in the play. I rarely had to object to a line, but when I did, my views were treated with respect, and as a result some changes were made. I was the "anachronism police." Not all anachronisms were cut, but several were. It was a bit daunting to represent Mark Twain in this process. He wanted his play to be a success. But he also wanted it to remain his play. My job was to make sure that it was both.
JY: Have you had any feedback from that other Twain scholar, Hal Holbrook?
SFF: Hal Holbrook was the first person—aside from the editors at the Mark Twain project and my husband—to whom I showed the manuscript after I first got excited about it. It was important to me to get a reaction from someone who knew theatre as well as he knew Twain. Hal loved the play and said full speed ahead. His encouragement meant the world to me.
Now through May 24: Is He Dead?
International City Theatre
Long Beach Performing Arts Center
300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach, 90802
(562) 436-4610
More from Jordan:
Octavio Solis’ powerful ‘Lydia’ at Mark Taper Forum
Clever ‘Emilie’ at South Coast Repertory
‘The Laramie Project’ at Theatre Out in Fullerton
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