By Parker Thomas Staff writer
The Shakespeare Club held a showcase of multiple performances titled “A Night of Shakespeare’s Errors” on April 1 in Charlie’s Coffee House.
Hosted by the club’s president, senior Michael Blaine, the event was composed of both tragic and comedic acts either written by or revolving around the subject of William Shakespeare. Each member of the club took part in these performances, enabling them to showcase their performance skills.
Following an introduction provided by Blaine, first-year Anthony Wojciechowsky provided a humorous skit where he attempted to provide a short biographical history of the man, Shakespeare, but gave Adolf Hitler’s biography instead. Afterward, Blaine opened the performance up for audience participation and candy prizes by having several members of the club play a quick round of “Bards Dispensed Profanity,” a Shakespeare-oriented version of the game “Cards Against Humanity.”
After the first round of the game, first-year Richard Berwind read Sonnet 29, 31, 43, 28 and 22 by Shakespeare in an exert titled “Shakespeare’s Gay Sonnets.” Berwind claimed that these and several other sonnets of Shakespeare’s could be considered homosexual, due to the focus of the writer expressing their love for a male youth.
Following this, vice president of the club, junior Sarah Adams, acted out Viola’s monologue from the comedy “Twelfth Night,” a production she did during her first year at Susquehanna as part of the club. After this, Blaine, Adams and junior Hannah Paley “The Comedies,” a sketch originally written by the Reduced Shakespeare Company in the early 2000s that pokes fun at the fact that Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies are very repetitive in their nature and attempts to summarize them all up into one play.
Following that was a bit from act two, scene one of “Taming the Shrew,” performed by Wojeceichowsky and first-year Madison Niness. Directed by non-member, junior Sydney Curran, the performance was one of the more serious acts of the evening, receiving praise from both Blaine and Adams. Adams, who had not seen the performance beforehand, stated that she was blown out of the water by how good [it] was.”
Blaine then introduced Hamlet’s death scene in “Hamlet” performed by Berwind and first-year Carling Ramsdell by “accidently” requoting the “Alas, poor Yorick” scene from the same play. After these acts, Blaine discussed the perspective critics have that Shakespeare stole many of his ideas from other playwrights at the time and simply enhanced their plays’ elements. He expanded upon this by explaining that some people believe that Shakespeare did not write any of his productions, which is supported by a lack of written material from Shakespeare himself. Blaine did state, however, that the only surviving document written by Shakespeare is an exert of a play, in which the historical person, Sir Thomas More, addresses an anti-immigrant, arguing in support of the incoming immigrants of England. Blaine read from the excerpt and referenced his own historical perspectives of how the document is still relevant today.
Senior Brian LeBlanc then delivered a performance of the “Dead in a Box” monologue from “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead,” in which he walked into the audience as part of the performance. After this, Paley and Blaine mimed a number from the musical “Something Rotten!” that made fun of peoples’ quick aversion to crown Shakespeare the king of writing.
Following this was another performance, this time by first-years Nolan Nightingale and Nicholas Cardillo. Written by Nightingale, the act made fun of Shakespeare’s habit to steal from others’ works and his overuse of certain elements in each of his plays. Another performance followed this act, in which first-year Lena Costello sang Miranda’s opening monologue from “The Tempest” to a song that she composed to the words of the monologue. In a post questionnaire, Blaine said that this was his favorite performance of the evening, stating: “I loved the concept. It was so good and well done.”
Closing the hour-long show, every member of the club came up to the stage to jointly speak the famous “All the World’s a Stage” monologue from “As You Like It.”
The event served as a promotion for the upcoming “Comedy of Errors” play that the club will be performing on April 30.
“The ‘Night of Errors’ in my opinion was a great success,” Paley said. “Not only did we get a lot of attention for ‘Comedy of Errors,’ we also gave our audience a fresh take on Shakespeare, which includes pop culture references based on Shakespeare’s shows… hopefully this got people more interested in Shakespeare’s writings and legacies.”
