Big Read in Wayne County highlights Dawidziak

The Wayne Center for the Arts is working closely with Northeast Ohio writer and Twain scholar Mark Dawidziak as a part of THE BIG READ IN WAYNE COUNTY this March and April. Dawidziak will be the keynote speaker for the Big Read and with the Largely Literary Theatre Company, will perform “Twain by Three” on April 1..Dawidziak  has also provided  the Wayne Center which many pieces from his Twain memorabilia collection.

Dawidziak has been the television critic at the Cleveland Plain Dealer since July 1999. During his fifteen years at the Akron Beacon Journal, he held such posts as TV columnist, movie critic and critic-at-large.

The Center for the Arts, all seven branches of the Wayne County Public Library, the Orrville Public Library, The Wooster Book Company and area schools have come together to get adults as well as students to read, discuss and examine the work and  life of Samuel Clemens at the one hundredth anniversary of his death. A Kickoff Event is scheduled for Friday, March 12 from 6 to 8 pm at the Wayne Center for the Arts.

The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. Wayne County is one of 268 communities nationwide participating in The Big Read from September 2009-June 2010.

Here are evnts:

* Friday, March 12 with an opening reception at the Wayne Center for the Arts celebrating an exhibition entitled, Mark Twain in Wooster. The exhibition will feature information on Mark Twain’s life and will include photos, memorabilia, artifacts and early editions of Twain books. A special section will highlight Twain’s visit to Wooster in January of 1872.

•  Tuesday, March 16 Keynote Speaker Mark Dawidziak at Main Branch of the Wayne County Public Library will present a program entitled, "Mark Twain: The Reports of His Death Are Greatly Exaggerated," at the Main Branch of the Wayne County Public Library, at 7 pm .

•  Thursday evening, April 1 at 7 pm. Twain by Three at Wayne College in conjunction with the Orrville Public Library The Largely Literary Theatre Company’s production of Twain by Three, will be performed in the J. M. Smucker Room of the new Student Life building.  The play begins with  Twain working at his desk. He talks to the audience about his frustrations with critics, editors and publishers, and this talk leads to a succession of stories. Three actors play all of the characters in these sketches.

•  Public programs at libraries around the County include Tom Sawyer movies, speakers and gamew.

• March 26 and March 27. Twain’s Tales  Storytime Family Theatre production at the Wayne Center for the Arts, a collection of five short stories by Twain.

•  Book discussions: At least twelve book discussions will be held during The Big Read.at the sponsoring locations. .The Wooster Book Company, College of Wooster, and Muddy Waters Café.

Dawidziak "enchanting" as Twain keynote speaker

Mark Dawidziak was "enchanting" in Wooster, according to a review of his discussion of humorist/author Mark Twain by the Wooster Daily Record's Linda Hall. Our Mark, former Beacon Journal and current Plain Dealer TV critic, lectured on Hannibal, Missouri's Mark -- and slipped into some Twain bits from time to time -- at the Wayne County Public Library in Wooster.

The keynote speech by Dawidziak was part of a communitywide "Big Read in Wayne County," designed to encourage reading county-wide.

Mark and wife Sara Showman will be doing The Largely Literary Theatre Company’s production of "Twain By Three" at 7 p.m. April 1 in the J. M. Smucker Room of the new Student Life building at Wayne College in Orrville, 1901 Smucker Road.

Click on the headline for the Wooster Daily Record story on Mark's lecture/performance.

Click on Big Read for the original story on the Wayne County project.

PD and former BJ pop culture critic and extraordinary author Mark Dawidziak and on-stage and off-stage co-star Sara Showman Dawidziak are celebrating their 35^th wedding anniversity today – October 9.

When I did the research for this article I realized that, to do justice to this “run of the play contract” for life, it would rival the Encyclopedia Brittanica in length. Since, as a BJ editor, I didn’t allow my reporters to do write that long, I won’t.

The Love Story of Mark and Sara (without the “h”) began in Tennessee in 1981 when they appeared together in Neil Simon’s “The Good Doctor.” A year later, there was a Mark-Sara wedding in Johnston City, Tennessee, where Mark was working on the Kingsport Times-News.

Another year later that’s where the BJ plucked Mark in 1983 as David Bianculli’s replacement for TV critic. And Mark “lucked into” me as his editor. As Humphrey Bogart said to Claude Raines, “It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship” that, like Frankenstein’s monster, “It’s alive!” today.

Before the BJ & the PD, Mark's career took him to the Kingsport Times-News in Tennessee,
the Bristol Herald Courier in Virginia, the Associated Press’ Washington bureau and Knight-Ridder Newspapers’  Washington bureau.

The Cuyahoga Falls couple’s photos, in many instances, were taken by their daughter, Becky, who may have a career in portrait art.

Mark was born in Huntington, New York (think Long Island), on September 7, 1956, a son of World War II Army Air Corps captain/navigator Joseph Walter Dawidziak, buried in Calverton National Cemetery on Long Island, and Claire Dawidziak. Later, Joe married Bernie Dawidziak.

Mark’s siblings were Joe, Jr., Jane, Aileen and Michael.

When he’s not writing more than a dozen books about Mark Twain, Columbo, Twilight Zone he’s performing the works of Twain, who is the spitting image of Dawidziak, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Dashiell Hammett (who gave birth to detective Sam Spade, played so admirably by Humphrey Bogart) and the Civil War, with Sara often alongside him on the stage for their Largely Literary Theater Company productions.

He has been Mark Twain at, honest to God, the Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Connecticut, at the Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, McKinley Birthplace Memorial Auditorium in Niles and the famous Barter Theatre in Virginia. He gave Hal Holbrook a run for his money when it comes to Twain impersonation.

He gets around, locally and nationally:

"A Christmas Carol," the Kent Stage.
"Shades of Blue and Gray: Ghosts of the Civil War," Zoar. 
"Everything I Need to Know I Learned in The Twilight Zone," Broome County Forum Theatre, Binghamtom, New York.

"Twain By Two," The Thurber House, Columbus.

"A Force of Nature," scenic overlook at Ledges, Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

The Big Read in Wayne County at the Wayne Center for the Arts in Wooster. 
And Paula and I have witnessed Mark and Sara’s performances at libraries in Akron, Cuyahoga Falls, Massillon and Hudson.

Mark’s email address includes tributes to H.L. Mencken and Groucho Marx.

Mencken’s most famous quote trotted out today with Donald Trump in the White House: “On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

Current Secretary of State Rex Tillerson may have been channeling Mencken when he put the M label on President Trump.

Not to be out-done, Groucho said: “Behind every successful man, there is a woman. Behind her is his wife.”

That takes care of President Clinton, Monia Lewinsky and Hillary Clinton.

Despite his tremendous achievements, Mark will never need a larger hat size. He’s as comforting and entertaining as a Twain quote.

Mark is justifiably in the Cleveland Press Club’s Journalism Hall of Fame.

And it is impossible for the reports of his life and love of Sara to be “greatly exaggerated,” if I may borrow from Mark Twain’s denial of his demise.

Rod Serling, one of the many geniuses in Mark’s spotlight, once wrote: ““Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull.”

Dawidziak is a writer who performs his lines in the public auditorium. But his skull is crammed with amazing talent.

One of my great pleasures in life was to work with and, in retirement, enjoy reunions at Primo’s Deli and at area performances by Mark and Sara, with Becky’s camera always at the ready.

Lights, camera, action – for Act IV of Mark, Sara and Becky.

 

Dawidziak is a busy guy

I got this response to my email to former BJ and current PD TV critic Mark Dawidziak about the April 8-25 trip to England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales by Paula and me, bringing my countries visited total to 45 since my 1996 retirement from the BJ:

John,

A trip through the British Isles certainly would boost the authors' homes and graves numbers. You should also have added Dickens with the stop at Poets Corner. It's a modest stone, but he didn't even want to be buried there. His wishes were overruled by national desire.

And I know how much the pilgrimage to the Greyfriars Bobby grave meant.

I've been on my own authors' tour these last few days. Thursday night, I was introducing Michael Slater, author of the magnificent Dickens biography published by Yale in 2009, at the Hermit Club in Cleveland (always wanted to get into that place, and the inside looked just as I have imagined it all these years). Friday was spent all day at the John S. Knight Center and the Akron Antiquarian Book Fair (talking Tully). Saturday, I was down in Massillon to give the keynote address for the Big Read devoted to Twain (nice turnout, and we're back at the Lincoln Theatre to do "Twain By Three" on May 15).

We finally have copies of the Tully biography, and it looks grand. The big coming-out party will be a free May 21 reception at the Cleveland Public Library. I'll send you details. Paul and I will be making like Tully, hitting the road for Tully talks and book fairs from May to November.

Glad you and Paula made it safely home. Sounds like another glorious trip.

All best,
Mark


Poets Corner is in London's Westminster Abbey. A ton of famous authors, including Chaucer, are buried there.

I've made a habit of trying to visit homes and graves of authors over the years.

"Greyfriars Bobby," the title of the Disney movie about the dog, is famous for sleeping on the grave of John Gray, his master, for 14 years after Gray died. Bobby's grave is the first one you see when you enter the cemetery. Greyfriars got special permission to bury a dog in a grave full of humans.

Tully is the subject of Dawidziak's 12th book, "Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler," which Kent State Press published and which is co-authored by Kent bookseller Paul J. Bauer. Tully, who was fired twice by the Beacon Journal and also worked for the Akron Press, became a boxer and Charlie Chaplin's ghost writer and biographer.

Last year Dawidziak and wife Sara Showman performed "Twain by Three" at the University of Akron's Wayne College in Orrville and participated in the Big Read program in Wayne County. This sounds like a triumphant return tour.

The photo is of William Shakespeare's grave, inside Stratford's Holy Trinity Church in England. The bard was born in Stratford. Shakespeare is buried next to his wife, Anne Hathaway, who grew up in a 12-bedroom farmhouse near Stratford in Warwickshire, England.

Paula and I just got home at 1 a.m. today after 18 days on the road and going without sleep for 25 hours while taking flights from London to New York City to Atlanta to Akron-Canton. More details and photos about that later, after I decompress and get caught up on my Ohio life.

I know some of you can't wait.

Mark & Mark at it again

Former BJ TV critic Mark Dawidziak, who escaped to Cleveland with two dozen others in the recent decade, will be performing "Twain by Three" for the umpteenth time at the University of Akron's Wayne College in Orrville at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 1.

Mark, wife Sara Showman and Jason Davis will perform in the J. M. Smucker Room of Wayne College's new Student Life building at 1901 Smucker Road.

Click on the headline for previous posts on Wayne County's Big Read project that Dawidziak has been involved with.

The BJ's local news surge

As advertised, the Beacon Journal kicked off its big local news surge today with a full page of briefs on page B3 and a large (4 col. X 12 inch) Paul Tople photo layout on a crew installing a sound wall on I-77 at 13th Avenue in Canton.

Three of the 18 briefs were from Akron, two from Barberton and one each from Bath, Boston Heights, Canal Fulton, Cuyahoga Falls, green, Medina, Norton, Revere schools, Stow, Wadsworth and Norteast Ohio (about a bald eagle count). There were none from Portage or Wayne counties-- the other two counties in the old five-county area once served by seven different editions.

Biggest brief was Revere Schools electing board officers--9 graphs. Credit at the bottom of briefs was given to five correspodents: Gina Mace 3, George W.. Davis and Jody Miller 2 each and Kimberly Sirk and Beau Dusz, 1 each.

You also might be interested in Random Observations on our web site, One asks if there is a smoking gun in the sale of the Minneaplios Tribune by McClatchy, another is on a new editor in Lexington, KY, a third from a disgrunted OSU alumnus, and finally one on the PD headline on Gerald Ford. . Click on the headline above to read them.