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Shakespeare’s First Folio: Teacher Workshops at OI

WHEELING, W.Va. (February 22, 2016)- – Oglebay Institute invites schoolteachers and aspiring teachers from the tri-state area to attend free professional development workshops that explore various ways to engage students in the study of Shakespeare.

Prepared by the Folger Shakespeare Library, the workshop titled The First Folio Teaches Teachers: Shakespeare’s Text Demystified gives teachers a better understanding of what the First Folio is and why it is important to the study of Shakespeare’s plays. The first half of the workshop focuses on the Folio itself with hands on activities that can be taken into classrooms. The second half delves into the language of William Shakespeare using the text from the First Folio and introduces teachers to interactive techniques designed to connect all types of students with Shakespeare’s language.

Two-hour and four hour sessions are available March 5 and March 19 at Oglebay Institute’s Mansion Museum.
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The curriculum is designed by Folger Education and has been tested with all kinds of teachers who teach all kinds of students in all kinds of schools across the country. Dr. Robert Harrison, West Virginia Reading Association immediate past president, and District 1 director Mary Kay Wensyel will instruct the workshops.

Harrison is a retired West Virginia educator with 46 years of service to the education profession. He participated in the Teaching Shakespeare Institute, sponsored by the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC and the National Endowment for the Humanities. His doctoral dissertation was titled “The Recurring Author: William Shakespeare-A Case Study through Content Analysis.” His study systematically described Shakespeare units in public school textbooks, and he presented his findings at an International Reading Research Symposium.

These professional development opportunities are offered in preparation for the Folger’s nationally touring exhibit First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare, which will be on display at Oglebay Institute’s Mansion Museum May 9-June 12.

This special Folger exhibition is sending a First Folio—the first collection of Shakespeare’s plays, printed in 1623—to all 50 states, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico. Oglebay Institute was selected as the First Folio! host site for West Virginia and is the only venue in the Mountain State to display this rare book and exhibit.  A wide range of public humanities programs to complement the exhibit will also take place.

Professional development workshops are free. Advance registration is required. A box lunch is available for a $10. For more information and to register, visit www.oionline.com or call Oglebay Institute at 304-242-7272.

Reading of Pinter’s “No Man’s Land” at Towgate

WHEELING, W.Va. (February 16, 2016) – -Oglebay Institute’s Towngate Theatre will offer a staged reading of “No Man’s Land” by Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter at 8 p.m. Friday, March 4 at Towngate Theatre.  The performance is part of Towngate’s Second Season, which enhances Wheeling’s arts landscape by featuring literary programming, theatrical readings, poetry, improvisation and more.

A tantalizing and poetic play, “No Man’s Land” explores a sense of being caught in a mysterious limbo between time present and time remembered, reality and imagination and life and death.  Michael Ramsay, president of Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre, and Wheeling playwright Tom Stobart will read the lead roles. The performance is directed by community theater veteran Arlene Merryman. The cast also features Butch Maxwell and Lewis Willming.

Harold Pinter was a Nobel Prize-winning English playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party (1957), The Homecoming (1964) and Betrayal (1978), each of which he adapted for the screen.

Tom Stobart, Butch Maxwell and Michael Ramsay will perform a reading of Pinter's "No Man's Land" March 4 at Towngate Theatre.
Tom Stobart, Butch Maxwell and Michael Ramsay will perform a reading of Pinter’s “No Man’s Land” March 4 at Towngate Theatre.

“No Man’s Land” is set in 1975 in a large room with a bar at a house located in London, and over the course of two hours of tension undercut by comedic dialogue we get to know a wealthy man of letters, Hirst, a hard-up “poet,” Spooner, and Hirst’s two overprotective servants.

Since its premiere in 1975 and its acclaimed 2008 London revival, “No Man’s Land” has been hailed as one of Pinter’s indisputable modern classics.

Stobart, who reads the role of Hirst, says the play is “by turns, funny, scary, and resonantly poetic and a piece that will haunt and tantalize the memory.”

Guests are invited to stay after the reading for coffee, cookies and mingling with the cast.

There is a nominal admission fee of $5. For more information, call 304-242-7700 or visit www.oionline.com.

Towngate Theatre is located in Wheeling’s Centre Market district at 2118 Market Street.