No one is saying Mark Twain’s never-performed play is cursed, but 109 years after he wrote “Is He Dead?” the farce is still waiting for opening night. Twain hoped it would open in London’s Lyceum Theater a century ago but a fire put an end to that. Earlier this month two preview performances hit the stage at New York’s Lyceum Theater before the ongoing theater strike darkened Broadway and nixed a planned November 29 opening night.

 

Shelley Fisher Fishkin did get to see one of those preview performances. Five years ago she unearthed the long-forgotten play in a sea of Twain archives. In this conversation she explains how she identified the “zany, cross-dressing farce” amid a dusty collection of inferior theatrical attempts by Twain.