CHARLES MOREY
Class of 1965
I have never been as frightened in my life as I was in the hour or so before the first performance of ‘Edwin Booth.’  I have never been as exhilarated in my life as I was in the hour or so after the performance.  This dangerous sensation is something that should probably be kept at great remove from all adolescents.  As has been sadly demonstrated, it can lead to a life in the theatre!

English teacher Sid Eaton escorted a group, including myself, on a trip to New York.  I saw my first Broadway shows on that trip, including the legendary original production of Edward Albee’s ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.’  I remember that evening clearly to this day.  Over the subsequent two years at Charles Wright, an extraordinary teacher and mentor, Jack Coogan, lead me to believe that a life as a writer – and specifically as a writer for the theatre – might actually be achievable.  I have now written eight produced plays.

“Study of and work on a great play opens the door to history, literature, language, the visual arts, music, dance, philosophy, psychology, sociology (and sometimes even the hard sciences as well) and frames these subjects in such a way as to make them immediate, alive and utterly indispensable.  This is why the study and performance of theater is vitally important at a school like Charles Wright – not simply for the occasional few who will be fool-hardy enough to pursue it as a profession, but for the hundreds, perhaps thousands of students to whom it will open a door into the life of the mind.  Isn’t that what Charles Wright Academy is all about?