Coming in October 2026!!

Barnstorming Across Iowa and Minnesota

Poster Design By Pennsylvania Artist Sarah Knox

On Halloween “Trick-or-Treat” candy always tastes better when you gobble it down listening to a scary story.  This October, give your friends and neighbors the treat of hearing spooky tales of ghosts, witches, and spirits told by America’s storyteller Mark Twain by bringing the live event “A Mark Twain Halloween”to your town. 

Twain had a unique view of the supernatural.  While other authors like Edgar Allan Poe wrote about haunted houses and tell-tale hearts, Twain told tales  haunted barrels floating down the Mississippi River, skeletons moving out of their old graves for a better neighborhood, and — “Besides scaring off witches, witch balls also ward off the evil eye, and evil spirits, and bad luck.  But it will do nothing for warts.  To cure warts, you need a dead rat and a grave-yard at midnight.”

“A Mark Twain Halloween” is based on Twain’s own writings about the supernatural and the mysterious with stories from “Tom Sawyer”, “A Tramp Abroad”, “Life on the Mississippi”, “Sketches New and Old”, “Europe and Elsewhere” and from his career as a journalist. “A Mark Twain Halloween follows the same lecture/storytelling format Twain used during his numerous speaking tours and features professional actor, Ray Carver as Mark Twain.  Critics say of his performance:

“It seems as though time has been suspended – that could be the drawling Mark Twain up there on stage, reeling off his one-liners and holding the audience in his spell.” Des Moines Register 

Chicago’s Writer To Writer magazine editor Barbara Croft says Carver “performs ripping good yarns.”

Carver’s work at the Minnesota Festival Theater was called ‘impressive”.

Carver’s scripts of Twain’s “Life On The Mississippi”, “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg” and “Mark Twain’s Civil War” are part of the collection at the Mark Twain Boyhood Home Museum in Hannibal, Missouri. 

How To Bring “A Mark Twain Halloween” to Your Town!Where To Perform?

“A Mark Twain Halloween” is designed to be able to be performed in many different venues; your local theater/opera house, a school auditorium, a multipurpose room in your local library, an events room in a restaurant, a church, your local museum, or even a large parlor in an old Victorian home.  (Wouldn’t a Victorian house be the perfect place to hear spooky stories on an October night?)  

Select A Date and Time for the Performance

Performance dates for “A Mark Twain Halloween” are available from October 1st through Halloween on October 31st.  Performance bookings will be accepted for any day/evening of the week.  Please, be aware that there are five weekends available in October for performances.  Weekends tend to be requested for performances first.  Please, book your performance early to get the date and day of the week you want. 

Performance Fee and What You’ll Get

The performance fee for bringing “A Mark Twain Halloween” to your community will be based on mileage, the type of venue to be used and seating capacity, past attendance for other live theatre events, how many performances you want and your expected attendance for “A Mark Twain Halloween”.

What you’ll get for the performance fee is:

* The number of performances you request of “A Mark Twain Halloween”(These can be a matinee or an evening performance or a combination of both. Each performance will run approximately 100 minutes with an intermission.)

*A stage setting that is tailored to your performance venue.

*An electronic reproducible poster design with blank area where you can put the performance date, time, venue, how to get tickets and the ticket prices ( which you decide).

*Professionally written press release that you can complete with your performance date, time, venue, how to get tickets and the ticket prices information.

*Electronic reproducible photos of Ray Carver as Mark Twain that you can send to local media, post on your website and Facebook site, and post on local electronic events calendars to promote the performance in your town.

*Ray Carver will be available by phone or Zoom to talk to local newspaper reporters or local radio personalities to promote “A Mark Twain Halloween” performance in your town. Depending on the mileage to your community, Ray Carver as Mark Twain can make a public appearance to promote the show coming to your town.

To get a quote for the performance fee to bring “A Mark Twain Halloween” to your town, please, contact Ray Carver at 3pennyplays@gmail.com. A quote will be prepared for you and Ray Carver will available to answer any of your questions.

Contact Ray Carver at 3pennyplays@gmail.com to start the discussion about bringing this Halloween event to your home town!!

Mark Twain’s black cat Bambino

Courtesy of twainquotes.com