Is He Dead?

What: Is He Dead?

A new comedy by Mark Twain as adapted by David Ives and performed by Germantown Academy’s award-winning Belfry Club.

When: Nov. 11 at 6:30 p.m. and Nov. 12 at 7 p.m.

Where: Germantown Academy’s Art Center

340 Morris Road

Fort Washington, 19034

Price: $10 (general); $12 (reserve); $12 (door). To order tickets, please go to www.showtix4U.com (search PA). Bring your ticket or program to Cantina Feliz before or after the show and receive 20 percent off your food total.

“This is a pure comedy — a fictional, farcical Paris-set yarn about a young painter, the real-life Jean-François Millet, who fakes his death to score fame and fortune.”-Playbill

Is He Dead? was written in 1898, but remained unpublished until 2002. It made its Broadway debut in 2007.

According to the play’s foreword written by Shelley Fisher Fishkin of Stanford University, “Mark Twain wrote Is Head Dead? in 1898 as he emerged from one of the darkest periods of his life. A crippling bankruptcy forced Twain to give up his home in the U.S. and embark on a world-wide lecture tour to pay back his creditors, and while abroad, in 1896, his youngest daughter had died suddenly. It would not be surprising if Twain had wondered whether he’d ever manage to laugh again. But by 1898, Twain had come out of the gloom that had enveloped him and found himself ready to transform death and debt into the raw material for a hilarious, over-the-top comedy.” 

The Belfry Club’s productions of musicals, comedies and dramas are not only popular in the GA community, but in the greater Philadelphia area community as evidenced by the fact that the Belfry Club was recently cited by Philadelphia Magazine as the best high school theater program in the Philadelphia area.

Also, theatergoers can use their program or ticket from Is He Dead? to get 20 percent off their food total at Cantina Feliz, which is right across the street from GA, before or after the show.