The Ocracoke Library will present “ The Diaries of Adam and Eve,” by Mark Twain, at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb 24.
Visiting Vermont thespians Diana Bigelow and Jim Stapleton will perform the 45-minute reading.
In 1893, Mark Twain published an imagined diary of Adam, the First Man, called “Extracts from Adam’s Diary,” a comic short story.
In 1906, shortly after the death of his wife, Olivia, Twain completed the companion piece, “The Diary of Eve.” Subsequently the two pieces were published together.
The combined “Diaries” are sprightly and fun, but they are also poignant since they span the entire time from the meeting of the First Couple in Eden to Eve’s death many years later.
Twain’s observations on the ageless contest between man and woman have a surprisingly modern ring.
Bigelow has selected passages from the two diaries that allow the characters to relate alternately the course of their life together in the Garden and thereafter.
Bigelow and Stapleton have performed “Adam & Eve” around the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, and in Bristol, Vermont, where they live.
They have also performed selections from their published memoirs and Bigelow’s songs, as well as fully-staged plays by Stapleton.
The latter included “Henry & Emily, The Muses in Massachusetts,” an imagined meeting between Emily Dickinson and Henry David Thoreau, which enjoyed a brief run off-Broadway in New York City.
