MTI’s Broadway Senior Series Has Older Performers Reveling in the Joy of Theater

The joy was palpable at the recent invited dress rehearsal for Lenox Hill Neighborhood House’s production of Singin’ in the Rain SR.

Fresh on the heels of theatrical licensor Music Theatre International’s official announcement of Broadway Senior — a collection of musicals specifically developed for the needs and abilities of older adult performers — Lenox Hill had its seniors singing, acting, and yes, tap dancing up a storm.

MTI’s senior series currently includes 60-minute editions of Into the Woods, The Music Man, Guys and Dolls, Fiddler on the Roof, and Singin’ in the Rain. Organizations can pay a flat fee of $595 and receive everything they need to mount a production, including scripts, performance tracks, and a production guide.

This wasn’t the team at Lenox Hill’s first Broadway Senior production. In fact, Singin’ in the Rain was the fourth of the five productions available to mount.

The Lenox Hill cast started rehearsals April 1 after two weeks of auditions and callbacks, as director Vivienne Claire Luthin explained. That means they had just over two months to mount the entire production — choreography, songs, and all.

Folks from MTI visited multiple times during the process, making it feel “very collaborative,” Luthin said. “It made everything feel important and meaningful and official.”

When the Broadway Senior series was announced in May, MTI President and CEO Drew Cohen said: “It empowers people to not simply experience theatre as an audience member or a volunteer—but to be the creators, the singers, and the storytellers.” In constructing her vision for this production, which involved a recording studio-based set and the use of clothing racks as various props throughout, Luthin wanted to give “the audience the opportunity to have an imagination about what’s happening.”

But so much of that playful and imaginative spirit came from the seniors she worked with.

“The fact that they come in with so much life experience, they’re able to just tap into things acting-wise that are unbelievable,” Luthin said. “It’s such a joy to be in the room with them.”

And the seniors in the production, many of whom had performed as youngsters but may not have returned to it until later in life, agreed.

“This was a great experience for everyone,” actor Jerry Petardi, who played Cosmo Brown, said after the invited dress. “It’s a role I wanted to play for a long time.”

When asked what the performance meant to him, Petardi said he couldn’t quite explain it. “It’s just like a chance for seniors to get a second chance at a role that you would never be able to do anywhere else, and Lenox Hill gives us that chance.”

Rebecca Marks, who played Kathy Seldon, echoed that. “It was fun,” she said of the four-day-per-week rehearsal process. And though she also described it as “intense,” she felt blue on days there weren’t rehearsals.

“If I see a stage, I want to be on it. If I could be acting every day of my life, I would do it.” 

Marks, who was excitedly showing off her first-ever manicure that she had done specifically for the role added: “The highlights are the people that supported us.”

Kerri Evans, the assistant director of the production who also teaches drama classes at Lenox Hill, said she and her colleagues often they find these adults acted as kids and stopped when someone gave them negative feedback. “It crushes us,” she said.

The Production Team sees these musicals as a collaboration between people who have never performed and people who love it. 

“Our job here is to really highlight what is there and what they can do, and not focus on limitations,” Evans explained. “They so often go to what they can’t do. We all have limitations as actors, as performers, but we always go with what we have and we utilize that.”

Choreographer Hannah Swanson, too, approached the dancing simply as “movement,” looking to see what skills could be built upon. “We gave them the option to eliminate the dancing if they wanted to, but no one wanted to,” she shared. “Everybody wanted to add it. It was growth for themselves.”

The result? Cast members went up to her multiple times during the process, she said, with the resolve that they’re “going to do this.” 

“They want to push themselves to try something new,” she said.

Ric E. Suarez, who took on the role of Don Lockwood, was one of those performers who pushed himself. He danced sitting down and “was making steps up,” noting that the creative team was “very patient with us.”

“It was fun. It was work, but we did it.”

Photo Credit: Mia Isabella Photography / Michael Russell