Recommendations

I believe Eric is one of the best teachers to have as you first step into the world of theatre. Throughout the first year he guided us step by step and at the same time left us free to experiment. He managed to strike a balance between moments of focused work and others of sharing and lightheartedness that personally made me fall in love with it and decide to keep going with acting. What struck me most of all was his complete openness to the ideas that came from us students during class, and his readiness to welcome them and work on them together. This let us stage an end-of-year show we were incredibly proud of: because each of us had had the chance to put something of our own into it, not only as an actor but also in the creative process itself. As a teacher, Eric passed on to me many ideas that I have tried to put to use both on stage and in everyday life, and above all he brought me to a new awareness of myself, guiding me toward improvement without ever forcing anything, leaving me free to express myself.

I met Eric when he was in one of his first experiences as a theatre teacher and I was in my first year at Scuola Minima. At times you could sense his inexperience, but alongside it I saw right away a quality that to me matters enormously in a teacher: the ability to build a real working group — focused and willing to keep putting itself on the line. With Eric we rehearsed, rehearsed again, and then rehearsed some more. And the surprising thing is that no one ever seemed to tire of it. There was never the sense of repeating something pointlessly: every new run-through added a quality, a nuance, a possibility we hadn't seen before. You really had the feeling that the work was growing, step by step.