MARCH 2026

25 years ago, I wrote and directed a post-modern adaptation of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain’s book is a masterpiece but it’s controversial because many people don’t realize that the novel depicts the character Jim through the ignorant eyes of its narrator, Huck. There are, in fact, many people (including a number of scholars) that misread the story entirely or reacted to the dialect or Twain's very conscious use of the N-word, and believe the book is racist.

So I thought, why not retell the tale and watch it through the eyes of Huck and Jim? In my retelling, Old Huck and Old Jim met up and "conjured" the story back to life. At first they merely commented on events, but before soon they were meeting their younger selves and eventually were swept up into the story. I called my adaptation: Sounding the River: Huck Finn Revisited.

The show premiered at Milwaukee Rep, where I was the Associate Artistic Director at the time. It was a big production, with a cast of 20-some actors and 3 musicians. (I've included two pages about the show on this website, under both Directing and Playwriting).

On the closing weekend, we held a symposium about Twain's book and my play with local scholars, a journalist, and Shelley Fisher Fishkin, a highly-respected Twain scholar, who flew in to see the show and spoke at the symposium. Thankfully, the play was well received and the sympsoium likewise. Then, like most big regional theatre productions, it faded away.

Three years ago - out of the blue - Shelley contacted me. She’d been asked by the editor of Yale University Press to write a “biography” of Jim and his contentious literary afterlife. She was planning on a chapter about stage and screen versions of the book and wanted to include Sounding the River. I dug up the script and sent it her way and she interviewed me via email.

And several months ago, she sent me the newly-published book. JIM, The LIFE and AFTERLIVES of HUCKLEBERRY FINN'S COMRADE. It is terrific and has gotten glowing reviews and 6 pages are devoted to my play. To top it all off, she’s currently teaching a seminar at Stanford University called Huck Finn and its Afterlives and my script is required reading. She invited me to speak with her class last week via Zoom. I got to answer their many questions about the script, the production and my process in adapting Twain’s novel. Needless to say, I was thrilled. Theatre is so ephemeral; it’s rare to receive such affirmation, especially after a quarter of a century. It feels as if a long-lost friend was conjured back to life.