On Friday, August 5th and Saturday, August 6th, The Mark Twain House & Museum turns up the heat on summer with R-Rated Twain. Featuring some of Mark Twain's spiciest, salacious and shocking works that span topics not fit to print (or even say in public). Included in the naughty hilarity will be a new short comedy Mark Twain: Ladies Man by West Hartford playwright David Ryan Polgar.
The "adults-only" staged reading, performed by Sea Tea Improv and directed by Twain House Communications Manager Jacques Lamarre, was such a hit when first presented in January that the museum is taking the show on the road to the Hole in the Wall Theater, 116 Main Street in New Britain. Be prepared to blush, leave the kids at home and wash your ears out with soap!
The show will take the audience through the naughtiest puns, poems, parodies, and passages that Mark Twain wrote. SuffIce To say the material covered by Twain in these writings is not suitable for most publications, family audiences or polite society.
There will also be hilariously biting take-downs of Twain's enemies culled from the recently published, bestselling Autobiography of Mark Twain. As Twain said, "There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined," so the historic house is looking forward to letting its hair down and introducing the public to these hysterical and deliciously deviant lesser-known works.
David Ryan Polgar's short comedy Mark Twain: Ladies Man resurrects "The Lincoln of our Literature" in a modern pick-up bar. Brought back from the dead in order to access his legendary library of one-liners, Twain acts as a "wing-man" for a socially inept single guy desperately seeking love. The comedy, featuring dozens of Twain's best-loved quips, will feature Michael Eck, Liza Pross and Dan Russell. Polgar is the author of the short play Some Kind of Modern Love which was premiered by the Connecticut Heritage Productions and has since been expanded to a full-length play that received a reading at the Buttonwood Tree in Middletown, CT.
The blushing begins at 8:00 pm on Friday, August 5th and Saturday, August 6th. Due to the nature of the material, all guests must be 17 or over or attend with a parent or guardian. Hole in the Wall is located at 116 Main Street in downtown New Britain, within walking distance of much parking and great restaurants. For tickets, call Hole in the Wall at (860) 229-3049. Reservations are strongly recommended. Any available seats will be sold at the door on a first-come, first-served basis.
The show's performers are all members of Sea Tea Improv. The troupe of eleven players, trained by Hartford Stage Company and the Upright Citizens Brigade, dazzles Hartford and beyond on a regular basis with witty, raucous interpretations of audience suggestions a la Whose Line is it Anyway? Besides their monthly packed houses at the Brew-Ha-Ha, Sea Tea Improv has performed in illustrious locations such as the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Connecticut Forum, the Funnybone, the Science Center, the Hartford Stage and Playhouse on Park. Sea Tea was an official selection of the Providence Improv Festival and has been featured on WNPR's Colin McEnroe Show, ESPN, Better Connecticut, Mass Appeal, and Connecticut Style
The Mark Twain House & Museum has restored the author's Hartford, Connecticut, home, where the author and his family lived from 1874 to 1891. Twain wrote his most important works during the years he lived there, including Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
In addition to providing tours of Twain's restored home, a National Historic Landmark, the institution offers activities and educational programs that illuminate Twain's literary legacy and provide information about his life and times.
The house and museum at 351 Farmington Ave. are open Monday through Saturday, 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m., and Sunday, noon-5:30 p.m. For more information, call 860-247-0998 or visit www.marktwainhouse.org.
Programs at The Mark Twain House & Museum are made possible in part by support from the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism and the Greater Hartford Arts Council.
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