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Walter John (Wal) Cherry (1932-1986) was an Australian-born professor of drama and theatre director. He was, until 1986, Foundation Professor of Philosophy at the Australian Catholic University and Professor of Moral Philosophy at King's College London. He is currently Professorial Fellow in the Melbourne Law School and the Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne and Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy at King's College London. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

Life
Born in Dortmund, Germany in 1946 to a Romanian father (Romulus Gaiţă) and a German mother (Christine Anna Dörr), he arrived in Australia in 1950 at the age of four. He attended St. Patrick's College, Ballarat (Victoria) Melbourne High School (Victoria), University of Melbourne (BA Hons, MA) and University of Leeds (PhD).

The story of his childhood and the lives of his family members and close friends is told in his award winning memoir Romulus, My Father, which was made into an award winning film starring Eric Bana (Romulus), Franka Potente (Christine), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Raimond) and Marton Csokas (Hora). In a later book, After Romulus, a collection of essays, “he reflects on the writing of the Romulus, My Father, the making of the film, his relationship to the desolate beauty of the central Victorian landscape, the philosophies that underpinned his father’s relationship to the world and, most movingly, the presence and absence of his mother and his unassuaged longing for her”. (from the Publisher)

He is married to Yael Gaita, who was born in Tel Aviv and was until 2008 a teacher at The King David School, where she taught Hebrew. Gaita has two children, Katerina and Eva and two step children, Dahlia and Michelle.

Because he believes that it is generally a good thing for philosophers to address an educated and hard-thinking lay audience as well as their colleagues, Gaita has contributed extensively to public discussion about reconciliation, collective responsibility, the role of moral considerations in politics, genocide and the alleged uniqueness of the Holocaust, education (the nature of teaching as a vocation, the role of love in learning) and about the plight of the universities. He has also been active in speaking and writing against people who advocate that in order to protect ourselves against terrorists we should legalise some forms of torture.

Awards and Recognition
Romulus My Father won the Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-Fiction in the Victorian Premier's Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards for Contribution to Public Debate, the Braille Book of the Year, the National Biography Award. It was nominated by the New Statesman, London, as one of the best books of 1999 and, in 2000, by The Australian Financial Review as one of the ten best books of the decade. In 2007 it was made into an award winning feature film of the same name.

A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice was nominated by The Economist as one of the best books of 2000.

The Philosophers Dog was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, 2003 and The Age Book of the Year, 2003. It was nominated by the Kansas City Star as one of the ten best books of 2005.

In 2009 the University of Antwerp awarded Gaita the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa “for  his exceptional contribution to contemporary moral philosophy and for his singular contribution the role of the intellectual in today’s academic world. In 2011, Routledge published Christopher Cordner (ed.) Philosophy, Ethics, and a Common Humanity: Essays in Honour of Raimond Gaita.

Walter John (Wal) Cherry (1932-1986), theatre director and professor of drama, was born on 10 May 1932 at Ballarat, Victoria, son of Victorian-born parents Walter Joseph Cherry, commercial artist, and his wife Vera Gladys, née White. Educated at St Patrick’s College, Ballarat, and Geelong High School, in 1951 Wal entered the University of Melbourne (BA, 1954) and was soon active in student theatre. On 4 January 1956 at St John’s Church of England, Geelong West, he married Marcelle Lynette (Peg) Mathieson, a schoolteacher. That year he was appointed manager of the Union Theatre at the university.

In 1956 Cherry became director of the Union Theatre Repertory Company. His productions were energetic, meticulous and stimulating, introducing audiences to Bertolt Brecht and contemporary British and American playwrights. He also began advocating a `national drama’, although he was critical of aggressively nationalist, under-prepared or poorly conceived work. In 1958 he returned from a study tour of Europe with renewed determination (as his successor, John Sumner, recalled) `to raise the standard of his work and stretch the imagination of his audience’. For UTRC’s next season he lengthened the runs of a challenging selection of plays—an initiative that failed to achieve commercial success. He resigned in 1959, becoming a freelance director and establishing his own Theatre Workshop and Actors’ Studio.

After a series of ventures to develop an ensemble company, in 1962 Cherry and the actor, director and teacher George Whaley established the Emerald Hill Theatre Company. In the 1960s this company became Australia’s most celebrated quasi-alternative theatre of ideas and style, recognised for its intimacy of space and actorly discipline, its left-progressive politics, its commitment to touring and reaching young people, and its exploration of connections with folk music, vaudeville, dance and film. It provided impetus for a `new wave’ of Australian plays, playwrights and performance that surged in Sydney and Melbourne from the late 1960s. Yet EHTC was unable to pay its way and the company closed in 1966.

In 1967 Cherry was appointed foundation professor of drama at Flinders University, South Australia. He began building a department based on his company-workshop model, integrating the teaching of theatre, film, radio and television under a broad concept of drama as `a complex changing communal activity’. He was soon immersed in teaching and other university duties as chairman of the school of language and literature (later school of humanities) in 1968-70 and of the theatre management committee in 1968-78, and as dean of University Hall in 1970-74. His aspiration to link the drama program with a major theatre company escaped him: overtures to the South Australian Theatre Company were not reciprocated, although his work for New Opera, State Opera of South Australia and the Festival Centre Trust—combining professionals, departmental staff and students—was of the highest standard. He formed the Australian Stage Company, an occasional ensemble including several now-famous performers.

Impatient with those `owing their eminence to the flatness of the surrounding countryside’, Cherry was a provocative figure for audiences, practitioners and students, and was often kept at arm’s length by the professional mainstream for his visionary approach and personal style. Visits to the Berliner Ensemble and Schiller-Theater (Germany), the Theatre Royal Stratford East (Britain) and the Habima ensemble (Israel) inspired him to incorporate new ideas into his own innovative and eclectic work. He experimented with epic-presentational, naturalistic, expressionistic and absurd drama, masking and mumming traditions, theatre forms from 1930s Germany and contemporary America, and aspects of Australian vernacular style.

During his career Cherry directed at least eighty-six plays, revues, operas and music theatre pieces, wrote a novel and two plays, collaborated on film scripts, published incisive articles, delivered papers in Australia and the United States of America and served on over thirty university and industry committees. He won the 1958 and 1961 `Erik’ awards in Melbourne and the 1959 Western Australian General Motors Holden award for best production, and travelled to the USA on Fulbright fellowships (1972, 1976) and to Japan on a fellowship from the Cultural and Social Centre for the Asia-Pacific Region (1973).

In 1980 Cherry was appointed professor of theatre at Temple University, Philadelphia, and spoke of entering `the most creative period’ of his life. In 1985 he also became associate-director of the Boston Shakespeare Company. He enjoyed these new challenges too briefly. On 7 March 1986 he died of ischaemic heart disease at Boston and was cremated. He was survived by his wife and their two daughters, Kate and Anna, both of whom pursued careers in the theatre. The Wal Cherry play of the year award is sponsored by the Victorian Arts Centre.