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Mark your diary
Updated On: 19 November, 2019 09:42 AM IST | Mumbai | Shunashir Sen
A play re-imagines a humorous talk that author Mark Twain had once given in Bombay.
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Vinay Sharma as Mark Twain.
You might not know this, but Mark Twain is regarded as the father of modern stand-up comedy. What happened is that in the later stages of his life, the American author was faced with a financial crisis. So he went around the world earning money through speaking engagements in different cities, where he sent the audience into ruptures with his characteristic wit, while also offering trenchant criticism of regressive ideologies. One of these talks was held at the now-defunct Novelty Theatre in Bombay in 1896. There is unfortunately no recorded history of what he said there. But Canadian playwright Gabriel Emanuel has gone through both the author’s fiction and non-fiction works, and also the observations on India that he made during his three-month stay in the country, to reimagine that talk in the form of a play. It’s called Mark Twain: Live in Bombay, and will be staged in the city this weekend.
Veteran thespian Vinay Sharma tells us that when Emanuel had sent him the script asking whether he’d be interested in performing it, it took him back instantly to childhood memories of the humour that Twain displayed in iconic books like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Sharma says, “I also realised that I had a passing resemblance to the author, and wrote back to Gabriel asking him to tweak the script a bit to suit contemporary human behaviour. It just felt to me that many of the things that Twain had spoken about over 100 years ago are relevant even today. Our society hasn’t changed that much, it seems.”
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