Retirees Act Everything--Including Their Age

The restaurant is empty, save for two women in their late 60s who sit at an unadorned table in the middle of the room. Although the women have never met before, neither is at a loss for words, since both have one powerful experience in common: Each was married to the same man at different times.

Trudie begins: “We must have a lot in common, since he loved both of us.”

Sylvia answers: “Yes. I guess he made both of our lives pretty miserable.”

Suddenly a pair of hands clap in the distance and the emotions at the table change abruptly.

“Oh, but I loved him so much!” Trudie wails, breaking into tears and covering her face with her hands. “So, so much!”

Two hands clap again.

“But he could be so funny and warm and wonderful too!” Trudie says, now laughing hysterically and clutching her sides. “I remember how he used to dry his socks over the toaster. . . .” She giggles.

The hands clap again.

“Oh, but he could make me so mad!” Trudie yells suddenly, with fury and clenched fists. “He was so selfish sometimes, so thoughtless. . . .”

No, these women are not schizophrenic, emotionally disturbed or otherwise mentally unbalanced. And they’re not really in a restaurant, either, except in their minds. Trudie Weinberg and Sylvia Miller are on the stage of the West End Playhouse in Van Nuys, taking part in a group that meets weekly to do improvisational comedy scenes. The exercise they’re doing is called “emotional jump-cuts,” in which the director claps hands and the emotions on stage must change immediately.

Improvisational comedy (or “improv,” as members usually refer to it) in itself isn’t uncommon, but there’s something about this particular group that is. Most of the group’s 20 members have had no experience in the theater or in show business. But all, nevertheless, have “been around.” The cast is made up entirely of amateur actors whose ages, one member said, “range from 50 to infinity.”

The brainchild of West End Playhouse owner-director Michael Ball and his wife, Victoria Carroll, the senior citizens’ improvisational comedy group in Van Nuys was formed nearly two years ago and has been flourishing ever since. Its first director was Gary Austin, a former member of The Committee in San Francisco and creator of the Groundlings, a Los Angeles comedy group that launched comedian Pee Wee Herman and actress Laraine Newman.

“When I was first approached to lead the group, I was really excited about it,” Austin recalled recently. “There was no money in it, and so I really wasn’t doing it for any other reason than it seemed like such a great idea. I must admit, though,” he said, “that when I first walked in the door, I had some questions about their limitations.”

Those “questions” apparently weren’t lost on the group’s members, either. “When Gary first started,” said Miller, who has been with the group since its inception, “he was afraid to lean on us too hard because we’re older . But the more he worked with us,” she said, “the more he learned that we are mobile, that we can be pushed, shoved, that we can respond and that we don’t snap back at him like a rubber band would. The total flexibility of the senior age group, I think, really shocked him.”

The group’s director, however, wasn’t the only one with some reservations. The group is open to anyone interested in it, and no audition is required. As a result, most members say they had initial feelings of shyness and varying degrees of awkwardness when they first tried their wings on stage.

“When I first came here, I was kind of self-conscious because I’m such a big man,” said John Strong, a stocky man taller than 6 feet, 3 inches. “But eventually, that rubbed off. Everyone was very supportive and encouraging. They kept saying to me, ‘Don’t be afraid to risk it. If you fall on your face, so what?’ ”

Learning to take risks, to push beyond emotional boundaries in a secure and supportive environment and to jump into something completely new has had an impact on the members that extends far beyond the four hours they occupy the theater each week. Many say it has changed the way they are “on the outside” as well.

Hang-Ups Forgotten

“When you learn how to commit yourself to whatever the situation is on stage, you forget whatever hang-ups you have,” said Miller. “Often, you find that you’re actually working through something you didn’t know was there, and that rubs off in your everyday life. You then find that you’re able to commit totally to whatever may happen to you in your life. You’re less inhibited. Sometimes people can’t even put their finger on the change in you, but they know there is a change in you.”

All of the group’s members are now retired, and many of them are widowed. For the ones who lost a husband or a wife, the group has given them a chance to do a lot more than exercise their funny bones; it also has been therapeutic, providing them an opportunity to begin living life on their own.

“I lost my wife of 37 years last August,” said William Derman, “and after that much time with someone, I didn’t want to go to any clubs or anything like that. That’s not my bag.” Derman is one of the few members with show-business experience. After “bombing out and getting the hook” on stage more than three decades ago, Derman became a successful television comedy writer.

“Everybody wanted me to go on a cruise, but that’s the last place I wanted to go,” he said. “I was in the depths; I was down, and not going anyplace or meeting anyone. I used to rather drink than go out.

“But when I came here and looked around, I knew this wasn’t a place where people came to look for a husband or wife. This is a place we come to with joy, to laugh. And when I came here and saw these old ladies up there on the stage--and I can say that because I’m almost the oldest one here--I laughed. I really laughed. I haven’t had a drink since, and I attribute that to this group 1,000%.”

Fills Emotional Void

For many members, retiring from lucrative careers also created an emotional void that the group has helped fill.

“I spent 30 years of my life in a very structured, very rigid, very disciplined organization,” recalled Duri Vital, one of the group’s “babies” at age 60. “I was a captain and commander of a California Highway Patrol office. In many ways, I always had the feeling that I was, in fact, playing a role. But it was always a role that I could control. I was in a position of authority, and I could act this way or that way and never have to worry about what the feedback was going to be.

“When I came in here and sat down, I was retired and no longer in that position where I could play that role. I was terrified. I had no identity. I didn’t really know if I wanted to go up on the stage and make a fool of myself. But suddenly I got up there, and it was kind of fun.”

The first time Vital says he enjoyed himself on stage was when Austin asked him to tell the group about his trip to Tijuana. “I suddenly switched into a Spanish dialect. In that moment, I suddenly realized that I was someone else, and that I could identify with this guy! That really was freeing for me, because I realized then that i didn’t need my old identity. I could have fun just being myself.”

Such positive experiences aren’t difficult to explain, said Dr. Gary Small, a geriatric psychiatrist in the Neuropsychiatric Institute and hospital at UCLA. As people age, he said, they experience a number of losses: their physical agility, their health, their appearance of youth and beauty as society defines it, and loved ones. The death of a spouse, friend or family member often results in isolation, he said, which in turn leads to depression.

Imparts New Purpose

“In addition to better mental health, involvement in such a group actually can improve an older person’s physical health,” he said. “Studies show a very high rate of illness in people who are depressed. Many of them have what we call the ‘give-up complex.’ Statistics show that widows have a much higher probability of dying. So this activity works against many of the natural tendencies in old age.”

Although first and foremost a comedy group, the cast has no dearth of other, sometimes more painful emotions. In many instances, a seemingly innocuous scene with initially “faked” emotions will bring forth memories in group members, hitting a particularly sensitive nerve.

“In the restaurant scene where we were talking about our husbands, things got a little mixed up inside,” said Weinberg. “I was a widow for 25 years, and it was a little like deja vu for me.”

In many ways, the scenes are frequently similar to psychodrama (a technique used in therapy), in which a person actually is playing out a real feeling, said Suzanne Kent, who, with Rob Watzke, directs the group.

“Sometimes I will set it up that way,” she said. “A few weeks ago we did a class that was total sense memory, where they went into their own personal lives and drew from what they knew, what they had lived, and how things had affected them. There was a lot of laughter and also a lot of tears. But that’s how I was trained as an actress, that you can only use who you are to emanate up there” on the stage.

There are times, however, when a certain emotion becomes too painful and a cast member may not feel comfortable revealing it to the rest of the group. When this is the case, Kent says she doesn’t force it, but instead tries to help the person identify what the feeling is all about.

Feelings Kept Locked Up

“There are certain things that people--young, old, middle-aged, whatever--want to keep locked up in a closet. I think that’s totally healthy,” she said, “as long as you’re aware that’s what you’re doing. What sense memory work does is help you to say, ‘Yes, I am aware of this feeling; I don’t want to share it, and I want to keep it personal,’ instead of, ‘What is this feeling? Why does this hurt me? What bothers me about it?’ ”

Although many of the group’s members say they would “jump at the chance” to be in commercials or on television, most say they no longer are aggressive or ambitious enough to go out looking for an agent. “But another, more formidable barrier to being “discovered” is what they believe is a stereotypical image of older people in the media. And many are angry about it.

Directors and casting agents “want someone who has a grandchild of 8, but I could have a grandchild of 20 at my age,” said Rivi Massion, a former teacher at the American Film Institute and one of the members with aspirations of taking her talents to a larger stage. “But they don’t buy it. There’s this ‘look’ that they want, the little old lady with the beef or something. And she’s supposed to be grandma. Well, what’s in between? There’s kind of a dead age there between 45 and 70 where they think that there’s nobody around. It’s so ridiculous.”

Directors Gain Awareness

All three directors of the group--Austin, Kent and Watzke--say that whatever preconceptions they came in with about working with senior citizens quickly vanished. In their place, a new awareness and respect have taken hold.

“These people just take their wings and they fly off the cliff,” Kent said. “With a lot of younger people, you have to walk to the edge of the precipice with them, hold the ropes, flap their wings and then pull them back to the cliff. Then you say, ‘Next time, I’ll hold it for five seconds and then you’ll be able to do it by yourself.’

“These people, though, they just want to jump,” she said. “They’re brave. And the most exciting thing is, they’re so willing.”