Ken Richters' Travel Memoir Just Released!

  

   
   

 

     

NOW AVAILABLE

Not So Innocently Abroad

Official State Department Tour or Sinister Government Plot to Disappear Me?
    

From award-winning actor and playwright Ken Richters comes this original, irreverent, and funny travel memoir of his month-long U.S. State Department goodwill tour of Russia and Ukraine as Mark Twain. After spending more than 30 years performing as Mark Twain, satirizing every government official and politician within earshot, American actor and playwright Ken Richters got a call from the U.S. Department of State asking him to leave the country for the former Soviet Union. Causing the author to wonder if the proposed trip was an official State Department goodwill tour, or sinister government plot by one of the many politicians and government officials he offended during his career (including seven U.S. senators, fifteen past and present members of Congress, twenty-six state governors, countless local politicians from all fifty states and a sitting justice of the United States Supreme Court) to have him permanently disappeared.
 
Originally scheduled for two shows in Moscow, the mission was extended for nearly a month to retrace Twain's travels in Eastern Europe. The book chronicles performance stops in Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, Simferopol, Sevastopol, and the Livadia Palace in Yalta; almost causing a diplomatic incident involving the Russian Black Sea Fleet; hallucinating on a road trip to Crimea, seeing a naked Oprah Winfrey and matryoshka doll juggling monkey riding shotgun, after self-medicating in an attempt to cure the Crimean Croup; and how, unknowingly, making the same observation about the beauty of Ukrainian women that caused Vice President Joe Biden public ridicule, elevated Richters to a Ukrainian media cause célèbre.
   

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Chapter Excerpt

"I’m trying to reach Ken Richters about a possible program in Moscow under the auspices of the Department of State. I have phoned him twice, at home, but haven’t received a response. He may be touring. In any case, would you please have him call me at his earliest opportunity?
 

—Michael Bandler, U.S. State Department

Bureau of International Programs.”

 
Reading the email made me think of Groucho Marx’s letter of resignation to the Friars’ Club: “I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.” There’s a reason for this. I was born in the state of Connecticut, leaving our government no choice but to accept me as a new member of the U.S. club. However, birthright alone should not be a justification for having someone like me represent the United States, let loose to travel around the former Soviet Union for a month speaking to thousands of theatergoers and having unfettered access to the Russian and Ukrainian press.
 
Above and beyond my unexceptional SAT scores, the reason I became an actor and not a politician or lawyer was, and continues to be, my inability to refrain from entertaining myself. In my own defense, those who accuse me of having no filter should thank their God for not being privy to what I could have said. For every politically incorrect comment that springs from my mouth there are at least five that don’t make the cut—internally censored, because even I think they cross the line. Hearing from the federal government is rarely good news; my last IRS field audit immediately comes to mind. But maybe the mail wasn’t from the Feds, and the “program in Moscow” was a Nigerian ruse to fool me into filling out a phony visa application with all the vital personal information needed for identity theft — I have no fear of being the victim of identity theft. In fact, look forward to the possibility, hoping the thieves might do a better job with my finances than I do.

But if this was a legitimate communication from the State Department, how did they find me? Who referred me? Why, after my thirty years as Mark Twain, did someone in the United States government decide I was now a good choice to represent the country? “Something is terribly wrong here,” I thought. I pondered the possibilities, thinking back over three decades of politicians and government officials who have had a love-hate relationship with my performances as Mark Twain. Granted, there is nothing better for a politician’s street cred than being publicly dressed-down by America’s most celebrated dead humorist — showing a room full of constituents what a collection of great sports they are. But how many of those influential people might be carrying a grudge? Had I unknowingly crossed the line by hitting someone too close to home, or forgetting to warn them they were about to be roasted? My mind raced through an exhausting list of probable adversaries who would like nothing more than to have someone in the government disappear me—a term used by the intelligence community to indicate an operative has been “permanently retired.” A catalog of my Mark Twain’s victims ran through my brain. I could see their controlled rage, a slow burn fueled with never-ending thoughts of sweet revenge, patiently waiting for me to drop my guard. To quote Joseph Heller, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.”

It all started in early 1982, around the time of my first-ever booking in Washington DC, which came to the attention of Samuel “Sam” Gejdenson, the newly elected United States Representative for the Second Congressional District of Connecticut. A few days before the show, his office invited Mark Twain to tour the Capitol for a photo-op and possible local television interview.

Sure!” I said. What could go wrong?

While the television news crew from WFSB Channel 3, the Post-Newsweek station in Hartford, began setting up for their interview, Sam Gejdenson and Sam Clemens stood together smiling on the Capital’s impressive Renville, Minnesota granite steps, posing for the House photographer. Following the interview, the reporter asked us to move inside so her cameraman could shoot b-roll of us walking around the Rotunda. It was while we stood in front of John Trumbull’s 1824 oil on canvas, General George Washington Resigning His Commission, that someone in the Congressman’s inner circle suggested we make an unannounced visit to the fifty-fifth Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time.

By the time we made it to the stately marble archway leading to the Speaker’s suite we had attracted the attention of a second television news crew—a degenerate-looking duo working as network stringers. After a couple of phone calls in the outer office we went through an unmarked door to an inner office and down a stately corridor leading to the private office of Thomas Phillip “Tip” O’Neill, Jr.—presiding officer of the House of Representatives and second in the United States presidential line of succession, after the vice president. Preceded by two videographers walking backward with cameras and bright lights pointed in our direction, we could have easily been mistaken for a 60 Minutes ambush interview orchestrated by Mike Wallace instead of what it was: a publicity-seeking courtesy call about to go terribly wrong ..."