Chair and Professor of Theater Matthew Wright is a recipient of the 2023–2024 Excellence in Teaching award. He fell in love with theater growing up in rural Florida and pursued a theatrical education and received at BA at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. After both observing and performing in various shows in the area, he received an MFA from the University of California, San Diego. He eventually acquired a manager and an Equity card in New York City, beginning his professional career. After 22 years at Oberlin, he will be retiring in the fall of 2025.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you transition into directing after working as an actor for so many years?
I lived in New York off and on for 10 years, but when I was [in grad school], I went through a terrible breakup of a long-term relationship that was really hard. Also, it was the ’80s, and New York in the ’80s for gay men was like a minefield. So, I decided that I wanted to have a more stable life, and I started looking for teaching jobs. I wrote to everybody I knew who was teaching and said, “Hey, are there any openings where you are?” And it worked. I got my first teaching job at The Ohio State University, and it’s almost impossible to work in any small to mid sized theater department without having to direct. I had been very fortunate in my career to have been in the room with some of the greatest directors in the world — Des McAnuff, Anne Bogart, Tina Landau, Oskar Eustis. I was like, “I know how to do this. I’ve seen the greatest in the world doing it.” So I followed my instincts, and that’s how I started directing. When I got here, I established myself as an actor pretty quickly and easily, and people started to trust me. Then, one or two artistic directors asked if I would be interested in directing, and I was like, “absolutely.” Before you know it, I had a professional directing resume. It just sort of took off, you know? I just accrued more and more skills over time. It really was instinctual, and I kind of learned to get good at it.
What do you find special about Cleveland theater? What has kept you here for so long?
Cleveland is one of the most undersold markets in the United States. It has the second largest theater district in the United States, after New York. Every famous person you’ve ever heard of has performed on those stages. Cleveland is not necessarily known in that way, but once you start to dig around, you discover that there’s a huge theatrical legacy here. I love the fact that there are beautiful spaces to work in. I love that in spite of the fact that there are two well-established regional theaters, there’s still a real kind of hometown feeling, and there’s a tremendous amount of talent. I’ve [also] been here long enough now that people will take chances on me as an actor. I’m doing a play right now called The Madness of Lady Bright by Lanford Wilson. It’s this crazy a** play written in 1964, and it’s about this aging queen who is literally growing old, has been abandoned by their friends, never [had] a serious long term relationship, and is just sort of looking at their life. I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to do that anywhere else. That’s Cleveland. There’s every kind of theater you can imagine, and every kind of opportunity you can imagine.
With shows like your upcoming Oberlin production of The Rocky Horror Show, what draws you to new projects like those? What do you look for as both an actor and a director?
I love modern realism. I really am drawn to those stories because there’s a depth to them. That was sort of my stock-in-trade when I came here to Oberlin 22 years ago. It’s certainly no secret now, and it was no secret then, that there is a huge queer population on campus. I happened to be the lone representative of the queer community on the theater faculty and staff. It felt [up] to me to make sure that we were doing plays that afforded an opportunity for queer actors to play something that they relate to in a personal way. I started to become sort of “The Queer Director.”W Because Rocky Horror is my swan song of collegiate directing, I wanted to do something that was an iconic queer piece. I went to the queerest of the queer pieces. It occupies a really special place in our history — before it was popular to really create commercial theater around themes of queerness, this movie came out, and it was a sensation. I think it’s because it turns what we think of as normative behavior on its head. I feel like we’ve gone through a period of theater history where we’ve been, especially on college campuses, a little reluctant to tackle sex-forward pieces. I think the time is now to rethink that. It’s the juiciest stuff, stuff that addresses people’s sexuality. So we’re doing it. I’m really excited about it.
You’ve been teaching for 35 years now. What has kept you impassioned and motivated to stay on that path?
For any successful teacher, but especially a teacher of actors, the most important ingredient in that process of teaching is the individual student. So, rather than it being 35 years of repetitive courses and teaching the same thing every time somebody is in front of me, it’s a new experience. That’s what’s kept me engaged. I love the students here at Oberlin. They’re smart, they’re talented, and I have thoroughly enjoyed every individual that I’ve worked with. I’ve learned something from them, and hopefully they’ve learned something from the experience as well. It’s the individuals that make it interesting.
Regarding your upcoming retirement, what do you want to see in the future of the Oberlin Theater department?
First of all, my greatest hope for this department is the very enthusiastic, relatively young faculty. They are fantastic. I want them to really feel invested in this legendary program and find a vision for the future. It’s very important to me that all of the values that have made Oberlin what it is up until now be continued, but that the new generation finds its own way of doing that — in some ways, better ways of doing it. People don’t understand what an impact Oberlin has had on the greater world of theater. An alum, I can’t remember who, said, “You stand on any street corner in Manhattan and throw a rock in any direction, and you’re going to hit an Obie that works in the theater.” And it’s true. It’s almost an invisible network of Obies who are very tied to the community, and the reason that that’s true is because Obies are individuals. I hope that that continues to be the case, and I can’t imagine that it won’t be so.
