Theater Review: The Whipping Man -- Hartford Stage

Josh Landay, Che Ayende and Leon Addison Brown. Photo T. Charles Erickson

The Line Between Family, Freedom is a Scar on the Back
By Lauren Yarger
Superb set design by Andromache Chalfant, skillful direction by Hana S. Sharif and strong performances enhance a sharp script by Matthew Lopez to create one of the best performances on a Connecticut Stage this year.

It's Hartford Stage's The Whipping Man, a tale of family and freedom set in the days right after the Civil War. A wounded Caleb (Josh Landay) arrives at the burned-out remains of his family estate following the surrender of his army at Appomattox. Former slave Simon (Leon Addison Brown) guards the property, awaiting the return of his wife and daughter, who left with Caleb's father.

John (Che Ayende), another former slave and boyhood chum of Caleb's arrives bringing much needed food and supplies "discovered" at nearby estates. John is on the run, but takes refuge at his former home. When Caleb refuses to go to an army hospital, Simon amputates his gangrenes leg. Unable to care for himself, the former master's son now has to remember to ask nicely when he needs something instead of barking orders.

A twist to the story is the family's Jewish beliefs. Caleb abandoned God and prayer in a fox hole, but Simon holds on to his faith and decides to celebrate a Seder dinner, improvised like the first one, with what they scrounge. Faith, friendship and family roots all are pulled up as the truth about what has taken place at the house, and John's periodic trips to see the plantation's "whipping man" for punishment are revealed.

The writing in this 90-minute, intermissionless play is taut and Lopez develops compelling characters while building an atmosphere of tension and suspense. This production, particularly the massive house, in ruins like the family and the hopes of the South,  closely mirrors the stellar version which played at the Manhattan Theatre Club and took home the Outer Critics Circle's John Gassner Award for Lopez. Marcus Doshi's lighting design and Broken Chord Collective's original music and sound design greatly enhance the dramatic presentation. Don't miss it.

The Whipping Man plays through March 18 at Hartford Stage, 50 Church St., Hartford. Evening performances are Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday at 7:30 pm and  Friday and Saturday at 8 pm.  Matinee performances are Sundays and selected Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 pm.  For tickets call the box office at 860-527-5151 or visit www.hartfordstage.org.

CT Arts Connections Week of March 5-11

At the HSO
HSO MASTERWORKS SERIES: RUSSIAN MASTERS
with Carolyn Kuan, music director & conductor; Sirena Huang, violin and HSO artist in residence
Thursday March 8, 2012 │ 7:30 p.m. 
Friday, March 9, 2012 │ 8:00 p.m.
Saturday, March 10, 2012 │ 8:00 p.m.
Sunday, March 11, 2012 │ 3:00 p.m.
Belding Theater │ The Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts
Program: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto in D Major; Modest Mussorgsky: Night on Bald Mountain; Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 9, Op. 70
Ticket Information: Tickets range in price from $35.50-$70.50. Student tickets are $10. On Saturday, March 10, $25 tickets are available for patrons age 40 and under. To purchase tickets or for more information, please contact HSO ticket services at (860) 244-2999 or visit www.hartfordsymphony.org.


At the Kate
On Thursday, March 15^th at 7:30 pm Maura O’Connell performs at The Kate.

Since moving from her homeland of Ireland to Nashville, this internationally-acclaimed stylist has applied her luminescent voice to the songs of John Hiatt, Janis Ian, Tom Waits, Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin Carpenter and dozens of other song poets. Along the way, she has earned a Grammy Award nomination and multi-platinum sales success in her native Ireland, and performed with artists as varied as Van Morrison, Nanci Griffith, Dolly Parton, Bonnie Raitt, and The Chieftains. Don't miss your chance to hear this exquisite voice in a setting sure to show off her gorgeous alto at it's best. Tickets are $30.

On Thursday, March 15^th at 7:30 pm come listen to stunning voice of Maura O’Connell at The Kate. Tickets are $30.


At Fairfield University
Fairfield University’s Bennett Center for Judaic Studies presents a staged reading of the play, The Red Box,  a love story exploring the rarely discussed subject of homosexual persecution during the Holocaust, on Tuesday, March 27, 2012, at 7:30 p.m. Free and open to the public, the event will take place at the Wien Experimental Theater, located in the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts on the campus of Fairfield University. To reserve a seat, call 203-254-4000, ext. 2066.


At Wesleyan
WesleyanUniversity’s Music Department and Center for the Arts present a performance by the Jay Hoggard Quartet on Saturday, April 28, 2012 at 8pm in CrowellConcert Hall, located at 50 Wyllys Avenue on the Wesleyan campus in Middletown. Admission for the performance by the Jay Hoggard Quartet is $15 for the general public; $12 for senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, and non-Wesleyan students; and $6 for Wesleyan students. Tickets are available online at http://www.wesleyan.edu/cfa, by phone at (860) 685-3355, or in person at the Wesleyan University Box Office, located in the Usdan University Center, 45 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown.

Goodspeed will Honor Chenoweth

Goodspeed Musicals will honor Tony Award-winner Kristin Chenoweth, who appeared as Annie Draper in Goodspeed’s production of Strike Up The Band, with The Goodspeed Award for Outstanding Contribution to Musical Theatre at its Gala on Aug. 11.
Previous honorees include Julie Andrews, Martin Charnin, Ira Gershwin,Jerry Herman, William Ivey Long, Thomas Meehan, Michael P. Price, Gerald Schoenfeld, Stephen Schwartz, Susan Stroman, Charles Strouse, Tommy Tune and Paul Williams.

Celebrate the Irish at Ivoryton Benefit

Join Ivoryton Playhouse favorite Michael McDermott and his group, Cead Mile Failte, to celebrate Celtic culture and heritage through stories and song 7 pm Saturday, March 10.

The evening will be filled with traditional Irish music including "That's An Irish Lullaby", "Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms", "Star Of The County Down", "Carrickfergus", and, of course, "Danny Boy". And Michael will be sharing some of his favorite stories as well as a little bit of blarney!

Michael has been seen many times at the Playhouse – most recently in The Producers and The Irish…and How they Got that Way. He has been performing with Cead Mile Failte for several years and says, “"Cead Mile Failte means A Hundred Thousand Welcomes in Irish Gaelic. This has always been a saying that has warmed and inspired my heart.

For me, the month of March is a time of renewed hope, that feeling of spring just around the corner. We celebrate St. Patrick's Day and feel the weather change with the old saying, "in like a lion out like a lamb" when strong gusts of wind push out winter and warmer, greener days are joyfully welcomed!

Because of this inspiration from nature, combined with my deep love for Irish music, the group "Cead Mile Failte" was formed. As a group, we strive to create that feeling in our concerts -the feeling that all are welcomed to share in the stories and music that the Irish tell so well. At our concerts you will find friendly hospitality, good conversation, and great music – a hundred thousand welcomes!”

Tickets are $50 and include hearty Irish food (corned beef and cabbage potato skins, scones and more) and of course, Guinness!

To book tickets, call 860.767.7318 or visit www.ivorytonplayhouse.org. Seating is limited.

Water By the Spoonful Selected as ACTA Finalist

Zabryna Guevara, Armando Riesco. Photo: T. Charles Erickson

Water By The Spoonful by Quiara Alegria Hudes, which had its world premiere last fall at Hartford Stage has been named a finalist for The American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award, recognizing playwrights for the best scripts that premiered professionally outside New York City during 2011.

The top award of $25,000 and two citations of $7,500 each, plus commemorative plaques, will be presented March 31 at Actors Theatre of Louisville during the Humana Festival of New American Plays. At $40,000, Steinberg/ATCA is the largest national new play award of its kind.

ATCA began in 1977 to honor new plays produced at regional theaters outside New York City, where there are many awards. No play is eligible if it has gone on to a New York production within the award year. Since 2000, the award has been generously funded by the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust.

The finalists:

 “Water By The Spoonful” by Quiara Alegria Hudes. A soldier returns from the Iraqi war and struggles to put aside the demons that haunt him. His mother, a recovering heroin addict, battles her own demons with other recovering addicts in an Internet chat room. The boundaries of love, family and community are stretched across time, generations and cyberspace as birth families splinter and online families collide.

“Annapurna,” by Sharr White, is a visceral and profound meditation on loss and the longevity of love. It reunites a mortally ill cantankerous poet who has moved to the Colorado mountains and the ex-wife he has not seen in 20 years who wants a reckoning if not a reconciliation. The play premiered in November at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco.

 “Edith Can Shoot Things And Hit Them,” by A. Rey Pamatmat, bowed last spring at the Humana Festival. This moving, bittersweet play portrays an especially untraditional family made up of three young misfits: a brilliant 16-year-old and his precocious 12-year-old sister abandoned by their widowed father to raise themselves, and the brother’s lover who runs from a family unaccepting of his nascent homosexuality. Their fanciful bonding, resilience and realization of their limitations results in an uplifting and meaningful comic drama infused with empathy and wry humor. 

 “On The Spectrum,” by Ken LaZebnik, depicts a young man with Asperger’s Syndrome passing as “typical” after years of mainstreaming and therapy. He connects with a woman who proudly champions her autism as a difference, not a disorder. This love story reveals the contradictions between finding success as oneself and finding success on the world’s terms, and the conflict between the desire for acceptance and the desire for achievement. Among the choices: live in a fantastic world of the mind or join the more mundane society that typecasts you as your illness. The work premiered in November at Mixed Blood Theatre in Minneapolis.

“Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World,” by Yussef El Guindi, is a gentle romantic comedy wrapped around a serious examination of issues facing today’s new immigrants, dilemmas that resonate for every generation’s newcomers. An Egyptian immigrant who drives a cab strikes up a romance with a quirky American-born waitress, but the clash of cultures is only the hook El Guindi uses to explore the diversity of opinions even within one ethnic group as they struggle with assimilation and a newly-minted belief in the promise of the American Dream. It premiered in June at ACT Repertory in Seattle.

 “A Twist of Water,” by Caitlin Montanye Parrish, is a sensitive drama of domestic relationships seamlessly fused with an examination of social issues. A single white father tries to come to terms with his black, adopted teenage daughter after the death of his longtime husband, the man whom the daughter considers her real Dad. When the girl seeks out her birth mother, the father’s relationship with her is pressed to the breaking point. This play speaks about forgiveness, about knowing our parents as human beings, about failing our children in spite of our every effort, about loss and love and the triumph of courage that allows us to go on with our lives. The play premiered in February at the Route 66 Theatre in Chicago. 

These six finalists were selected from 27 eligible scripts submitted by ATCA members. They were evaluated by a committee of 12 theater critics, led by chairman Wm. F. Hirschman, FloridaTheaterOnStage.com. Other committee members are Misha Berson, Seattle Times; Bruce Burgun, Bloomington Herald Times and Back Stage (Ind.); Michael Elkin, Jewish Exponent (Pa.); Pam Harbaugh, Florida Today (Melbourne); Elizabeth Keill, Independent Press (Morristown, N.J.); Jerry Kraft, aislesay.com (Port Angeles, Wash.); Julius Novick, freelancer (New York City); Wendy Parker, The Village Mill (Midlothian, Va.); David Sheward, Back Stage (New York); Herb Simpson, totaltheater.com and capitalcriticscircle.com (Geneseo, N.Y.) and Tim Treanor, DC Theater Scene (Washington, DC). 

Since the inception of ATCA's New Play Award, honorees have included Lanford Wilson, Marsha Norman, August Wilson, Arthur Miller, Mac Wellman, Adrienne Kennedy, Donald Margulies, Lynn Nottage, Moises Kaufman and Craig Lucas. Last year’s honoree was Bill Cain for “9 Circles.” For a full list of 35 years of winners and runners-up, go to www.americantheatrecritics.org and click on Steinberg-ATCA under Awards. 

Quick Hit Theater Review: Odysseus D.O.A.

The cast of Odysseus D.O.A. Photo Gerry Goddstein

Odysseus D.O.A.

Written and Directed by Stephen Svoboda

Connectiut Repertory Theatre 

Summary:

The regional premiere of Svoboda’s journey into the world of AIDS juxtaposed with the voyage home of classic hero Odysseus. 30-year-old writer Elliot  Hayes (John Bixler) has developed complications from the disease which have left him unable to speak except in short phrases. Obsessed with writing his story, which sounds a great deal like that of Odysseus, Elliot checks into the hospital over the objections of his overprotective mother (soap star Kim Zimmer), from whom he hasn’t been separated since his diagnosis.


Dr. Roberts (Will Graziano) doesn’t give them much hope and head nurse Dorothy (Maggie Sulka) offers more rules and medication than sympathy. Elliot’s arrival, with the oppressive, if well intentioned support of his mother, soon sparks a community of friendship among the patients. They include Resean (Desmond Thorne), a transvestite obsessed with soap operas, focusing on getting better and reclaiming Erica Kane, his daughter named in tribute to his favorite soap star, from foster care; Maha (Briana Maia), a young girl whose only fond memory of her mother is a birthday trip to McDonalds, Nick (Anthony J. Goes), a vulgar ruffian in denial about the illness which has robbed him of his sight and Adam Collins (Coles Prince), drifting in and out of consciousness while he waits for the end.


Elliot and Adam find love despite obstacles, primary among which is Adam’s estranged mother (Jan Radcliff), whose selfish needs for reconciliation lead her to ban Elliot from the room and to keep Adam hooked up to life support contrary to his wishes. Each of the characters takes on a second identity from Homer’s Odyssey in Elliot’s ever-present story journal. 

Highlights:

What appears at the start to be merely “another play about AIDS” soon distinguishes itself as a compelling work with surprisingly likable characters. Community, rather than the disease which brings them together emerges as the theme and Elliot’s voyage become less a reproduction of the voyage of a hero and more a depiction of everyone’s journey and the difference one can make through caring.


Svoboda, directing his work, gets some very strong performances from the ensemble, particularly Bixler, who communicates volumes with short phrases, then morphs into the articulate reading of his story. Also standing out is Radcliff who manages to show a compassionate, caring side to someone, who on the surface, appears as cold as ice. The scenes where the patients swirl hospital screens and board a hospital bed in full sail to depict Odysseus at sea are really quite clever. (Allison McGrath designs the set which smoothly blends modern and ancient elements.)

Lowlights:

It take a while to get into the play, so give it a chance. Some of the lighting is a bit stark (Kwame Tucker, design).


Information:
The show ends its run March 4 in the Nafe Katter Theatre, Storrs.  For tickets and information call 860-486-4226 or visit www.crt.uconn.edu.

Theater Review: Centennial Casting -- Seven Angels

Elizabeth Rouse, Amada Brooke Lerner, Nicholas Wilder, Anthonay Patellis, (seated) Lou Martini, Jr. Photo courtesy of Seven Angels.

Once the Lie is Cast, Can Romance Break It?
By Lauren Yarger
What does a 47-year-old single guy need to do to get a date with the girl of his dreams? Well, if you're Vincent DiDonato (Lou Martini, Jr.) in Gino DiIorio and Nancy Bleemer's comedy Centennial Casting playing at Seven Angels Theatre in Waterbury, you pretend you are a casting director and pretend to give her an audition for a movie.

Vincent is sifting through the paperwork of Centennial Casting, the tool, machine and car-part casting company left to his care by his recently deceased mother, when he comes across a batch of headshots and resumes. They have been sent to the company by mistake by wannabes thinking the "casting" part of the company title refers to agents who can get them acting roles.  (The disheveled office is created stage center by designer Erik D. Diaz with side sets for a diner and a racetrack.)
Vincent is attracted to the resume of Edie (Elizabeth Meadows Rouse), especially when she lists handicapping race horses as a skill. Vincent loves the track, but he isn't sure how to ask her out for a date. Shop employee Doo Doo (Anthony Patellis) decides to take matters into his own hands and calls Edie saying that Centennial Casting would like her to come for an audition. Insecure Edie isn't sure whether she should go. After all, she just has been offered a teaching job and probably should give up her wild hopes of being an actress, but best friend Michele (Amanda Brooke Lerner) encourages her, gives her advice on wardrobe (costumes by Jimmy Johnasmeyer) and sends Edie to the audition.

Doo Doo takes on the role of Aldo, an Italian director of an unnamed movie to take place at a race track. He enlists the help of slow-witted coworker Carmine (Nicholas Wilder) to play a jockey and to read with Edie during the audition. Edie summons up the courage to overcome the fear she'll encounter the "audition curse" that has plagued her, does the scene and even offers to help Vincent scope out locations at the race track. Once the roles are cast, however, Vincent can't break the mold. As Vincent and Edie spend more time together and fall in love, their happiness is threatened by the truth of Vincent's deception.

Director Semina De Laurentis casts an able ensemble. A quick rapport between them helps make believable relationships that extend back into childhood for Edie and Michele and for Vincent and Doo Doo. Martini gives a layered performance as a man struggling with feelings of loneliness, responsibility and love. Lerner and Patellis are strong foils for the leads and Rouse shows her chops by delivering a wide array of emotions. Wilder is less believable as the wide-eyed boy crying for Vincent's mother -- probably because the part is less believable in the mix.
The story is gentle and predictable with some smile-inducing humor (too many laughs, however, depend on the men's focus on Edie's ample bosom.)

Centennial Casting  runs at Seven Angels, 1 Plank Road, Waterbury, through March 11. The theater offers these special nights:
March 3 Fascia’s Chocolate Night
March 9 Wine and Martini Night
March 11 Sundaes on Sunday

For tickets and performance information visit http://sevenangelstheatre.org/.

Theater Review: February House -- Long Wharf

Stephanie Hayes, Kristen Sieh and Julian Fleisher. Photo: T. Charles Erickson

Art Imitates Life as a Good Idea Doesn't Come to Fruition
By Lauren Yarger
The idea is a good one -- both in real life, where editor George Davis dreams of running a boarding house for artists in Brooklyn, and and in the theater, where book writer Seth Bockley brings the residents' stories to the stage, but a lack of practical planning in both cases fails to bring the ideas to full fruition.

While the real commune didn't work at 7 Middagh St. because of a lack of funds and personal complications among the boarders, February House, playing its world premiere at Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven prior to an Off-Broadway run at the coproducing Public Theater in New York, makes the mistake of trying to be a musical (Gabriel Kahane writes the score and lyrics as well as providing orchestrations).

The characters are interesting enough. Novelist Carson McCullers (Kristen Sieh) is working on her second book, edited by best friend Davis, following the success of "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter." Composer Benjamin Britten (Stanley Bahorek) and his partner Peter Pears (Ken Barnett) collaborate on an opera about Paul Bunyon. Meanwhile, poet Wystan Hugh Auden (Erik Lochtefeld)  and his wife of convenience, actress/writer Erika Mann (Stepahnie Hayes), who only married Auden to obtain British citizenship to flee the Nazi regime, also take rooms.

It soon becomes clear that the crumbling Victorian brownstone (represented in skimpy fashion by set designer Riccardo Hernandez by some furniture pieces and a wood molding suspended above the action) serves as much as a safe haven for alternative lifestyle choices in the 1940 USA as it does as a creative retreat. Britten and Pears no longer have to pretend to be brothers living together. Auden lives openly with much younger struggling poet Chester Kallam (A.J. Shively), whom he calls husband, and Mann and McCullers begin a sexual relationship, much to the despair of McCullers' husband, Reeves (Ken Clark), who visits the house often and tries to convince his wife that she isn't herself and needs to return with him to their home in Georgia.

The warmth of utopia wears off, however, and February House's winter setting is felt as creativity and relationships cool  -- the temperature drops literally, when the heating bill isn't paid. In fact, funds to pay for lots of things like the rent, the phone, tuning the piano, bringing out an exterminator to rid the place of bed bugs and most importantly, to purchase a never-ending supply of booze, are dwindling and the "family" turns to father figure Davis to come up with a solution.

He calls on old friend Gypsy Rose Lee (Kacie Sheik) to lend her striptease talents to some soiree fundraisers. She also pays some bills and takes a room while Davis edits her first novel, "The G-String Murders."

While the story (also told in "February House," a 2005 book by Sherill Tippins on which this musical is based) is interesting, particularly since it doesn't focus on the point of view of just one character, but gives everyone a voice, the unimaginative score is not. Only a couple of songs have a different feel to them. Most sound like a failed attempt to put lines that should be spoken to a few cacophonous notes of music. The battle to turn the work into a musical weakens the characters' ability to develop. Director Davis McCallum is forced to try to make the two competing elements work, with help from choreographer Danny Medford, but the 24 musical numbers in the two-and-a-half-hour show quickly have us asking, "Another song? Seriously?"

Auden, well played by Lochtefeld, seems the most layered as the man trying to avoid involvement with the unfolding war and atrocities in Europe while being tortured by the infidelities of Kallman who misses the faster life of Manhattan. Singing "Funeral Blues," one of Auden's most known and loved poems, however, ruins its effect. The piano seems more dramatic than the intense pain and loss usually conveyed by the speaker of the words. (Post-show conversation among audience members focused on not being able to hear if seated near the piano, played by Music Director Andy Boronson. Andy Stack is the other musician housed stage right in this two-man band.)

Fleisher is very entertaining as a floral-robe-wearing host. He has impeccable delivery, which gives humor us lines a robust quality. His character seems to be caring and concerned about the others, until he delivers a musical line about love being defined by "squeezing the last drop  out of someone" and then sending them on their way. It's confusing.

Britten and Pears are amusingly portrayed, but their song "a Certain Itch" about their bedbug infestation is icky, rather than humorous. Skeik is miscast as Lee and we're never sure how she and Davis became such good friends. Despite the fact that McCullers adopts a more masculine wardrobe to appeal to Mann (costumes designed by Jess Goldstein), it isn't clear how that relationship develops or whether it really is what either of them wants. Sieh's southern accent seems to wander as much as the character's desires.

A good idea that doesn't quite make it.

February House runs at Long wharf's Stage II, 222 Sargent Road, New Haven, through March 18. Tickets are $45 to $65 and are available by calling 203-787-4282 or visiting www.longwharf.org.  February House plays the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St., NYC May 8 through June 10. Visit http://publictheater.org/.

A Writers' Weekend at the Mark Twain House Provides Immersion in the Skills of the Craft

April 20-21 Event at Author's Hartford Home Includes Lewis Lapham, Alfred Uhry, A. R. Gurney, 15 Workshops, Talks, Panels and Discussions
"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning," Mark Twain wrote in 1888.

Writers in many genres, and all levels of experience, who want to end up on the right side of this distinction can immerse themselves in the craft at The Mark Twain House & Museum Friday evening, April 20, and all day Saturday, April 21, as the museum launches its first Writers' Weekend.
 
Within a few hundred yards of America's iconic author's beloved home, participants will hear legendary Harper's editor Lewis Lapham keynote the conference and then follow it up the next day with a range of  activities -- from honing a novel they're working on to hearing about the joys and pitfalls of blogging to attending a panel with Alfred Uhry and A.R. Gurney, two distinguished playwrights whose works have influenced millions.

The Friday-Saturday event begins with an April 20 early-evening reception followed by the keynote speech by Lapham, a witty and prolific commentator on wealth and politics and the social scene, who as editor of Harper's and now Lapham's Quarterly has influenced a whole generation of writers and editors.
 
Fifteen panels, talks and workshop sessions will follow on Saturday, including a kickoff talk by novelist Jon Clinch (Finn, Kings of the Earth) and a panel including playwrights Gurney (The Dining Room) and Uhry (Driving Miss Daisy). A panel of faculty and students in the Writing at the Mark Twain House program, which has offered evening courses in fiction, non-fiction and memoir over the past few years, will discuss the ins and outs of teaching the writer's art.

No fewer than two winners of the Connecticut Book Award Lifetime Achievement Award will be participating in sessions during the Writers' Weekend: Lary Bloom, longtime editor of Northeast magazine, columnist, author of many books (including The Writer Within), and sage teacher of writing at the Mark Twain House and many other places; and Bessy Reyna (Memoirs of the Unfaithful Lover), the beloved Cuban-born poet who has been called "a clear-eyed guide to the world we see but don't see" by Martin Espada.
 
Among other authors slated to lead 50-minute sessions on Saturday are Susan Campbell (Dating Jesus), Susan Schoenberger (A Watershed Year) Suzanne Levine (The Haberdasher's Daughter), Denis Horgan (Ninety-Eight Point Six) Cindy Brown Austin (By the Waters of Babylon) and Wendy Clinch (The Ski Diva).  There will be sessions on fiction, non-fiction , memoir, poetry, travel writing, blogging, the business of getting published, and new forms of storytelling unleashed by the existence of the Internet.

The event will run from 7 to 9 pm Friday, April 20, and 8 am to 7 pm Saturday, April 21. A box lunch will be provided on Saturday, and the weekend winds up Saturday evening with a closing reception.

The cost of the Writers' Weekend for participants is $100. This includes the Friday night reception and lecture, all Saturday sessions, a box lunch and the Saturday night closing reception. Participants will also receive a voucher good for a tour of the Mark Twain House at any time. Space is limited to 100 participants, so advance registration and payment is a must: Call 860-280-3130 to register. 

The Writers' Weekend builds on the success of Writing at the Mark Twain House, the writing program that bears out The Mark Twain House & Museum's explicitly stated mission, promulgated in 1955, to develop a literary center. The program has offered fall and spring evening courses in memoir, non-fiction, and fiction over the past few years.

Selected students in the Department of English at the University of Connecticut's Greater Hartford Campus will be serving as interns during the Writers' Weekend. The partnership between The Mark Twain House & Museum and UConn has been arranged through the university's Office of Service-Learning.

More details on participants and sessions will be posted on the Mark Twain House & Museum website, www.marktwainhouse,org; the Writing at the Mark Twain House blog,  http://writingatthemarktwainhouse.blogspot.com/; and the museum's Facebook Page, http://www.facebook.com/MarkTwainHouse.

About the Keynote and Kickoff speakers:

Lewis Lapham: In her brilliant first-hand account of life at the lowest rungs of the American social ladder, Nickle and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich describes Lewis Lapham's editorial style. Discussing issues of poverty with Lapham, her editor, she writes, "I said something that I have since had many opportunities to regret. 'Someone ought to do the old-fashioned kind of journalism -- you know, go out and try it for themselves.'" She meant some young, hungry reporter. "But Lapham got this crazy-looking half smile on his face and  ended life as I knew it, for long stretches at least, with the single word 'You.'" Lapham is Editor of Lapham's Quarterly, a distinguished literary journal, and was Editor of Harper's magazine for a total of 27 years. He is the author of numerous books, including Money and Class in America, Theater of War, Gag Rule, and, most recently, Pretensions to Empire. The New York Times has likened him to H. L. Mencken; Vanity Fair has suggested a strong resemblance to Mark Twain; and Tom Wolfe has compared him to Montaigne. A native of San Francisco, Mr. Lapham was educated at Yale and Cambridge.

Jon Clinch:  Jon Clinch's first novel, Finn, was called "a triumph of imagination and graceful writing" by USA Today; his second, Kings of the Earth, is "blunt and brutal yet beautifully told," said Julia Glass. Finn's take on the story of Huckleberry Finn's brutal father brought Clinch in touch with the Mark Twain House just around the time when it needed friends, during a 2008 fiscal crisis. He pitched in, organizing a major event for writers that year, and helped the museum survive and get back on the upswing. Born and raised in the remote heart of upstate New York, Clinch has been an English teacher, a metalworker, a folksinger, an illustrator, a typeface designer, a housepainter, a copywriter, and an advertising executive. He lives in Vermont; his wife, Wendy Clinch, a blogger and author of ski-themed mysteries, is leading a blogging session at the Writers' Weekend.

About Alfred Uhry and A.R. Gurney

Alfred Uhry is the only American playwright to have won a Pulitzer Prize, an Academy Award and two Tony Awards. His first play, Driving Miss Daisy, opened in New York in 1987 and won the Pulitzer in 1988; the film version with Morgan Freeman and Jessica Tandy won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 1990 -- as well as the Best Picture Award. It was recently revived on Broadway and the West End with James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave. He is the author of The Last Night of Ballyhoo, which won the 1997 Tony Award for Best Play. His book for the musical Parade won the Tony Award in 1999. Other plays incluide Without Walls, Edgardo Mine and the book for the musical Lovemusik. Most recently he co-created the dance-theater piece Angel Reapers with Martha Clark.

A.R. Gurney is one of the most prolific and most produced playwrights in America. He has written more than 32 plays and three novels over more than 30 years. His breakthrough success came in 1982 with The Dining Room. Love Letters (1989), has enjoyed tremendous popularity for many years with its two-character cast. Gurney adapted his novel, The Snow Ball, for the stage; other novels include The Gospel According to Joe and Entertaining Strangers. In 1999, Gurney wrote the libretto for Strawberry Fields as part of a trilogy presented by the New York City Opera. Gurney is the recipient of many awards, notably a Drama Desk Award in 1971, a Rockefeller Award in 1977 and Lucille Lortel Awards in 1989 and 1994.

The Mark Twain House & Museum (www.marktwainhouse.org) 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 and Wednesday through Saturday, 9:30 am to 5:30 pm and Sunday, noon to 5:30 pm. (Closed Tuesdays through March.) 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.