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Man arrested after shooting in West Pittston

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Explosion kills two

<p>You learn some neat things in college theater.</p><p>Like how to make a junky little wooden bench look so classically marbleized that you&#8217;d swear it belongs in Augustus Caesar&#8217;s private garden, just the ticket for elegantly gowned ladies to perch on while discussing the state of the Roman Empire or the latest cabal.</p><p>I&#8217;ll tell you how to pull off that trick. First, other business.</p><p>I attended King&#8217;s College from 1960 to 1964. I took lots of great courses, so mind-expanding that I&#8217;m still trying to catch up on the reading lists.</p><p>One of the biggest experiences, though, wasn&#8217;t a course. It was my two years in the college&#8217;s drama club, the King&#8217;s Players, working with talented fellow students and the wonderful director Carl Wagner.</p><p>The theater major, which didn&#8217;t exist in my time, celebrated its 50th anniversary last week with a big bash at the college. Of course, I was there.</p><p>What drew me to the drama group many decades ago was seeing a couple of plays in my first two years at King&#8217;s. I&#8217;d enjoyed being on stage in high school, and so amid all the excitement of college courses I started thinking &#8220;well, why not?&#8221; Perhaps that wasn&#8217;t the greatest motivation, but it sufficed.</p><p>Within a couple of weeks, I was &#8220;running props.&#8221; That meant I had to make sure that every item an actor had to carry onstage was right there to be picked up.</p><p>They had to be correct props, too, drawn from the club&#8217;s store of artifacts of all kinds. One evening I received a &#8220;gentle&#8221; caution from Mr. Wagner that I should not have allowed an actor in an 1890s drama to be seen &#8212; even during a dress rehearsal &#8212; drinking from a glass with Fred Flintstone&#8217;s picture on it.</p><p>Occasionally I did get to come out of the shadows and deliver maybe a dozen lines in two Shakespeare works, with enormous casts. Maybe it wasn&#8217;t the exposure I&#8217;d anticipated, but that was still a thrill.</p><p>My experience with the &#8220;inappropriate&#8221; drinking glass, though, stuck with me. Whenever I&#8217;d grouse about not getting some time on stage, what would pop into my mind but a memory that I was the prop guy who&#8217;d handed a fellow player the world&#8217;s worst prop.</p><p>He&#8217;d delivered his lines beautifully, he&#8217;d moved across the stage with grace, he&#8217;d kept the audience transported to another century.</p><p>How did he resist gagging when he raised the glass to his lips and saw &#8220;yabba dabba doo&#8221; on it?</p><p>Hey, I said I&#8217;d tell you how to turn wood to marble.</p><p>First, build your bench and paint it gray. Let it dry overnight.</p><p>Second, pour some maroon paint into something the size of a garbage can lid and ball up a couple of sheets of newspaper.</p><p>Roll the newspaper ball gently in the paint.</p><p>Just as gently, roll the soggy ball of newsprint at various points on the gray bench.</p><p>Presto! When you put the bench on a stage, far from the audience and under theatrical lighting, it looks like it&#8217;s made of marble. Things that wouldn&#8217;t work in your living room really do work onstage.</p><p>Theater is magic. Your college buddy is a glib renaissance courtier with a sword. The wood you nailed together decorates an ancient Mediterranean villa.</p><p>But, there as in the rest of life, we all have to do our jobs to make wonderful things happen.</p><p>And that&#8217;s the lesson a patient Mr. Wagner &#8211; with a bit of help from Fred Flintstone &#8211; taught me.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption"></div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/web1_dracula.poster-2.jpg</photo0><caption0></caption0><photoCredit0>Associated Press </photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/web1_TOM_MOONEY-3.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Tom Mooney Remember When </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/web1_TOM_MOONEY-3.jpg</photo1><caption1>Tom Mooney Remember When </caption1><photoCredit1>Associated Press </photoCredit1></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Tom Mooney</p><p>Remember When</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Tom Mooney is a Times Leader history columnist. Reach him at tommooney42@gmail.com.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Remember When: Remembering a great big ‘yabba dabba don’t’