Twain Tales

By Jim Quinn
and Dave Frieze

Produced: February, 2004
Bridgewater State College
Director: Jim Quinn
Scenery: Arthur Dirks
Facility:Campus Center Auditorium
Notes:

The premise of this original script is Samuel Clemens' return years later to a gathering of the people he wrote about in one community, framed by a lecture-circuit retelling in his later years. The children at the gathering reenacted many of Mark Twain's stories. An onstage string band backed songs and underscore.

The piece developed in relation to design ideas, but we began with a large old family home on the river. The porch-corner gazebo was an ideal answer for the band, complete with corrugated cardboard shingles. It's a children's show and I wanted a gimmick, so I added a steamboat with a rotating wheel and lights that tracked across in back of hill-like ground rows. I framed the setting in fall folliage cut legs and borders. An additional challenge was the enactment of the river story. For that a "raft" "floated" across the orchestra pit.