Joyce Heller
5th April, 1928, Mid Street, Kirkcaldy to 13th January, 2024, Hermiston.

A long life lived well

Joyce was born in the flat above her parents’ fish restaurant in Mid St, Kirkcaldy. Their second child but always an only child, her brother Alex dying before her birth and his life never talked of. Her Dysart father Marshall had been a miner and mine safety inspector. Her Edinburgh mother Annie/Nan had led the life typical of a working class girl, going into service in North Berwick at 14 and later taking passage to a job as live-in help in Montreal, Canada.

Back in Edinburgh from Canada, Annie reconnected with Marshall and they married in July 1915. Joyce arrived 13 years later. It was as a teenager in Kirkcaldy that she developed her interest in drama, and in 1947 she headed to the Edinburgh School of Speech and Drama in Eglinton Crescent. Exciting times, as the first Edinburgh International Festival had just taken place and, in 1948, a final year student, she was in the thick of it as ASM on the famous Tyrone Guthrie production of “Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaites”. A year later, a chance conversation with a young English actor on another Kemp play led her to apply for work with a small touring theatre company based in Gloucestershire. She got the job, and headed off almost immediately to join the Compass Players in their base at The Warren near Lydney. This is where Joyce met Martin. They were married by Christmas 1950 and the first of their six children (Judy) arrived the following year.

  1952 - the company folded and the Hellers decided to move to Edinburgh to be near Joyce’s family. Their parents and older relatives invested in a lodging house in Leamington Terrace for them, to provide a basic income, and a home. Thus began Joyce’s 70 years of providing. Their second daughter arrived in 1954, their third during Martin’s 2-season contract in Morecambe in 1955-57. While Martin built what became a solid reputation and career in Scottish theatre, and more children arrived (the 4th girl in 1959, the boys in 1960 and 1962), Joyce realised she needed an alternative life to lodging-house keeping. In 1965, she headed for Jordanhill to train as a drama teacher. A year there, and a probationary year at a school in the Gorbals, preceded her first Edinburgh post, at Portobello High School, then Craigmount HIgh School with its purpose built drama studio, Queen Margaret College in Corstorphine and finally Moray House. There are creatives across Scotland now who are grateful for the time they were her pupils and students.
 
In 1968, the family moved to modern housing on the Drumbrae, the smaller spaces compensated for by the lucky purchase of Townhead Cottage in Kinnesswood where family weekends were spent, often with friends, colleagues and on one occasion even Joyce’s pupils joining us. But when Joyce’s Mum needed to move in with the family, a larger house had to be found. They visited a surprisingly cheap, large house just beyond the western boundary of the city. Turning in the gate of 54, the old farmhouse at Hermiston, Joyce said ‘This is it’. And so it was.
 
So much life has been lived at 54.  Joyce and Martin helped their own six children navigate their ways through school to adulthood. As they all grew up and left, the house filled with home then international graduate students from Heriot Watt, all finding a warm welcome and much support. Joyce was also active in the village as it faced the changes and threats that the years brought and The Hermiston Action Group, then Village Conservation Society were formed, campaigning to ‘Keep Hermiston Green’.

With all this, her own acting career might have ended entirely. However, she never gave up her membership of Equity and was still taking work into the noughties. In the early 80s, Joyce was involved with the Scottish Mime Theatre, and from the mid-80s, she also worked to support Martin’s theatre production company, Prime Productions which, like Compass Players, took high quality theatre to small venues across the country until 2008. It was their membership of Equity that took her on a trip to Moscow and Baku in Azerbaijan with Martin in 1978.
 
And there was so much more.
 
While still in Gloucestershire, Joyce had become interested in Roman Catholicism, going with other members of the company to talks with the monks at nearby Prinknash Abbey. The Christian pacifist Taena community, living then on a nearby farm, were also a strong influence. Returning to Edinburgh, Joyce had begun instruction under the Jesuits at the Sacred Heart in Lauriston. Martin, working at The Byre in St Andrews at the time, went to the local priest Fr Riddell to borrow books in order to understand the path Joyce was taking. In the end, he decided to follow her. They joined the Church in 1953/4.
 
Joyce always tried to live her faith, driven by its message of commitment to the poor and to social justice. The reforms of the Vatican Council in the 1960s met with her full approval, and throughout the 20 years of her teaching career and into retirement she also gave of her time and skills to a number of organisations: 13 years as a Children’s Panel member; volunteering in the 70s as local contact for a pupil at the Trefoil school; running a drama group at Gogarburn hospital; to Denmark, Germany and Greece with Mobility International to run drama workshops; prison visiting at Saughton/Edinburgh Prison where she established a HOPE group supporting continuing connections between offenders and their families; and for a number of years until Covid struck, volunteering with Martin at the Christian Aid booksale in George St. As part of the parish community, she was a Reader, a Eucharistic Minister and a member of the Parish Council. She marched with MakePoverty History in 2005, supported SCIAF and, after a trip to Jordan and the West Bank, Medical Aid for Palestine.

Later Life
 
As life slowed down a little with the closure of Prime Productions in 2008, Joyce had more time to indulge her love of theatre with Martin as season ticket holders at the Lyceum, exploring the delights (or otherwise!) of the Festival and Fringe and, at Joyce’s insistence, becoming regulars at Scottish Opera’s productions at the Festival Theatre. In the 80s she had been back to Canada for family weddings, and to Jordan to visit one of her daughters, but city breaks became her and Martin’s joy, and off they went to Paris, Bruges, Madrid, Krakow and (5 times!) to Venice on holiday.
 
More recently, as her health and mobility became less reliable, Joyce focussed on home and family. Like many older people, the restrictions of the covid pandemic hit her hard but she found increasing pleasure in being out in the garden, absorbing the sun whenever it appeared and admiring the new plantings as they grew and bloomed even as the air cooled last October.
 
Joyce died at home, as she wished, with her family around her, in the final hour of 13th January 2024.
 
 
“Plays Without Theatres: Recollections of The Compass Players Travelling Theatre 1944-1952”, compiled & edited by Pamela Dellar; 1989, Highgate Publications (Beverley) Ltd
 
“Community Journey” by George Ineson, illus John Crocket; 1956, Sheed & Ward