Forever in Prime Time : Seniors Hit the Boards and Lift Many Spirits

“Grandma?” Gerry Bassham’s granddaughter once asked. “Remember when you played Snow Off White?”

Bassham is a star to her grandchild. As a member of the Forever in Their Prime Time Players, a theater group for senior citizens in East County, Bassham appears in two musicals each year.

At a recent dress rehearsal for their December production, “The Secret of Christmas,” the group’s director, Leslie Johnson, called out cues and forgotten lines from backstage. The senior citizens, disguised by their colorful costumes, gathered around, relishing the opportunity to toss out wisecracks and comments. Clearly, they consider Johnson more than just a director.

“She’s like a daughter,” said Jadell Arnold, who plays Santa.

“No,” said Bassham, costumed in a man’s suit and black bowler to play the Price Gouger. “She’s like a younger sister. We wouldn’t do this for anyone but Leslie.

“She keeps us off the streets and out of the bars. Because of her we don’t have to hang out at the shuffleboard courts or the shopping malls like Valley Girls,” said Bassham.

Then, Arnold said, more seriously, “Leslie brings out the most in us. It’s all that hollering--she shows that you can do it. She’s considerate, she’s got finesse. She may criticize but she never hurts your feelings.”

It’s obvious from the warm backstage camaraderie that eight years of rehearsing together, of changing costumes together with little or no privacy, of using car pools, of experiencing death and illness together, have created a tight-knit group who can joke about themselves and the rigors of the theater.

Changing costumes in cramped quarters isn’t a problem. “After age 60 or 80 who cares?” said Ruth Colove. “If you haven’t seen it all by then. . . . Anyway, modesty and vanity fly out the window at 70. After that, you look for comfort.”

No One Left Out

Like any professional acting ensemble, this one enjoys performing for appreciative audiences. “We have more fun when people applaud for us,” said Bassham. “Most places give us a good reception. But then we won’t go back if they are too old and fall asleep.”

Johnson does everything she can to limit performance anxiety. Actors who have trouble memorizing their lines often carry index cards on stage to prompt themselves. Every member has a part to play, a song to sing. No one is left out. If someone doesn’t feel comfortable on stage, he can work behind the scenes.

For some of the players, the group becomes a reason for living, Johnson said. Pauline Carnell, 91, plays the piano for every production. Her husband died when she was 43 so Carnell supported herself and sent her two children to college playing the piano in nightclubs.

“I played in every hole there was,” she said, dressed in a pastel pink blouse, her silver hair pulled back in combs. “Except I never played in a burlesque house--that I know of.” She played the piano professionally until retiring at age 76. Her employers “didn’t know how old I was. It was a hard life but I enjoyed every bit.”

Although Carnell has had many health and family problems during her years with the Forever in Their Prime Time Players, but she bounces back faster than most people her age. Not too long after she joined the group, Johnson said, Carnell suffered a stroke. Using piano playing as part of her therapy, she recovered quickly. Later, she broke a wrist. Again, Carnell made an amazingly fast recovery. Then last year, a sister she had lived with for 20 years died. It was very traumatic for her, Johnson said, but Carnell knew the show must go on. She played the piano and dedicated the show to the memory of her sister.

In her youth, perky Lucy Gyure was a performer. In “The Secret of Christmas,” Gyure and her husband, Andy, play Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy. But in her 20s, Lucy danced with the Rockettes at the Roxy Theatre in New York, and she appeared with the Marx Brothers in the 1940s. Even now, at age 80, when Lucy performs there is a bit of the ingenue about her. Andy also had some stage experience during his youth; he was an assistant lion tamer with a circus.

Ties That Bind

Drama has proven to be an effective personal and social outlet for the group members. “When you perform,” Johnson said, “you have to become very vulnerable. You have to really release certain things inside yourself that you might not release otherwise. If you don’t, the performance isn’t effective.”

The senior citizens easily cast aside their inhibitions--if they have any--on stage. Al Garrod, 84, acts in both men’s and women’s roles, smoothly switching clothes and characters like a seasoned professional. Dressing in drag doesn’t faze him in the least. He’s played a variety of characters in 16 musical-comedy productions including a Hawaiian hula dancer, Sweet Georgia Brown, Boy Gorge, John “Revolta,” a smooth-talking customer named B.S. Daily, a pregnant nun and a pink-pinafored Molly the Dolly. He also designs, paints and creates the stage sets--something he never had the opportunity to do before he retired from working as a drafting manager at RCA. Garrod’s real-life girlfriend, Holly Patterson, plays a toy duck in the current production.

“There is a tremendous amount of networking that has taken place away from the actual group itself,” Johnson said. “When someone needs help for whatever reason--sickness, needing a ride or looking for a traveling companion--they feel free to call on each other. They’ve grown to trust each other in a way that, perhaps, brothers and sisters would. They support each other. If someone loses a close family member and they need their friends to be there, it doesn’t matter what time of day, their friends are there.”

Occasionally, Johnson and the senior citizens weave a message about aging into the plot of the play. Sometimes it’s a subtle message; sometimes it’s not so subtle.

Last year’s Christmas play asked the question: Should Santa retire? At a “worldwide tribunal” called to explore the issue, representatives from government agencies as well as spokespersons such as a doll that had been forgotten in an attic, presented their opinions. Finally, in a scene right out of “People’s Court,” the audience was asked to play jury and decide whether or not Santa should retire to Hawaii and put the reindeer out to pasture.

The Christmas production this year, “The Secret of Christmas,” was written by Johnson with help from the group. In the play, Santa searches for a suitable spot for his North Pole Factory Outlet toy store. He sends his chief investigator, Suzie Snowflake (played by Ruth Colove), to check out two store owners, Papa Johannson (Beth Wentzel) and Price Gouger (Gerry Bassham). In one dramatic scene, Gouger and his partner, Sneaky Lagree (Doris Woodward), steal Papa Johannson’s antique toys and lead them to the Land of No Christmas. Even worse, they nearly do in Suzie Snowflake with a most dangerous weapon--a hand-held hair dryer.

Johnson, a professional gerontologist, had never written a play before she founded the drama group. But she had been interested in musicals since her childhood in New York and she thought putting on a play would be a creative activity for the members of the Spring Valley Senior Center where she worked. After talking with senior citizens who frequented the center, she wrote a play called “Seniorella.” Garrod played the prince, who was named John Revolta after John Travolta. The mean stepsisters were named Hypertensia, Diverticuliza and Wrinkle Belle. The show was a hit at local senior citizen and recreation centers.

Johnson later left the Spring Valley Senior Center to produce the plays through the Mt. Miguel Adult School. Although she is paid to work with the drama group four hours a week, she typically puts in about 16 hours a week; clearly, she says, it’s a labor of love. She also teaches body dynamics, an aerobics class modified for senior citizens, 13 hours a week for the San Diego Community College Adult Education Program. She is the author of “Prime Time Aerobics,” a home exercise book for oldsters.

Johnson spends months with The Forever in Their Prime Time Players to prepare and rehearse each production. The group meets weekly at either Casa de Oro Foothills United Methodist Church or Atonement Lutheran Church in La Mesa. In the beginning, the group brainstorms plot ideas while Johnson takes copious notes. Eventually, using her notes, Johnson writes a play that incorporates their best ideas. Then rehearsing, creating costumes and set building begins. A month before the first performance, the cast rehearses twice a week.

Finally they take their show on the road, moving their cache of costumes, portable stage and sound system to community centers across the county.

Out for Laughs

On the whole, Johnson said, the group doesn’t like sad or morbid topics. They like to dress up in silly costumes, tell jokes and make people laugh. They like to paint a positive image of aging in their plays.

After a recent rehearsal, the group watched the video tape of their performance, chuckling and throwing out comments through it all. Then they met at a nearby restaurant to relax, eat dinner and celebrate two birthdays with a specially decorated sheet cake and candles.

After singing “Happy Birthday” and a few choruses of “The Old Gray Mare Ain’t What She Used to Be,” they closed the evening with a tune from the Broadway musical “La Cage Aux Folles”:

The best of times is now.

So hold this moment fast

And make this moment last.

Because the best of times is now.

Live and love as hard as you know how.

And make this moment last

Because the best of times is now.

Is now.

Is now.