An award-winning playwright and alumnus of the Horace Mann prep school interrupted a school reunion held in San Francisco with an impromptu speech blasting the elite Bronx institution’s handling of the sex abuse scandal and urging guests to freeze donations in protest.
Performer Charlie Varon, who graduated from the Bronx private school in 1976, reminded about 50 fellow graduates of the school’s motto: “Great is the truth and it prevails.”
He then went on to tell the guests, including current head of school Thomas Kelly, “Horace Mann’s board of trustees has failed to be courageous or even decent in the wake of the sexual abuse scandal.”
He urged alumni to give money to the Horace Mann Action Coalition to fund an independent investigation into abuse of almost 50 students at the hands of over 20 teachers from the 1970s through the 1990s — instead of donating to the school.
The board has repeatedly refused to conduct an independent investigation.
The school acknowledged last year that the scandal has put a damper on its $50 million fundraising campaign.
The indie playwright/comedian’s “toast” to his alma mater ended with an awkward silence. In a video of the performance, one guest can be heard saying, “Wow,” another asks, “What?” and then a few people applaud.
Varon said he hadn’t planned to interrupt the March 20 gathering, but was shocked that Horace Mann officials were “going merrily about their fundraising as if nothing has happened — no sexual abuse scandal, no shameful behavior on the part of the board of trustees.
“I couldn’t let this go unchallenged,” he wrote in an email to classmates on Monday.
“I was not the only one who spoke out,” Varon said in the email. “After my toast, at least five people (including me) spoke to Mr. Kelly individually, challenging him about HM’s handling of the scandal.”
In Kelly’s address to the alumni, he was “defensive” about the scandal, Varon said.
In “a strange ironic twist,” the school gave out party favors that seemed to complement Varon’s speech.
“I had no idea that each alumnus would be given, on entering the event, a Horace Mann bookmark with 24-carat gold plated HM insignia on the front including the school’s motto: Great is the truth and it prevails.”
The native New Yorker’s plays include “Feisty Old Jew” and “Rabbi Sam.”
A rep for Horace Mann did not immediately comment.