Lake Tahoe Forest Service says a final goodbye to Mark Twain after more than 30 years
Submitted by Jeff Munson on Mon, 07/24/2023 - 8:50am
It was a special evening Friday at the Lake of the Sky Amphitheater at Taylor Creek near South Lake Tahoe. For nearly 35 years, McAvoy Lane has been performing as Mark Twain at the theater, and Friday was to be his final performance.
The USDA Forest Service Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit and Great Basin Institute had invited community members and visitors to join them for the special evening, and they filled the amphitheater.
“It’s the end of an era,” said LTBMU Public Services Staff Officer, Daniel Cressy. “McAvoy Layne has performed as Mark Twain for three decades and is an audience favorite at the Lake of the Sky Amphitheater and Lake Tahoe.”
Layne presented his last performance as Mark Twain to an admiring full house gathered at the Forest Service’s beautiful Lake of the Sky Amphitheater at Taylor Creek Visitor Center last Friday. As an appreciative audience member put it, “we wish it really wasn’t his last time here”.
He has been bringing Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain to life in theaters, classrooms, and special events around the globe ever since. He's had over four thousand performances from Piper’s Opera House to Leningrad University in Russia, he has helped preserve the wit and wisdom of Mark Twain.
Lake Tahoe Basin Forest Supervisor Eric Walker presented McAvoy Layne with a beautiful framed sunrise photo over Lake Tahoe’s Emerald Bay and a certificate of appreciation for his 33 years educating and enriching the lives of people across the globe and at Lake Tahoe through “theater, pen and humor.”
McAvoy’s Twain was introduced by his famous 1860's contemporary Norwegian “Mailman of the Sierra” John ‘Snowshoe’ Thompson — performed by local Chautauquan Steve Hale — who told the stories that explain how both famous historic characters are intertwined with The Territorial Enterprise newspaper.
After a performance of Snowshoe Thompson by Steve Hale, McAvoy took to the stage with line after line spoken as Mark Twain.
He took the audience through Mark Twain's life on the Mississippi, traveling to the Utah Territory with brother Orion, his attempt at a timber claim at Lake Tahoe and the resulting forest fire, and life as a reporter with Virginia City's Territorial Enterprise. When Snowshoe Thompson was on stage, he told of how "he" and Mark Twain were in the Sierra at the same time — Snowshoe was the Mailman of the Sierra from 1856 to 1876, and Mark Twain moved west in 1861, and at the Territorial Enterprise in 1863.
Some of the favorite Twain quotes of the evening:
It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
Don't let schooling interfere with your education.
The day you are born and the day you find out why.
And quotes of Lake Tahoe:
As it lay there with the shadows of the mountains brilliantly photographed upon its still surface, I thought it must surely be the fairest picture the whole earth affords.
The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine. Bracing and delicious. And why shouldn't it be? It is the same the angels breathe.
McAvoy will no longer be performing at the Lake of the Sky Amphitheater, but he has an upcoming event, "Mark Twain on the River" at the Eagle Theater in Old Sacramento on August 11, a performance at St. Peter's in Incline Village, and a final one at the place where it all started, the Piper's Opera House in Virginia City on Sept. 30. For tickets for the Piper's Opera House performance see the website: https://pipersoperahouse.com
More can be found about the Incline Village resident on his website, https://ghostoftwain.com/.
McAvoy is a winner of the Nevada Award for Excellence in School and Library Service. He plays the ghost of Samuel Clemens in the Biography Channel’s episode of Mark Twain, and the Discovery Channel’s Cronkite Award-winning documentary, "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."
Thank you McAvoy!
"Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see," Mark Twain.
