TONIGHT – MARK TWAIN ! – New English American Theater Stuttgart

People call me a pessimist but I’m not. I am an optimist who did not arrive.

Tonight – MARK TWAIN ! – Featuring Derrick Jenkins

MARK TWAIN is often called the “Father of American Literature” because he created and popularized a distinctive American form of literature based on American themes and colloquial language. He is revered as one of the country’s greatest humorists, whose biting wit and wisdom are as topical and influential today as they ever were; he is still one of the world’s most widely read authors.

In addition to writing articles and books, MARK TWAIN was also a highly popular lecturer, who traveled the world, delighting audiences with his good old-fashioned common sense on topics as diverse as politics, science, technology, religion, civil rights, human rights, labor, ethics, history, life and love.

His reading tours took him all over Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, North and South America and he often used the earnings from the lectures to pay for additional well documented adventures; his “travel accounts” actually outsold his novels and short stories!

In the mid- to late 1800’s the Public Lecture was a very popular form of entertainment and with our new MARK TWAINproject, we present a broad sampling of insightful, sardonic, amusing stories from the author’s novels, speeches, letters, conversations, and lectures with which he precisely chronicles the vanities and hypocrisies of mankind.

MARK TWAIN lived through a time of enormous change as America transformed from an agricultural nation to an industrial nation following the Civil War; an era for which he coined the term “THE GILDED AGE” – a time characterized by growing economic inequality, not unlike today.

Over the years, NEAT has presented these MARK TWAIN projects – THE DIARIES OF ADAM & EVE… LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI… THE AWFUL GERMAN LANGUAGE… MARK TWAIN IN HEIDELBERG… SHOCKHEADED PETER… and LETTERS FROM EARTH – making this the 7^th show dedicated to the Great American humorist!