Classic Authors Series: Mark Twain

Bern Budd of Wareham, Massachusetts will appear as the classic author Mark Twain on Tuesday April 28 at 7:00 pm at the Trinity Episcopal Church Parish Hall at 120 Broad Street, Claremont. This is the second program in the living history series presented by the Friends of the Fiske Free Library and the Claremont Historical Society.

Twain, who has been called the father of American literature, wrote stories about his childhood in Hannibal, Missouri as told through the eyes of such unforgettable characters as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Twain’s colorful life, working at dozens of jobs including printer, steamboat pilot, miner, journalist, and lecturer, led him all across the country. He eventually settled his family in Hartford, Connecticut, in a dramatic Victorian Gothic house which is now maintained as a museum.

Bern Budd grew up on Long Island, graduated from Kent School in Kent CT., spent a year in Switzerland, and graduated from the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York in 1971. Over a period of seven years he worked in professional theater in New York and Seattle, before he and his wife, a stage manager and costumer, retired from the theater world to raise a family.

Getting back onto the stage through community theater, Budd has performed with groups across Massachusetts, in productions ranging from Shakespeare to Moliere. He also produced, directed. and acted in radio plays for TIC, a radio reading service based in Marshfield that serves the blind and print-disabled community. Budd has been performing his one-man show as Mark Twain since 2002.

Budd‘s performance of “Mark Twain Talks” is free, open to the public and appropriate for ages 10 to 100. For more information, call 603-542-7017.