A junior at Roman Catholic campaigned to name the high school’s theater for the late Charles H. Fuller Jr. And now, his wish is getting fulfilled

Brad Ferdinand, a junior at Roman Catholic High School, seemed mildly shocked Thursday that his one-man campaign to have the school’s generic Black Box Theater named after Philadelphia’s Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, Charles H. Fuller Jr., was accomplished.

From now on, the theater’s new name is “The Charles H. Fuller Jr., ‘56 Theater.“ Fuller, a member of the Roman Catholic Class of 1956, died in October 2022.

Ferdinand, who once thought he would have to start a petition to have the theater renamed, posed with members of Fuller’s family. He also posed with members of the cast of A Soldier’s Play, now on a national tour at the Forrest Theatre through Jan. 29.

With a genuine and self-effacing smile, Ferdinand shook his head at the excitement around him.

There was a Tony Award-nominee, Norm Lewis, who plays Capt. Davenport in the play, shaking his hand.

There was Eugene Lee, a veteran Broadway, film, and television actor, now in the major role of Sgt. Waters, asking Ferdinand if perhaps he was interested in the theater himself.

“No,” Ferdinand said quietly, “I want to go into politics.”

Ferdinand said he had learned about Fuller last fall, for a Veterans Day project, when his research seminar class studied the lives of alumni who had served in the military. Fuller served in the U.S. Army and was stationed in Japan and South Korea between 1959 and 1962.

A little later, in his AP English Language class, Ferdinand learned more about Fuller’s works and accomplishments as a playwright.

That made him wonder why Roman Catholic had not honored Fuller in some special way.

» READ MORE: Charles H. Fuller Jr., whose ‘A Soldier’s Play’ won the Pulitzer Prize, was memorialized by a city that admired him

One day, he walked into Roman Catholic President Father Joseph Bongard’s office and told him he wanted to start a petition to name the Black Box Theater inside the school’s Howard Center for the Arts after Fuller.

Bongard told Ferdinand there was no need to write a petition. But he asked him to write a proposal. The school’s board of directors had already been thinking of some way to honor Fuller, Bongard told the Inquirer.

This is part of the letter Ferdinand wrote:

“Upon further research of Mr. Fuller, I began to build an appreciation for his work and service, leading me to wonder why an alumnus as acclaimed as him was not formally honored or recognized by the very institution that instilled the many principles and values he presented to the world through his work.”

In a question-and-answer session Thursday with nearly 200 students, staff, and guests inside the newly named theater, Lee remembered knowing Fuller when his play was first produced in 1981 by the Negro Ensemble Company.

Lee was one of the young soldiers, Cpl. Cobb, in the original cast, which featured fellow newcomers Denzel Washington and Samuel L. Jackson.

Fuller was soft-spoken and sat in the back during rehearsals, Lee told the students, and as a writer, Fuller didn’t interfere in the work of the actors and director.

Though Fuller’s play was set in 1944, the actors who honored him Thursday said the themes have stood the test of time.

“A lot in America is changing,” Lee said, “but big boats turn slow.” He encouraged the students to be the ones to keep turning the boat in the right direction.

Lewis, a Florida native nominated for a Tony Award for his role in the musical Porgy and Bess, said in his own home state, leaders are trying to keep students from learning Black history (a reference to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his rejection of a proposal for an AP Black history course).

Earlier in the week, on the same night A Soldier’s Play opened at the Forrest, DeSantis was honored at the Union League of Philadelphia with its highest award. Father Bongard attended that Union League event; he told attendees at the theater Thursday that he was invited to offer a prayer.

“I will pray with anyone,” he said.

Bongard said he had not been following Florida politics and did not know about the criticisms of the governor — the Philadelphia NAACP, the Black Clergy of Philadelphia and Vicinity, and others have called the DeSantis award a “slap in the face.”

“There seems to be a lot of opposition in the country today,” he said. “The trend today, is we don’t allow people to speak. We can never learn unless we’re listening to each other.

“One of the things we try to teach even here, is we are going to disagree with each other, but we have to be civil and talk to one another.”

Fuller similarly wanted people to talk to each other about racial conflict and the internalized racism that some Black people, like Sgt. Waters in the play, exhibited, Temple University Professor Molefi Asante told the students on Thursday.

Fuller loved his years at Roman Catholic, Asante said. Attending the school has become a time-honored tradition in the Fuller family.

Charles Fuller IV, the playwright’s grandson and the third generation of Charles Fullers to graduate from Roman, attended the naming ceremony. His 8-year-old son, Charles Fuller V, was there, too.

“There’s a kind of brotherhood,” said Fuller, 31.

“It’s a huge honor,” he said. “It’s powerful and overwhelming.” He said he hopes his own sons, Charles V and Jackson, will also attend Roman one day.

“That’s the plan.”