Highlighted Roots and More …

Highlighted Roots and More …

On Saturday 18th July this year something magical happened.
We graduated on the steps of the Central School of Speech and Drama on Friday 11th July, 1975. Forty years on we met up on those steps, where celebrity alumni’s names are now set in concrete. After mirth (some of us had re-united at the Old Vic Centenary in 2006 and some of us were still connected socially or professionally, but some faces had not been seen by each other for the full forty years so there was more than smiles) we took a tour of a place that Gilly (nee Macguire) said with our collective skills we could probably now run. We were T75. (Teachers, and we were referred to by our departure date lest we forgot our goal it seemed.)
We followed in our former footsteps, inhaled the same theatrical air and mirrored that attendant gossip in the old sanctuary of the Ladies opposite Marianne’s coffee bar. (Thank you, Claire Hill nee Harrison for this.) Nige (Pamment) wrote that he felt the most emotional in our old working spaces. Kate (Moon) wrote that it was in Studio A that Chrissie (Hearne) taught us to unfold our spines. The New Studio belonged to us and, but for the lack of leotards, we could have been in class when our tour guide made a speech.
Kerry, (nee McKerral) in charge of organizing our Central tour transported us by London bus to Charm’s (Hoare) where we met up with the remaining members of T75: a bit like group A meeting group B. Seamless highlighted roots shone out in the July sunshine. Sally (Edwards) wrote that we had been so young but that it seemed just a heartbeat away. Big Dave (Ramsay) thanked us for tracking him down; an amusing notion for a tower of a man whose Scottish roots could now only just be detected with a trace of a retroflex ‘r’.
Some kinds of roots can always be cosmetically re-touched but we thanked Central and each other for giving us a different kind of firmly established grounding. “The tone of our re-union,” Jonathan Nibbs wrote, “was testament to its, and our, breadth and sensitivity.” Kate wrote that if Joan Washington had asked us to take down notes phonetically we would have pulled out our pens. “What a gorgeous group of people you are,” Joan wrote.
Well, we are and that includes you, Joan. Last Saturday was our payoff as Flip wrote for, “growing into our skins together”. And Maureen (Bennett) writes the last word. “I feel we should all still be joined together.”
Seamless. Well, almost the last word, Maureen.
Edited by Jan Moran Neil (nee Titterington) www.janmoranneil.co.uk
Attendees: Maureen Bennett, Sally Edwards, Sallie George, Mike Gray, Claire Hill (nee Harrison),Charm Hoare, Gilly Hollis (nee Maguire), Kate Moon, Jan Moran Neil (nee Titterington) Jonathan Nibbs, Nigel Pamment, Dave Ramsay, Hillary Stallard, Alan Titley, Joan Washington (Tutor), Flip Webster, Elaine White (nee McKerral).
Remembering Ian Barber (52- 11/11, Slow Loris and Torvald/A Doll’s House) and Joanna Stevenson (25/11/52-29/3/12, Wild Boar and Celia/As You Like It.)