AN EVOLVING TROUPE

         Play Readers is an informal club of 12 current members drawn from an Independent Living cohort of 235 residents. We’re half female and half male, a slight surprise in that two-thirds of community residents are women. We normally perform once a month, preparing with two rehearsals. If member absences or special casting needs require extra personnel, we may reach out for a temporary proxy or two. The community auditorium has become our regular performance venue, but we’ve been temporarily appearing in the Lounge while the auditorium undergoes protracted renovation.

         We’ve been together for almost two years, since my wife Nancy first proposed a play-reading campus activity. Over the interval, our group has undergone an interesting evolution. We started out as a small, private circle of compatible enthusiasts, meeting in a campus parlor to read plays and poetry aloud among ourselves. Slowly and steadily, the word got out and fellow residents asked if they could sit in as spectators. With increasing popularity, we now regularly attract audiences of up to 100, and video recordings of our performances reach additional residents in their apartments.

         These gradual changes in scale have been mirrored in evolving program objectives. We first convened for our own pleasure and emphasized to all inquirers that no prior acting experience was required. Having quiet fun, like a book group, not chasing Tonys or Emmys. With expanding audiences, we found ourselves also paying attention to skill-building, implicitly not wishing to look and sound foolish in front of our neighbors. More recently, as Play Readers acquire a campus reputation, generating fellow residents’ enthusiasm and anticipation, we include audience entertainment among our objectives and use microphones for large-space audibility. Our current impression is that we can have our cake and eat it: sustaining fun for our performing members while generating pleasure for our audiences.

         During 2024, we agreed to produce comedies. Political turbulence and extreme weather have been sufficiently unsettling without our compounding anxieties by featuring dark dramas. Under this affirmative umbrella, we’ve performed staged readings of works by playwrights like Neal Simon, T.S. Eliot and Noel Coward plus light thematic poetry.   

         Our most important programming decision has been to conduct play reading, not acting. With an average age over 80, most group members have short-term-memory challenges. Several of us can’t move about swiftly or smoothly, stand for long, lift or bend easily. A number don’t see and/or hear so well, even with high-tech aids. Reading lines aloud from a 14-point typescript is within our comfort zone. Memorizing parts, timing tricky entrances and manipulating multiple props are beyond our current competence. You’ll find us sitting and reading in an on-stage row, using script binders, music stands and hand-held mics. We may venture some miming and a few sound-effects, changing hats rather than full costumes. Voices, not movements, deliver our stories. When an audience’s final applause arises, we bow from our chairs, without standing. Play-reading’s the perfect genre for elders. In our most effective moments, we become our characters, exchange nimble dialogue and convey layered relationships with a glance.

         With one-hour performances our norm, we opt for single scenes or acts, although once we attempted an entire play in three monthly installments. (A marathon experiment probably not to be repeated.) Some selections call for a cast requiring our full membership. More common are smaller ensembles. For each production, members volunteer to read major or minor parts, depending on their interest and availability. Thus far, half have tried their hands at directing; others prefer limiting their participation to reading. Back-stage support, publicity and production liaison with community administration all require additional member labor. Over our initial months of operations, we’ve experienced modest turnover. As a handful of original members drifted away, energetic new talent has taken their places.

REACQUAINTING WITH MR. THOMAS AND HIS HOLIDAY CLASSIC

         This past summer we began tossing around candidates for a year-end holiday performance. A Christmas Carol was considered but seemed awfully complicated. Another colleague floated A Child’s Christmas in Wales. I was immediately charmed by this possibility, lured by vague, English-major memories from sophomore year. I offered to take a closer look, aware that many favorite books and movies from early adulthood may no longer appeal or resonate in old age.

         Wikipedia reminded me that Dylan Thomas was a handler’s handful. A Welsh poet and writer with increasing popularity in the 1940s, he encouraged a notorious reputation as “roistering, drunken and doomed.” BBC Radio wanted to broadcast his work but not risk his undependability for a live reading. So they fabricated technical difficulties and instead engaged him to make a studio recording of a preliminary version of A Child’s Christmas and that’s what they aired. Thomas recorded a revised, final version in New York City in 1952. Within a year, he was dead of acute alcoholism at age 39.

         None of this Sturm und Drang was in evidence when I revisited the script of A Child’s Christmas. Instead I was delighted to discover inviting nostalgia, wry wit and convincing depictions of a world gone-by. This radio play is a fictionalized memoir, reimagining and presumably embellishing Thomas’s primary-school days in a Welsh seaside town. Although only 3,000 words in length – the same as one of my posts – taking just 30 minutes to read aloud, the composition has a complex, artistically inventive structure. The Narrator glides through two time zones and three distinct roles. At the beginning and intermittently, he’s a time-present storyteller, recalling and recounting his childhood for a modern audience. In this current timeframe, he good-naturedly entertains the persistent interruptions of a precocious contemporary lad. In separate sections, he retains his observer’s role but travels through time to observe the town and its occupants as an on-the-scene commentator. In still a third role, he becomes his childhood self, roaming the streets with his mates, experiencing seasonal adventures as they occur.  

         In this work, Thomas is as much poet as playwright. He fashions eccentric metaphors and melodic alliterations. His language colors and contours his landscapes:

Our snow was not only shaken from whitewash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunderstorm of white, torn Christmas cards.

 Some listeners might resist such verbal flamboyance as self-indulgent. For my taste, the bardic context justifies the exuberance. These are fireside folktales, not TV weather reports.

         Likewise, there’s no hint of condescension from this London literary celebrity. Smiles but no sneering. Thomas is consistently respectful of his seaside antecedents. He gives particular deference to his street-kids’ exotic imaginations:

It was on the afternoon of the day of Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero’s garden, waiting for cats with her son Jim….Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible whiskered, spitting and snarling, they would slide and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their eyes.

The wise cats never appeared. We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the eternal snows – eternal ever since Wednesday.

         Apart from my literary enchantment, I found myself extracting parallels from my own childhood rambles. I too had roamed a residential neighborhood with restless pals. Eddie, Barry, Bill and I banded together to fill boring summer-vacation afternoons. Shooting driveway hoops, sprinting down the block to John Burroughs Junior High to contest the two-on-two, touch-football world championship. Riding our bikes to the Carnation shop on Wilshire for soon-dripping ice-cream cones. I recognized Thomas’s townies. Not bad kids, just adlibbing their own entertainment.

         So also, his clustered adults. I’d never been to Wales, but my mother and her relatives were immigrants to our Southern California home from Northern England. In Thomas’s porches, parlors and kitchens, I could transpose Robert and Dorothy, my maternal grandparents, plus Uncle Bert and Auntie Ethel, Uncle Len and Auntie Nora. Everyone overeating holiday fare. The rotund men retiring to smoke their pipes around my mother’s coal-burning fireplace. The women doing kitchen cleanup as they had all the cooking before.

         My re-reading of Thomas’s script left me highly encouraged. I was confident this holiday classic could engage our members and our audience. The threshold directorial challenge would be how to convert a radio monologue into a live ensemble performance.

ADAPTATION, PREPARATION AND DELIVERY

         Whenever our group selects a stage play’s act or scene for public reading, adaptation is almost always a major challenge. Our normal guideline is simplification. Prune the original script of most stage business: movement and action, entrances and exits, sets and props, sound and lighting effects, costumes. The adaptation goal is to improve performance quality by reducing production complexity. Tell the playwright’s story while sitting still. Most of this conversion can be accomplished by editorial tinkering: in place of a medium swooning into a stage-center trance, insert a line of dialogue – “My God, she’s fallen on the floor!”

         I grasped that adapting A Child’s Christmas would require a different set of adjustments. Thomas’s script was already written for sedentary reading. But the poet-performer had read all the parts. How to distribute the riches so all or most of our members could contribute to the year’s final performance? I was delighted to detect two opportunities. Although the script flowed as a continuous monologue, on closer reading I discovered it offered a sequence of distinct segments. Some were solo reminiscences, others two-voice dialogues, still others dramatic scenes with multiple characters. Moreover, to fit all these variations into a monologue, Thomas had had to somewhat awkwardly insert “he saids” and “she saids.”

         What if, instead, we employed half of our members to share the Narrator assignments? And the other half to voice Townspeople roles? The director could clue in the audience with a few introductory words about the paired quintets’ complementary assignments. By seating them on opposite sides of the stage, we could emphasize the distinction between Narrators and locals, while clustering the locals for intramural interaction. [As things turned out, we got lucky when the retirement-community administration set up a giant Christmas tree in the Lounge, right between our two groups’ intended placements. Their distinction would be visibly demarcated.] We’d let the townies speak for themselves, bringing their stories alive. And donning caps, shawls and scarves from our personal wardrobes could signal characters’ winter togs without elaborate costumes.

         The members welcomed this approach and gave me a green light to modify the script. (They’d already warmed to the program in principle. Our dilemma had been how to make it our own.) One obvious advantage of parceling out Narrator stories and animating the Townspeople was to create reading opportunities for our female members. In his original script, Thomas had allocated only 13 words to female characters and then read them all himself. Small adjustments demanded close editorial attention. Overall, the adaptation required three drafts.

         When I distributed the adapted scripts and asked members which roles they’d prefer to read, all but one opted for a Narrator. But I was able to make town roles more attractive by doubling parts (assigning two roles per reader.)

         For production simplification, we limited ourselves to two props. A shrill starter’s whistle for a local bad boy to blow. And a kitchen gong for Mrs. Prothero to sound the fire alarm.  (Ours being a cosmopolitan retirement community, my campus-wide request for the loan of a gong attracted a splendidly resonant, Bhutanese brass artefact.)

         Casting in place, our preparation progressed encouragingly. And when two Narrators had to miss the first rehearsal in order to join long-planned family Thanksgiving gatherings, they both made time for a substitute practice session on their return.

         From my director’s chair, rehearsals produced a number of positive developments. Once we agreed not to attempt Welsh accents, all Narrators settled into convincing story-telling rhythms. Moreover, their senior life experience seemed to give them rhetorical conviction. Thomas’s long lines of poetic flamboyance took some getting used to, but his commas signaled way-stations for taking mid-sentence breaths. On their side, the senior players voicing street kids seemed to relish raising their pitch to convey pre-teen banter and bravura. Several dated British words were unfamiliar to us, especially descriptions of local holiday foods. But definitions and pronunciations were quickly digested. And the availability of mics meant no Shakespearean projection would be required.

         The full holiday program featured A Child’s Christmas and a caroling performance by the community residents’ chorus. This ad hoc partnership benefited both groups. The music uplifted audience spirits. Our reading added a dramatic dimension to the singers’ selection. Both our presentations were brief, so the collaboration produced a full hour of entertainment. 

         As is often the case, our Play Readers’ dress rehearsal was a bit uneven. But the performance itself delivered our best work. At our post-performance debriefing, members credited two influences with boosting that quality. The seasonal choral harmonies were one. Equally energizing for our performers were the size and enthusiasm of the audience. The Lounge was overflowing and administration staff had to squeeze in extra chairs for stragglers. Readers conceded they were especially motivated to do a good job for friends and neighbors spotted in the crowd. But several also commented that the positive “atmosphere” felt connective, inspiring their relaxed concentration.

         One feedback pattern was especially gratifying. In spoken and emailed appreciations, audience members for whom A Child’s Christmas was a lifetime favorite were as enthusiastic as others hearing the work for the first time. Our Play Readers are encouraged to be concluding this 2024 season on a high note. We’ll begin new year’s planning with momentum and motivation.

TWO SIDES OF THE COIN

           From an Agile Aging perspective, my directing opportunity was doubly rewarding.

         How did the project stimulate and sustain my healthy aging? Gerontologists diplomatically but consistently advise us seniors to get out and about, up off of our duffs. Launch or join group projects. Get actively involved within those assemblies. Consciously reach for socialization, teamwork, artistic and creative stretching, practicing self-discipline and honoring commitments. Laugh, take risks, make mistakes, give back.

         My directing engagement ticked all of those motivational, mobilizing boxes. It got me out of my apartment, away from my compulsive computer. It gave me a context for interacting with fellow residents: old friends and new neighbors. I could indulge my life-long passions for literature and writing. I could play on a team. Every day I worked on this project, my hibernating batteries were recharged.

         On the flip side of this coin, researchers report that thoughtful, attentive aging can help seniors select and sustain the right projects. Part of that preparedness is accepting our declining faculties. Play-reading, not play-acting. In my case, impaired memory, peripheral vision and hearing dictate ego-challenging choices.

         But this directing involvement also reminded me that alert aging can be a positive influence on one’s project performance. We may creak and lose words. But we also have life and leadership experience, some wisdom and, hopefully, empathy, humility and humor. Aware aging can sensitize and strengthen our teamwork. Listening before leaping. Perceiving, valuing and openly praising teammates’ differing contributions.

         I came away firmly believing that a public reading of A Child’s Christmas can be a particularly good fit for seniors. On the stage, recalling and reciting stories from the distance of time. In the audience, savoring and riffing on those shared memories.