Mark Twain is a name not usually connected with Broadway , but now his play "Is He Dead" will receive its first public performance on November 29. "Is He Dead" was written by Mark Twain in 1898 but was never performed. It was rediscovered in 2002 by Shelley Fisher Fishkin, an English professor and director of the American Studies Program at Stanford University. It was published the following year by the University of California Press. The story is about a group of poor artists who fake the death of their friend in order to increase the value of his work. "Is He Dead" is set in France in the 1840s and centers on the French painter Jean-Francois Millet. "Millet was probably the most popular European painter in the United States in Twain's lifetime," Fishkin said in a telephone interview. "Americans greatly admired him because he focused on the life of the common man and the common woman." According to Fishkin, "Is He Dead" is a satire  about how value is created in the art world. Twain wrote the play when he was coming out of the hardest time of his life. What's "Is He Dead" about?
The death of a poor artist in the 1840s. A trick played by a group of poor artists. A story about the French painter Jean-Francois Millet. An experience Mark Twain had gone through.