A Reader’s Theatre of Mark Twain’s The War Prayer will be held at the Gazebo of Pioneer Park, March 28, Friday, at 4 p.m. Kellie Bond and Luann Venden, Walla Walla University English professors, are hosting the dramatic reading. The event is free and open to the public.

Twain criticized just about every type of person or institution either living or dead during his life, but when he wrote The War Prayer his family felt he should not publish it; they felt it was a sacrilege. However, Twain had the last word in death as he directed the piece to be published after his death; “I have told the truth in that…and only dead men can tell the truth in this world.”

Twain dictated The War Prayer around 1904; rejected by his publisher at the time of writing, it was found after his death and was first published in a 1923 anthology. The story was a response to war and in particular the Phillippine-American War of 1899-1902; Twain opposed the war.

For more information call 509-527-2825 or contact kellie.bond@wallawalla.edu or luann.venden@wallawalla.edu.

>>See the event poster