Van Brown plays Mark Twain Thursday, July 21, at the Annette Howell Turner Center for the Arts.

As someone who has performed as America’s great man of letters for many years, Van Brown appreciates the duality of Mark Twain.

“His daughter used to say she liked Daddy when he was Samuel but she didn’t like Daddy when he was Mark Twain,” Brown says.

This week, Brown brings to life Samuel Langhorne Clemens’ famous pen name and stage presence with “An Evening with Mark Twain” at the Annette Howell Turner Center for the Arts. Brown hopes the performance will benefit the arts center and looks forward to returning to Valdosta.

Born in Spartanburg, S.C., Brown’s family moved to Macon when he was a child. As a young adult, Brown came to Valdosta in 1966 to take classes at Valdosta State.

He discovered theatre, realized he loved it, and enrolled in the speech and drama program. Brown reminisces about performing in Pound Hall in the days prior to Sawyer Theatre and the VSU Fine Arts Building. Then, there was nowhere to build sets so drama students constructed them outside.

“If you exited stage left and had to re-enter stage right, you had to climb out a window, run around the building and climb into another window,” Brown says.

Working summers as a welder, he paid his way through school for two years, but it wasn’t enough then to push him to excel in all of his classes. After a couple of years of school, Brown says his “less than stellar academic accomplishments” earned him a ticket out of Valdosta and into Southeast Asia.

The Navy’s Seabees had use for Brown’s technical skills in the civil engineering corps in Vietnam.

“There was no such thing as an immunity to the front because there was no front,” Brown says of the war in Vietnam. The war was everywhere.

He recalls working with the kids, seeing their smiling faces, and thinking many of these children would never make it to adulthood.

After the war, he returned to Valdosta in 1970. He returned to Valdosta State. He worked at a radio station. He continued studying theatre and performing in plays. He met Brenda, the woman who became his wife.

He played in Valdosta bands, such as House of Commons. He recalls playing in one band called The Band until discovering the much more famous group had already taken the name. Another one of his bands played as Atlantic Coastline until the group received word to cease from the railroad company.

In 1974, Brown graduated Valdosta State and enrolled in the University of Georgia.

Through the years, Brown has worked in all aspects of theatre. He’s also worked many other jobs. He drove trucks and found other work to support himself, Brenda and their three sons.

He also hit upon creating a one-man show as Mark Twain back in the 1970s as a UGA grad student. Several people attempted to persuade him away from the Twain show. They told him too many people already worked as Mark Twain. Someone suggested he cast himself as another great author, George Bernard Shaw but, Brown asks, how many people really know Shaw or his works? Despite the recommendations to the contrary, Van Brown stuck with Mark Twain.

Though he has created his own script from Twain’s writings, Brown says he can take no credit for Twain’s wit. He compares playing Twain to escorting someone to a parking lot full of tractor-trailers. The person should walk around until finding the best-looking rig. “The man who steps out of that truck can drive it, but he didn’t build it,” Brown says.

Same with playing Twain.

“I’ve studied the life and writings of the man named Samuel Langhorne Clemens,” Brown says. “I’m an actor working with a script. I can’t take any credit for the wit and wisdom of Mark Twain.”

But he has obtained his own wisdom along the way. Several years ago, Brown was finding numerous gigs as Mark Twain. These shows kept him on the road to a point he realized he was missing out on his sons’ childhoods. He took fewer gigs, found other work, stayed closer to home and was there to be a daddy to his kids.

He didn’t stop performing as Twain. He just did it less often. With his sons all grown now, he can perform as Twain as much as the demand calls.

Brown sees Twain as a man of contradictions. A man whose stage presence seeped into his real life. The public expected the wry, caustic Mark Twain to a point where that’s who Samuel Langhorne Clemens became.

“Here was a man who was a literary giant but in his lifetime he lost so many people who were close to him,” Brown says. “… He had a lot of bitterness to deal with.

“… But he had a very expressive style in his writing and on stage. He took on the role of the character that was Mark Twain and it provided him his fame. Through his wit, his sarcasm, the mustache and white hair, he became his own caricature. He started wearing those white suits everywhere.”

Brown has confronted such duality in his life. He knows he is not Mark Twain. When the show is over, he takes off the wig, the mustache, the white suit. He’s Van Brown, and he realizes he’s a different person on stage than he is in his daily life.

SHOWTIME

“An Evening with Mark Twain” starring Van Brown.

When: 8 p.m. Thursday, July 21.

Where: Annette Howell Turner Center for the Arts, 527 N. Patterson St.

Show tickets: $20, general seating.

Optional pre-show dinner catered by Covington’s: 6:45 p.m at the arts center. Show, dinner tickets: Reserved seating, dinner: $45; general seating, dinner: $35.

More information: Call (229) 247-2787.