COMING FEBRUARY 14 A FUNDRAISER FOR THE COPE MURRAY CAMPAIGN.
Pigeons by the Charles written by Peter C. Murray will be broadcast as a ZOOM recorded staged reading.
Cope Murray taught at New England College for 30 years and became a well respected part of the faculty and a favorite among his acting students.
Beginning in 1958, through 2010, Cope’s summer job was acting at The Barnstormers summer stock theatre in Tamworth New Hampshire run by the son of President Grover Cleveland. There he delighted audiences with his range in a wide variety of parts and he had to learn the parts in all of one week. Not an easy accomplishment and certainly not done today, even at The Barnstormers. At the later stage of his Barnstormer career Cope jumped into film, most notably, In the movie “In Bedroom” with Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson. It is now time to honor the Cope with a dressing room in the Putnam Center at the Campus of New England College where he enjoyed teaching. With your help, this fundraiser will help accomplish our goal of $25,000 for the naming right. A large part of the work has already been done by his students, former colleagues, college friends, and the Tamworth community. We are seeking another $16,397.00 to accomplish this goal. We are seeking your help on February 14th by watching a staged reading of Pigeons by The Charles.
As a Playwright Pigeons by The Charles is a work in progress for me. The plot is simple and tried and true. It is a classic boy meets girl play, with some twists and turns along the way. By I telling you a little bit about the play, I won’t be giving much away. I will leave the twists and turns out of the plot.
Kurt Denmark and Julie Alexander meet at Boston University and become friends after a disastrous frat party. They share a love of the Charles and an odd connection with the kit of Pigeons that reside there. Kurt and Julie remain friends through their four years of College and you think maybe these two kids have a chance at love. All is lost when Julie wants to help Kurt move on from his high school sweetheart Charlotte Van Nordstrom. Julie introduces Kurt to her best friend Natalie. Julie realizes her mistake when she suddenly realizes she has feelings for Kurt. She lets him go, thinking Kurt and Natalie have married and she has lost two best friend. Four years later, Kurt and Julie reconnect at the Charles. Kurt did not end up with Natalie after all. The couple re-establishes their friendship and fall in love, but will that love last? How will their friends the Pigeons aid in that process and get them through a turbulent part of their relationship? Yes the Pigeons are a metaphor for what happens here. It may seem like a tired plot, but we have been through such a turbulent part of our history with COVID and the division we have in this country, I felt why not re-establish what we all lost, the hope of coming together and the hope that two people can still find each other and fall in love.
The reading will be recorded and broadcast on Youtube and Linkedin on Valentines Day. The night of the broadcast, there will be some information for you to help donate to The Cope Murray Campaign. You are not obligated to donate, and there is not a set amount to donate, but your support and your word of mouth will allow others to hear about this event and perhaps donations will come from you as a source.
The Script is the thing 