Corning Community College’s Muse of Fire Theatre is proud to present, Is He Dead?, a new play by Mark Twain, adapted by David Ives, and directed by Mary Guzzy, on November 5, 6, and 7, 2009 at 8 p.m. in the Science Amphitheatre on the Spencer Hill campus in Corning, NY. An additional performance will be held on Sunday, November 8 at 2 p.m. Performances on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday are $10 for general admission and $5 for students and senior citizens 65 and older. A special benefit for CCC Campus Ministry will include a Dessert Theatre on Saturday. Coffee and dessert will be served at 6 p.m. in the Triangle Lounge, Commons Building. Barbara Snedecor, director of the Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, will speak and take questions on Twain’s life and times until roughly 7:30 p.m. in time for the 8 p.m. performance. All tickets for this very special event are $15.
Is He Dead? was obscure until just a few years ago when Shelly Fishkin, a Twain scholar in California, found it among Twain’s papers. With the brilliantly comic playwright David Ives, Fishkin had the play adapted for the modern stage and brought it to Broadway. Now Corning Community College and Muse of Fire director, Mary Guzzy, will bring Is He Dead? to Twain’s adopted home of Upstate New York.
Is He Dead? farcically explores the idea that a dead artist’s work is worth more than that of a living one. The students of masterful but debt-ridden French painter Jean-François Millet devise a scheme to solve their teacher’s financial woes by faking his death and passing him off as his own “widowed sister.” Immediately the prices of his art soar, and solvency seems within reach, but – is he dead? And if he is, how will he escape the romantic clutches of both a villainous moneylender and the father of his fiancée? How will he manage to live happily ever after with his true love, Marie? Through madcap escapades and clever twists Twain delivers the answers with his matchless sardonic wit and style.
Professor Mary Guzzy directs a cast of actors from Corning Community College and the surrounding community. Is He Dead? Features Trinidad Archuleta, Ashley Dominikoski, Eric Friedman, Mallery Gurnsey, James Mitchell, Alexandra Ober, Katie Owens, Isaac Quattlebaum, Samuel Rosenzweig, Anna Wheaton, and Gary Yoggy. Technical director is Ryan Spruck, set design by Tim Borden, and lighting design by Ellen Blagg.
For additional information and tickets, please call (607) 962-9448.
