Friends, My first message to Twain-L.

The best and most well-known of all one-person theatrical performances in
my opinion is Hal Holbrook's Mark Twain. I saw it a couple of times on TV
years ago, and I would say it is due for a repeat performance, on PBS at
least. Does anyone know if it is on Videotape? I read that Holbrook knew
the material so well that he changed the performance every time, adapting
it to the response of the particular audience. This would mean that even
if there is a video, it would only be one "take" on his remarkable
performance.

In 1970-71 (perhaps 72-73) in Jerusalem, I saw a performance of an actor
who also did a Mark Twain long monologue. He was an American, and the
performance was exciting. He was not as good an actor as Holbrook, but he
did something audacious in the last part of the evening. He opened the
performance to questions from the audience about events of today and
answered the questions as Mark Twain. I don't remember if he used the actual
words of Twain (all of Holbrook's performance is exact quotation from
the Twain corpus) that he felt served as appropriate answers to the
questions or if he improvised with what he felt Twain "would" have said.

Does anyone know the name of the actor I am talking about and if he is
still performing this piece?

Joseph Lukinsky