Western Gold Theatre’s Super Seniors explores the comedy and conundrum of extreme old age
Veteran Vancouver director-educator Kathryn Shaw’s new play is about three women who are all over age 105—just like her mother and grandmother were
Kathryn Shaw (left), Annabel Kershaw, and Patti Allan. Photo by Javier Sotres
Western Gold Theatre presents Super Seniors from June 6 to 23 at PAL Studio Theatre
AFTER 35 YEARS as artistic director of Studio 58, Kathryn Shaw found herself facing a personal crisis following her retirement: the director and educator had nothing to do. Making matters worse was the timing; it was during the pandemic. Stuck at home, she reached out to old friends and suggested they start an online writing group, rekindling a pastime they had embarked on decades ago. They could write about anything in any form. And that’s how Super Seniors came about.
Shaw wrote and co-stars in the new play, which will have its world premiere at Western Gold Theatre from June 6 to 23. Super Seniors is about three women who are all over 105 years of age and are living in a retirement home. They get together and discuss and debate the pros and cons of extreme old age. Shaw’s inspiration for the comedy is real: her mother lived to be 105, and her grandmother made it to 106. She imagined what it would be like to be that age, roughly modelling one character on her mom, one on her grandma, and one on herself.
“My mother in her very old age had mild dementia, but she still retained a lot of her wonderful qualities,” Shaw says in a phone interview with Stir. “She really related a lot to music; she really loved the old songs from her youth. She always wanted ice cream. She became kind of fixated on vanilla ice cream a lot. The other thing she did as time went on was saying, ‘I don’t know who I am. Who am I? I know I’m not the person I used to be.’
“When the pandemic came along and I’m retired, sitting around twiddling my thumbs, I had this idea of getting my mom and grandma and I in the same room when we’re old,” she says. “I ended up with this play.”
Shaw describes her mom as very sweet—someone who was kind and caring toward other people and who loved animals, even the chickens that were at one of the seniors’ homes she lived in; she would hold them. Her grandmother was a “whippersnapper” who didn’t have any cognitive decline and lived in her own apartment until she was 105, when she moved in with Shaw’s mother.
“She was very with it,” Shaw says. “She really loved to eat. She continued being the great person she always was. She was always very supportive of me and all of her grandchildren, and she had a real zest for life. She had this friend and they would go toodling around; everybody in the neighbourhood knew them. She just kept going. She kept a real interest in life and was very lively and always wanted to participate. She did take up drinking sherry or red wine in the afternoon. She didn’t start drinking until she was over 70. She was devoted to that glass sherry in the afternoon and she’d have a glass of wine at dinner, but only in her old age.”
Given the longevity in her family, there’s a good chance Shaw will end up living just as long as the two inspiring women who came before her. “I’d be a tougher case than either my grandmother or my mother,” Shaw says. “The character I’ve written is someone who wants to die. It is a comedy and that doesn’t sound funny, but it is. She doesn’t succeed. I’d be someone with a wry sense of humour and someone who doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and who’s still very sharp and hasn’t lost any cognitive ability—maybe that’s wishful thinking. I’m hoping.”
The play is a departure for Shaw, who, although trained as an actor, dedicated her career to directing and teaching students in the professional theatre-training program at Langara College. She had done some writing back in the 1980s and ’90s with the same group of friends she reunited with during COVID.
She says that Super Seniors came fairly easily to her, given how close she is to the material. She participated in a workshop reading at Presentation House and was accepted into a program called Emerging Voices at Theatre 1 in Nanaimo. “I said to the woman who managed it, ‘I emerged about 50 years ago,’” she says with a laugh, “but yes, as a playwright I was emerging.” Other readings and revisions followed. Then, she approached Western Gold Theatre, which has a mandate of supporting work of people aged 55 and up. Whether Shaw will continue to pursue writing and acting in her retirement remains to be seen. For now, she’s enjoying the process.
“I kind of completely changed; the desire to direct has kind of disappeared for me,” she says. “I’ve done lot of plays over many years, so I’m sort of reinventing myself a little bit. I may be a one-shot wonder, I don’t know.
“We’re having a wonderful time in rehearsals,” she adds. “The director is a former student of mine—Anita Rochon. Two of the cast members…are former students of mine. It feels very comfortable. The stage manager is a graduate of Studio 58 too. Some of it is turning out even funnier than I thought it would. But there’s more meaning to it than that. There’s the undercurrent of what it’s like to be a senior in the world today.” 
Related Articles
