Garland ISD graduate Matt Cox has always enjoyed making people laugh and performing theater and writing has become a great avenue for that. However, he said that he was a relatively shy kid and didn’t realize that he might be good in the arts until high school.
“I had initially just wanted to be an improv actor, and that has morphed until it eventually became a I want to be a writer situation,” he said.
As a Sachse High School student, Cox was involved in the arts program, participating in a few plays and the UIL One Act event and he is grateful for that bit of experience as he feels like it was the beginning of his journey into the arts.
“So I do owe quite a bit to Sachse teachers Libby Nelson and Joe Murdock for giving me a chance,” he said. “Prior to that I had been a part of the newspaper/ yearbook team where Rebecca Pollard also let me stretch some funny bones in writing which was a first for me, too.”
The SHS 2007 grad has written a successful play called Puffs: Or Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic & Magic. This story, though is about the classmates, called the Puffs, of a certain famous boy wizard and the terrifying time they had trying to get a wizard education.
“We call it ‘a play for anyone never destined to save the world.’ It’s a fun time, I think, with a lot of heart too,” Cox said.
He shared that he is surprised to have a hit show in NYC.
“Puffs was only supposed to run for five performances at a comedy theater in New York, and yet nearly three years later here we are,” he said. “I am always overjoyed we keep getting to do this show and that people want to come and see it!”
Even more surprising to Cox, the show has been filmed and was recently shown all over the United States. He added that it is also surprising to him that the play will soon premier in Australia.
“Immediately when we first started performances people from all over the world asked us to film the show, or to bring it their country,” he said. “That seemed like something that would never happen, but here we are.”
He added that he is excited that this ‘little underdog story’ could be shared with people all over the country in movie theater. And hopes that people connect with it the way they have in NYC.
Cox has a few projects in progress and said to watch for a book called Salem Witch Comedy and an interactive play called The Magnificent Revengers.
Matt’s parents, Bob and Debbie Cox, are proud of his success.
“Matt was always very imaginative when he was young and good at writing stories. I always told him he should try theater when he was young but he didn’t really start until his senior year of high school and just grew from there,” Debbie said. “He was also an avid reader as a child and started reading the Harry Potter books when they first came out. We never imagined 20 years later, he’d have a hit Off Broadway show inspired by his love for those books.”
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