When I went to Maine, my cousin Marianne was talking about how much she had wanted to see Hal Holbrook’s legendary one-man show, based on the life of Mark Twain. I have not seen it either. And today, in The New York Times, there is a gorgeous profile of Holbrook, who created the show himself, and has been doing it for almost half a century. He keeps the show fluid as he has grown older. He will incorporate Twain’s writings as an older man, he will find quotes from Twain which are relevant to the topics of the day … and the show just keeps going and going and going.
Holbrook says, “I’m certainly surprised that I can be so riveted on this guy, on what he’s talking about and thinking about after all these years. But I can’t wait to get on the stage with this guy.” He’s playing Twain, but he still refers to him as “this guy”. It’s like he is channeling something from another plane. It’s like Holbrook knows that the real genius up there is Twain, and Holbrook just gets to inhabit him. This is such a familiar sensation for actors … actors with a sense of humility, I should say.
As an actor, my favorite quote in this article is the following:
Holbrook talks about his editing process, how he takes snippets, puts them together, cuts stuff out, etc. And he says: “I take out a lot of adjectives. As an actor I am an adjective.”
It makes me want to cry.
And the following anecdote gave me chills:
On Oct. 9, 1962 … Mr. Holbrook brought “Mark Twain Tonight!” to Oxford, Miss., just days following the violence that ensued there after James Meredith became the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Two people had died.
“I didn’t want to start a riot, but I wanted to nail the issue,” recalled Mr. Holbrook … He included in the Oxford show the bit he’s come to call “The Silent Lie,” in which Twain decries the nasty human habit of not standing up to an evident injustice, of going along to get along, of maintaining a silence that obscures the truth.
“I went out on the stage, and I was scared,” he said. “There were federal men backstage, and they taught me how to use a fire extinguisher to defend myself. And one of the stagehands, before I went on, I guess he was trying to be funny. He said, `Hey Hal, watch out for the guys with the squirrel rifles in the trees out there.’ And you know, it could have been a joke, but I was thinking about those guys all through the first act.
“Well, I started the second act with `The Silent Lie.’ And there’s a long pause at the end, when he says, `It is timid — and shabby.’ And then I always walk downstage right, all the way back to the lectern, and let the audience sit with this hot potato. And only three times in 49 years has that moment ever gotten applause. The first time was in Hamburg, Germany, in 1961. The second time was that night in Oxford, Miss. The third time was in Prague, behind the Iron Curtain, in 1985.”
