Theatre talent helps bring back forgotten Mark Twain comedy

For more than 100 years, a Mark Twain script lay forgotten in a file drawer at a university library in California. Today it has come back to life and was available to audiences in Western New York for the first time, thanks in part to a trio of SUNY Fredonia contributors.

 

Dixon Reynolds, assistant professor of Costume Design within SUNY Fredonia’s Department of Theatre and Dance, recently designed costumes for the regional premiere of “Is He Dead?” the lost Mark Twain comedy originally written in 1898 which completes a month-long run at the Kavinoky Theatre in Buffalo this Sunday.

 

In addition, Ashley Arnone of Jamestown, N.Y., a senior design and technology theatre major, served as assistant costume designer to Professor Reynolds, while SUNY Fredonia alumnus David Bova, ’00, served as the wig designer for the performance which received a three-out-of-four-star review from The Buffalo News.

 

“Working on ‘Is He Dead?’ at the Kavinoky Theatre has been a warm welcome into the Buffalo theatre community, and has given my student assistants a chance to gain professional experience,” said Reynolds.

 

The Kavinoky Theatre of Buffalo is the first to stage the production “Is He Dead?” since its Broadway debut in 2007. The play, now streamlined to two acts from the original three which Twain had penned, is a fictional comedy about a French painter whose friends hatch a plan to increase the value of his artwork when a rich collector decides not to buy it because the artist is not yet dead. The painter, therefore, fakes an illness as well as his own death, and then pretends to be his own sister, all in an attempt to raise the values of the painting.

 

Reynolds’ designs have been seen on a broad range of styles from theatre, dance, opera and film. He is a two-time recipient of the Kennedy Center/ACTF Meritorious Achievement in Costume Design and is a member of USITT and the Costume Society of America.

 

For more information on the performance, contact the Kavinoky Theatre at 716-829-7668.