Theater Group Is Putting Seniors in the Spotlight

Some of it is funny. Take the adventures of Lydia, a comely widow who gets in her sports car and shucks the Midwest for a new life on the California shores, where romance blooms with a bird-watcher.

Other parts are softly poignant. A man reminisces about the death of his 99-year-old aunt, a fun-loving woman who exuded a sense of caring and was “in love with life as it was.”

And some of it packs an emotional wallop. An autocratic father--self-made and successful, but facing old age as an invalid--is locked in combat with a dutiful son who has never been able to gain his father’s love or escape his control.

But taken together, the scenes from plays, songs, poems and dramatic readings that make up “In My Grandmother’s House” add up to a new venture for The Ready for Prime Time Players, the over-50 community theater group based at the Norris Theatre for the Performing Arts in Rolling Hills Estates.

The hourlong stage production, which is followed by a discussion led by gerontology professionals, explores a variety of challenges involving aging. Among them are deaths of parents and loved ones, the pain of placing an aging parent in a nursing home, peacemaking between feuding parents and children, and older people getting on with their lives despite health problems or losing spouses.

Director Linda Hamilton calls the show an innovation for her group, which is known best for musicals and light comedies. It has been taking the show to South Bay retirement homes, senior centers and hospitals, and there will be other performances this weekend.

The production is the first installment in an ongoing theater project aimed at seniors and their families. The project is funded with grants from Target stores and Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Harbor City.

“The idea is to stimulate thought and create a dialogue with the audience,” Hamilton said. “I hope people will go away from this looking at aging issues and talking about problems in the family with one another, things they’ve been avoiding.”

As performer Jack Marler puts it from the stage: “There’s something healing about the sharing of secrets. It keeps us young to open up to each other, to become vulnerable, to see that other people share the same secrets we have.”

The nine Prime Timers in the cast drew their largest audience yet on Wednesday at Torrance Memorial Medical Center, where they played to 400 members and guests of Advantage, the center’s senior services program.

And they provoked some questions.

A woman asked how to deal with the guilt of not doing enough for aging parents. Counselor Emily Stuhlbarg, one of the panelists, replied that everyone feels they could do more.

But she suggested a way to lessen guilt: “Assess what it is in the relationship that you expect, and what parents are expecting from the relationship. Say ‘This is what I can do, but I have other things to do in life, a job, a husband and a family.’ ”

There were questions about how to get close to grandchildren, longevity and how to still be enjoying life at 90. One woman in the audience said she thought remaining creative is the best way to handle the aging process.

Some of the Prime Time performers say there is something of themselves in the material.

“Lydia parallels my life,” said Betty Magnusson, who portrays the independent senior with the long scarf and straw hat. “I left Illinois for California, driving a sports car. I started a new life.”

Bill Hoag wrote and performs “Mommie Moo,” a tribute to his grandmother, who acquired that odd name because a young Bill couldn’t say Mother Maude. She was “flamboyant, talented, commanding” and taught Hoag to play “Nola” on the piano by moving her fingers over his on the keys.

When he was 14 and visited his senile and dying grandmother in a state hospital, they tapped out the music again with their fingers for the last time.

Hoag said the vignette sprang from his anger about nursing homes and hospitals such as the one his grandmother died in. “They’re red brick buildings with rows of white beds and screened-in porches with people lined up like cattle,” he said. “I want people to think about the kind of care that people should have, and to make sure that those places don’t exist anymore.”

“In My Grandmother’s House” will be performed Saturday at noon at Gardena Senior Center, 1700 E. 162nd St., and at 4:30 p.m. at Anderson Senior Center, 3007 Vale Ave., Redondo Beach. There is a $3 charge in Gardena, which includes lunch, but the Redondo Beach performance is free.

Two free presentations will be given Sunday in Torrance--at the Vermont Retirement Center, 22711 S. Vermont Ave., at 1 p.m. and Bartlett Center, 1318 Cravens Ave. The Vermont center requests calls for reservations at 320-3318.

Seniors are asked to bring a family member with them.

At every stop, director Hamilton asks people in the audience to submit their own poems, songs and stories for similar shows Prime Time will stage in the future. They’re also invited to try out for parts.

“One of our messages is that it’s never too late,” she said.