SOMETHING SILVER...

"Awed by her Splendor
stars near the lovely
moon cover their own
bright faces
when she
is roundest and lights
earth with her silver"

- Sappho.

2015 officially marks the EH School's Silver Anniversary!
This September, the image of my first student, Ruth Golden and I looking at each other across my mother's dining room in Kilmacud, will be twenty five years old.  The desire to teach was new and exciting, and as that first class filled up, and the school began to grow, I realised the benefit each new personality could bring to the group, and that drama, in its purest sense, has very little to do with being in the spotlight. Those first students help me to find my ethos as I watched them develop and blossom, and I very quickly got over the fact that they didn't particularly want to be actors, but could draw from the lessons, that which they needed - confidence in that moment or honing a future ability for a life that might never include the stage. Many students have come and gone over the past twenty five years, and they have continued to teach me, so that I too could have the confidence to recognize what I want the school to be.  I have now, and always have had a super team too, in the form of youth theatre students gaining teaching experience and former pupils become right-hand men and women to me; teaching, organizing, helping out in any way - just to be creative, and to watch the magical transformation as a child finds their creative way.  It has been simple to find these team members, because they have always come from the school - they came to me, and I like to surround myself with brilliant people. Like Sappho's silver moon, shining on everything, I like to think of us, not as individual stars, but one big round beautiful unit, tinged with a little silver perhaps, after twenty five years.

Feeling grateful :)