When I was in third grade or so and growing increasingly frustrated at my inability to play sports at the level that I wanted, my parents, seeing my growing misery, tried to find alternative activities. One was a drama class run by IE (Mrs. E.) a local actor, community player, and mom who had a bunch of older boys and a pair of Irish Setters named Shelley and Keats. (The names meant nothing to me at the time but my parents thought this was very amusing.)

Once a week I’d go to Mrs. E’s class and participate in all manner of “acting” and “improvisation” classes. I remember lots of games, lots of situations, lots of trying to talk to girls, lots of acting up. I remember Mrs. E. pulling me aside because I was too squirmy or restless to participate and having what I now recognize as the dreaded earnest conversation. (Sorry).

I got a lot from these classes. I saw some ways to be that weren’t related to sports; I got a love of performance; an ability or at least a comfort level with talking in public; some sense of dramatic timing. As I got older, I realized that there was a kind of intellectual heft that comes along with acting and writing and that Mrs. E was a kind of model for this sort of work and this kind of life.

Thank you Mrs. E.