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Fitness center to be part of new development in Kingston

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Recent major attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure facilities

<p>&#8220;Into which of these seats should I put my royal rump?&#8221; actor Richie Cannaday asked as he strutted past the front row in the Alvina Krause Theatre and counted off, &#8220;Duck, duck, duck, duck, duck &#8230;&#8221; until with a cry of &#8220;Goose!&#8221; he chose a student to oust so he could claim his place.</p><p>Then, clad in a robe, crown and sneakers as King Claudius in Shakespeare&#8217;s &#8220;Hamlet,&#8221; Cannaday settled down to watch a play-within-a-play about a man who kills a king and replaces him on the throne.</p><p>Using hand puppets to portray the murder, actor Amy Rene Byrne ratcheted up a brother-versus-brother atmosphere by humming a tune from Disney&#8217;s &#8220;The Lion King,&#8221; then segued to the menacing music from &#8220;Jaws.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s funny enough to keep us interested,&#8221; said 16-year-old Amber Weiss from Bloomsburg High School, one of more than 300 students from area schools who attended a Wednesday morning performance of the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble&#8217;s production &#8220;The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged).&#8221;</p><p>Don&#8217;t worry &#8212; it you&#8217;re not in one of the high school or middle school classes that will be attending 10 a.m. matinees through Oct. 3, you can attend a general performance. Show times are 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays through Oct. 6.</p><p>While the show is &#8220;always different, based on the electricity between the cast and the audience,&#8221; as Byrne explained in a Q-and-A talkback after Wednesday&#8217;s performance, these are some of the moments you might expect as all 37 of Shakespeare&#8217;s plays are condensed into 97-minutes:</p><p>Eric Wunsch as Mark Antony, standing over a slain Julius Caesar, declares &#8220;Friends, Romans, countrymen, I come to bury Caesar &#8212; so let&#8217;s bury him and get on with <em>my</em> play, &#8216;Antony and Cleopatra.&#8217; &#8220;</p><p>That&#8217;s a cue for Cannaday, who portrays several major female roles, to enter as Cleopatra swinging the asp whose bite will kill her.</p><p>In another turn as a woman, Cannaday portrays a Juliet who is so immature that when Wunsch, as Romeo, repeats one of the Bard&#8217;s actual lines, &#8220;Call me but love,&#8221; Juliet seizes on the last two words like a potty-mouthed toddler.</p><p>&#8220;Butt love! Butt love!&#8221;</p><p>Later, with a nod to modern technology, Cannaday as Juliet&#8217;s nurse wails that &#8220;Tybalt is slain and Romeo banished and nobody &#8216;liked&#8217; what I posted on Instagram.&#8221;</p><p>By necessity each of the three actors plays many parts. Byrne, the lone woman in the show, told Wednesday&#8217;s audience that Shakespeare&#8217;s male characters greatly outnumber his female characters, and that male actors used to take on female roles when the plays were first written.</p><p>But &#8220;I&#8217;ll be playing whichever parts I damn well please,&#8221; she said, to delighted applause.</p><p>The story of Othello and his innocent, &#8220;she ain&#8217;t done nothin,&#8217; &#8221; wife Desdemona came across as a rap song; a summary of Shakespeare&#8217;s history plays took the form of a football game, and one of the insults that flew about in the Scottish play, also known as &#8220;Macbeth,&#8221; was &#8220;haggis breath!&#8221;</p><p>Finally, when the versatile trio staged a backward version of &#8220;Hamlet,&#8221; Bryne in the role of Hamlet told Ophelia to &#8220;nunnery a to thee get.&#8221;</p><p>And the ghost of Hamlet&#8217;s father said &#8220;oob!&#8221;</p><p>During intermission audience member Somaya Elnoshar, 16, from Bloomsburg High School, said she read &#8220;Romeo &amp; Juliet&#8221; as a freshman and wants to read more of Shakespeare&#8217;s work. &#8220;I want to read &#8216;Macbeth&#8217; and &#8216;Hamlet,&#8217; &#8221; she said. &#8220;They seem like pretty good plays.&#8221;</p><p>Attending Wednesday&#8217;s matinee were students from Lake-Lehman High School, Bloomsburg High School and Columbia-Montour Voc-Tech.</p><p>&#8220;They were really engaged, talking about the show at intermission and as they left, BTE&#8217;s school programs director Paula Henry said later. &#8220;They didn&#8217;t have to be prompted (to ask questions during the talkback). It was about as good as it gets.&#8221;</p><p>For more information about BTE&#8217;s matinees for middle and high school students, contact Henry at 570-458-4075. BTE has planned additional matinees for middle and high school students in December, when it will offer the romantic comedy &#8220;Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley,&#8221; which has been described as the unofficial sequel to Jane Austen&#8217;s &#8220;Pride and Prejudice.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Eric Wunsch, Amy Rene Byrne and Richie Cannaday portray, respectively, Polonius, Hamlet and Ophelia in a &#8216;Hamlet&#8217; scene from &#8216;The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)&#8217; at the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/web1_complete.polonius.hamlet.ophelia-1.jpg</photo0><caption0>Eric Wunsch, Amy Rene Byrne and Richie Cannaday portray, respectively, Polonius, Hamlet and Ophelia in a &#8216;Hamlet&#8217; scene from &#8216;The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)&#8217; at the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble. </caption0><photoCredit0>Bob Rush Photography | Submitted photo </photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/web1_complete.grappling-1.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Grappling and pratfalls, sword fighting and insults are part of &#8216;The Complete Works of William Shakespeare,&#8217; as presented by the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble. Director Aaron White explained in the program notes that Shakespeare wanted &#8216;to entertain the groundlings&#8217; as well as include the more nuanced aspects of High Art. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/web1_complete.grappling-1.jpg</photo1><caption1>Grappling and pratfalls, sword fighting and insults are part of &#8216;The Complete Works of William Shakespeare,&#8217; as presented by the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble. Director Aaron White explained in the program notes that Shakespeare wanted &#8216;to entertain the groundlings&#8217; as well as include the more nuanced aspects of High Art. </caption1><photoCredit1>Bob Rush Photography | Submitted photo </photoCredit1></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/web1_complete.with_.guitar-1.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Richie Cannaday, still wearing his Juliet dress, plays a guitar after he and cast mates Amy Rene Byrne and Eric Wunsch finished the &#8216;Romeo &amp; Juliet&#8217; portion of the play. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo2>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/web1_complete.with_.guitar-1.jpg</photo2><caption2>Richie Cannaday, still wearing his Juliet dress, plays a guitar after he and cast mates Amy Rene Byrne and Eric Wunsch finished the &#8216;Romeo &amp; Juliet&#8217; portion of the play. </caption2><photoCredit2>Bob Rush Photography | Submitted photo </photoCredit2></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Mary Therese Biebel</p><p>mbiebel@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><factboxMeta><p><strong>IF YOU GO</strong></p><p><strong>Who:</strong> Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble</p><p><strong>What:</strong> The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)</p><p><strong>When:</strong> Sept. 19 through Oct. 6, with shows at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays</p><p><strong>Where:</strong> Alvina Krause Theatre, 220 Center St., Bloomsburg</p><p><strong>Tickets:</strong> $30 adults; $26 seniors and young adults: $16 students; $10 Bloomsburg University students</p><p><strong>Info:</strong> 570-784-8181 or bte.org</p></factboxMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Mary Therese Biebel at 570-991-6109 or on Twitter @BiebelMT</p></shirttailMeta></div>

School students attend BTE’s ‘Complete Works of William Shakespeare’