Theater News

17-Year-Old Playwright Noah Altshuler to Adapt Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer for Stage

Sponsors at the Mark Twain House & Museum has Broadway hopes for the play.

Seventeen-year-old Noah Altshuler will pen the stage adaptation of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Seventeen-year-old Noah Altshuler will pen the stage adaptation of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Noah Altshuler, a 17-year-old playwright and senior at Groton School, will adapt Mark Twain’s classic novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer for what is being called a "Broadway-bound" stage play, according to the Mark Twain House & Museum.

In 2014, Altshuler's play Making the Move premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (where Altshuler was the youngest playwright selected to present a new work). He will return to Edinburgh this August with Last Call for Providence, a sequel to Making the Move, which deals with similar themes of adolescent male gender roles in society.

"At the age of 17, a young Samuel Clemens, later known as Mark Twain, set out from Hannibal, Missouri to find his destiny," said Mark Twain House Executive Director Cindy Lovell. "It is with great excitement and anticipation that we support another 17-year-old writer on a similar journey. Noah Altshuler is an exceptional choice to reexamine and adapt The Adventures of Tom Sawyer for the stage. I look forward to hearing about his adventures as he develops his play of this American classic."

"This is exciting," added Hal Holbrook, an Emmy- and Tony-winning actor and longtime advisor to the Mark Twain House. "I think Mark Twain would be mightily pleased to find that his Hartford Home is sponsoring a playwright-in-residence program and that the first playwright chosen to get it started is a young man as tall as Abe Lincoln. Noah Altshuler has already proved himself at the Edinburgh Festival where a play of his was produced. The creative sparks will be lighting up again at 351 Farmington Avenue."