Weis Center for the Performing Arts at Bucknell University

Our colleagues at Bucknell Religious & Spiritual Life premiered a virtual Candlelight Christmas service today featuring the Bucknell Choir, Ringers and musicians. The service includes traditional carols, seasonal favorites, scriptures, and songs that have uplifted the community and world for many decades. Two of the student musicians (Jaden Lee on piano and Ryan Bailis on cello) will be featured in a Weis Center Session on Christmas day. Stay tuned! ... Video link:

Welcome to our 28th installment of Weis Center Sessions! Each Friday, we release a video that features a member of the BucknellU community. Today, we feature Maren Snow performing a holiday classic, Please Come Home for Christmas. Maren is the daughter of Judy Grisel (Professor of Psychology at #Bucknell) and Jimmy Snow. ... She is a senior at Lewisburg Area High School and has been playing guitar and singing since she was 10. Maren is a member of the Uptown Music Collective in Williamsport. Maren chose "Please Come Home For Christmas" in recognition of the fact that the pandemic has prevented a lot of people from traveling and visiting with their families this holiday season, and as a reminder of how important home is. Recorded at and produced by the Weis Center for the Performing Arts at Bucknell University. ENJOY! #WeisCenterSessions

Have you seen Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol yet? The reviews are in and the critics are raving about the innovative (and empathetic) approach to this classic holiday tale. Maya Phillips of the New York Times said in her review, Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol, a gorgeous mixed-media adaptation featuring live performance, stunning puppetry and animation, and live music, inlays Dickens’ tale within a story about a woman named Trudy who grudgingly keeps up the holiday trad...ition of presenting a Christmas Carol puppet show, this time via her computer screen; it was something her cheery, Christmas-loving husband, who died from COVID-19, loved to do. Trudy, however, is too busy to worry about festive puppets and ugly sweaters. She mentions all the disasters of the year, her jingle-jangle attitude officially gone and, really, who can blame her? Read the full review: https://www.nytimes.com//a-christmas-carol-significance-.h It’s not often that theatre companies are highlighted on the nightly news, but Manual Cinema was this week https://www.nbcnews.com//theaters-get-creative-to-share-a- Don’t miss it! You have one more opportunity to see it virtually via the Weis Center this Thursday, December 17 at 8 p.m. EST. Following the 60 minute performance, patrons are able to ask live questions of the artists/puppeteers! This 30 minute Q&A is as much fun as the performance itself and allows you to get a behind the scenes look at how they create this puppetry magic. Still not convinced? Here are a few more reviews. :-) Chicago Sun Times: https://chicago.suntimes.com//manual-cinema-review-christm Chicago Tribune: https://www.chicagotribune.com//ct-ent-manual-cinema-chris Chicago Reader: https://www.chicagoreader.com//yule-be-home-for-c/Content My Kid’s List: https://mykidlist.com/manual-cinema-a-christmas-carol/ ABOUT THE SHOW: Performed live in Chicago and presented by a live stream, Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol will be told with hundreds of paper puppets, miniatures, silhouettes, and a live original score in an imaginative re-invention of a cherished holiday tradition. An avowed holiday skeptic, Aunt Trudy has been recruited to channel her late husband Joe’s famous Christmas cheer. From the isolation of her studio apartment, she reconstructs his annual Christmas Carol puppet show over a Zoom call while the family celebrates Christmas Eve under lockdown. But as Trudy becomes more absorbed in her own version of the story, the puppets take on a life of their own, and the family’s call transforms into a stunning cinematic adaptation of Dickens’ classic ghost story. Adapted from the novel by Charles Dickens Runtime: Performance (60 minutes) + Q&A with the artists (30 minutes) TICKETS: $20 per household http://www.Bucknell.edu/BoxOffice 570-577-1000 https://www.bucknell.edu//w/manual-cinemas-christmas-carol

Welcome to our 27th installment of Weis Center Sessions! Each Friday, we release a video that features a member of the BucknellU community. Today, we feature #Bucknell student Sami Wurm '22 performing an original piece. Sami Wurm '22 is an R&B/Pop singer, producer, and songwriter from New York. She is majoring in Computer Science and Multimedia Music Composition at Bucknell, and she is so excited to share the first live version of her original music with you. ... She began singing when she was cast as the Tin Man in a local production of The Wizard of Oz at 4 years old, and after that, Sami grew up pursuing her love for musical theatre, performing in musicals and cabarets Off-Broadway. She began writing her own music around the age of 13, and she has since fallen in love with production and audio engineering; she writes/produces all of her released tracks. "10 Minutes ‘Till Sunrise" is the final piece on Sami’s EP "Feels Like Yesterday", which was released this fall on September 12th. She crafted this EP with her friend and collaborator DRZ, a Bucknell alum himself. This song combines themes of nostalgia, longing, and love with a profound sense of elusive companionship and loneliness. Wurm hopes that you all enjoy this experience as it is the closest she can get to performing live in our current environment, and she looks forward to sharing it more intimately, in-person, someday soon. Recorded at and produced by the Weis Center for the Performing Arts at Bucknell University. ENJOY! #WeisCenterSessions