JOHN FORIER
MS & US Drama Teacher & Performing Arts Department Chair, Since 1998
I think my most enduring memory is of my first show at Charles Wright.  I didn’t really have any parameters to follow, so I just blindly lurched forward to put on a Fall Show… not fully comprehending that there hadn’t really been any Fall Shows in the past.  I needed seven kids for a cast, and I got five to try out.  I wound up wandering the halls on the first day of rehearsal and dragging a couple kids into our makeshift rehearsal room (where room 44 is now… I think it used to be an Art room, believe it or not).  The kids were pretty non-committal at first, but wound up setting the commitment standards for the entire drama program.  Those seven kids did everything that needed to be done for the show from acting, to tech, to folding the programs, and they did it all with a quirky, can-do spirit right out of an old Andy Hardy movie (you remember… Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland… they had to put on a show to save little Billy’s dog… in a barn… on a three-dollar budget… and wound up with something just short of the Ziegfield Follies… I loved those movies).  Anyway, one of my biggest dreads now is turning away kids, even from tech, because we don’t have the space or the resources to handle the number of kids that want to try out for any show.  That may even be a bigger dread than not being able to find seven kids just to put on a show.

My hope is that a new space will allow even more kids to experience that old Andy Hardy spirit… and with a new space (lets face it… our current space makes a barn look pretty darn snazzy), maybe even we could come up with something just short of the Ziegfield Follies.