Mark Twain impersonator visiting senior center

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Mark Twain impersonator Stephen Hollen will return to the Highland County Senior Citizens Center for a performance and dinner that will begin at 6 p.m. Saturday, June 18.

Hollen first appeared at the senior center in 2012. His performance was the first special event center executive director Mechell Frost put on.

“Since then, every now and then, people will ask when he’s going to come back, so he’s coming back,” Frost said.

During that first visit the center created a historical fair theme for the Hollen appearance, but this year it will be a riverboat theme, “Because the real Mark Twain was a riverboat captain and that’s how he got his pen name,” Frost said.

Doors open at 6 p.m., the same time the dinner starts. The dinner menu will be steak, mashed potatoes, green beans and apple pie. During dinner there will be vocal and piano entertainment by Christopher Ford, a Hillsboro High School student who is also a member of the Cincinnati Boychoir.

Tickets are $12. They are currently on sale on the senior center and will include a ticket for door prizes.

Frost said Hollen’s performance will include storytelling and some humor and wit.

“Stephen Hollen is a humorist, storyteller, performer, writer, poet and a Mark Twain Impersonator,” his website says. “Stephen became a ‘Twainiac’ some time ago when he began to read Twain’s books. The irony and wit Twain as a humorist had as he appeared on stage shows forth easily in his speeches and lectures. Stephen’s early influences as a humorist arose from his childhood in the hills of Eastern Kentucky and his love for the richness of humorists like Twain and Will Rogers.

“It was simply serendipity that led Stephen Hollen to impersonate Mark Twain. The first time someone told him he looked like Twain, he simply smiled. After it happened dozens of times, someone finally said, ‘You know… you like to tell stories, you look like Mark Twain and you love his wit … why not be Twain?’”

Frost said those attending the show are welcome to dress in time period clothing, but it is not at all required.

For more information call the senior center at 937-393-4745.

Reach Jeff Gilliland at 937-402-2522 or on Twitter @13gillilandj.

Mark Twain impersonator Stephen Hollen will perform at the Highland County Senior Citizens Center in Hillsboro on June 18.
http://aimmedianetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2016/06/web1_Twain-pic-1.jpgMark Twain impersonator Stephen Hollen will perform at the Highland County Senior Citizens Center in Hillsboro on June 18.

By Jeff Gilliland

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