Assistant Professor of Theater and Dance Mark Cryer is playing "the Duke" in Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors. Cryer can be seen at the Saratoga Springs Shakespeare Festival in Congress Park, Wednesday, July 31 through Saturday, Aug. 3 at 6 p.m., and Sunday, Aug. 4, at 5 p.m. Performances are free and open to the public.
The Comedy of Errors is based on Menaechmi by Plautus. This five-act comedy by William Shakespeare, first performed in 1592-93, is Shakespeare's shortest play. The play's comic confusions derive from the presence of twin brothers who were seperated at a young age, in the same town. Their father, a merchant of Syracuse, is arrested in Ephesus and becuase he is unable to pay the local ransom appears before the duke. He tells the duke, played by Cryer, his sad tale: years earlier he and his wife had been shipwrecked with their infant sons, identical twins, and a pair of infant servants, also identical twins. The parents, each with a son and a servant, were rescued but then permanently separated. The play ends happily with Egeon's ransom paid and the family reunited.
Cryer earned a master of fine arts in acting from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama, Glasgow, Scotland. He studied Shakespeare at the Royal Academy of Art, London, where he acted in various plays including Othello, Two Gentlemen of Verona and Macbeth. After completing military service with the U.S. Air Force, he worked with the Science Museum of Minnesota's resident acting company, and later with the Children's Theatre Company. He has also acted with the Guthrie Theatre, where he taught acting, and later continued with Steppingstone Theater and Child's Play Theatre. Cryer was tour coordinator at Penumbra Theatre, and has appeared in the feature films Mighty Ducks 2, It Could Happen to You, and The Peace Maker.
