Performances:
"Mark Twain Unlearning Racism"

The Performance

"Mark Twain: Unlearning Racism" is a forty-five minute performance that introduces audiences to Mark Twain's process of evolving from his boyhood in a slave-owning Hannibal, Missouri home, to an author and public figure who was racially enlightened for his time.

The performance, like the Traveling show, is premised as a lecture, this time with Twain introducing his boyhood environment and progressing to his last decade when he wrote an essay, "The United States of Lyncherdom," that went unpublished until after his death.

Pritner has performed "Mark Twain: Unlearning Racism" in a variety of venues, including a Manhattan Island Presbyterian church, a Kansas City Unitarian church, an Asheville, NC classroom with hundreds of undergraduate students, a private secondary school in New York City, and at the Gordon Parks Center in Ft. Scott, KS.

Because he wishes to be available for post-performance interaction with the audience, Pritner leaves the stage after performing and returns as himself to lead a discussion.