Cultural Perspectives on Aging

A Different Approach to Old Age and Aging

Andrea Hülsen-Esch

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9783110683110
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Current demographic developments and change due to long life expectancies, low birth rates, changing family structures, and economic and political crises causing migration and flight are having a significant impact on intergenerational relationships, the social welfare system, the job market and what elderly people (can) expect from their retirement and environment. The socio-political relevance of the categories of 'age' and 'ageing' have been increasing and gaining much attention within different scholarly fields. However, none of the efforts to identify age-related diseases or the processes of ageing in order to develop suitable strategies for prevention and therapy have had any effect on the fact that attitudes against the elderly are based on patterns that are determined by parameters that or not biological or sociological: age(ing) is also a cultural fact. This book reveals the importance of cultural factors in order to build a framework for analyzing and understanding cultural constructions of ageing, bringing together scholarly discourses from the arts and humanities as well as social, medical and psychological fields of study. The contributions pave the way for new strategies of caring for elderly people.

The Arts and Old Age

Exploring Old Age Through the Theatre: Three British Senior Theatre Companies

Núria Casado-Gual

In a seminal article published in 2012, Valerie Barnes Lipscomb states that theatre studies can enrich the interdisciplinary study of ageing from at least three angles: as a way to analysis of the phenomenon of ageism, as an instrument to develop a narrative approach to ageing, and, finally, by taking into account the “performative” aspect of age and ageing, which the theatre is a natural means of expressing. A fourth perspective could regard the theatre as a potential source of exchange between academics, artists and the community, where meanings of age can be circulated and, consequently, an integrative, more complex, more enriching discourse on ageing can be constructed. In the light of these complementary perspectives, this paper explores the case of three British senior theatre companies that contribute to an enriching an “age-wise” conversation between the community and the artistic and academic domains. Our analysis is based on fieldwork conducted with the members of Ages and Stages (associated with the New Vic Theatre in Newcastle-under-Lyme, and closely related to Keele University), the Feeling Good Theatre Company (based at Leeds Playhouse) and the Elders Company (from the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester). We draw on recent developments in the increasingly interconnected fields of ageing and theatre studies to provide our theoretical framework (Basting 1998; Bernard et al. 2015; Lipscomb 2016; Mangan 2013), as well as data from participant observation, interviews conducted with the companies between May and July 2018, and some of their most recent scripts. The theatrical and social practices reflected in these testimonial and creative texts will be examined in order to observe the social practices these ensembles promote, and the cultural capital they generate for an anti-ageist society. As will be shown, through their emancipatory resort to the theatre both as a vehicle of self-expression and of social empowerment, Ages and Stages, Feeling Good, and The Elders Company can be aligned with an “affirmative” discourse of ageing (Sandberg 2013) which transcends the theatrical spaces they inhabit.

Introduction

The themes of ageing and, in particular, old age, have been part of the history of drama since its origins. However, critical attention to “ageing” within theatre studies is much more recent. This should not come as a surprise, considering the short trajectory of cultural gerontology as a field. Nonetheless, in her seminal book Aged by Culture, Margaret Morganroth Gullette used the theatre as an invaluable cultural frame to discuss age as a construct (2004), and even before then, Anne Davis Basting had explored the potential of theatre to undermine rigid views of ageing (1995, 1998). Since then, the connection between ageing or age studies and theatre studies has started to bear significant fruits through the academic work of other scholars like Michael Mangan (2013), Elinor Fuchs (2014, 2016), Valerie Barnes Lipscomb (2012, 2016), Bridie Moore (2014, 2018), and Sheila McCormick (2017), to name but a few. Inspiring theatre-based research projects, such as those conducted by Miriam Bernard and David Amigoni at Keele University (Bernard et al. 2015) or Anne Davis Basting at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (Basting et al. 2016), and other academic initiatives around performance and age, such as monographic volumes (Lipscomb and Marshall 2010; Goldman and Switzky 2016; Bronk 2017; Gough and Nakajima 2019), or a working group led by Julia Henderson and Ben Gillespie within the Canadian Association of Theatre Research (2017 – 2020), have contributed to the growth of what is nowadays a thriving area of ageing studies.

In a pioneering article published in 2012, Lipscomb states that theatre can enrich the interdisciplinary study of ageing from at least three angles: it may be regarded as a source of analysis of the phenomenon of ageism; it can be considered another instrument to develop a narrative approach towards ageing; and, finally, it enhances the “performative” aspect of age and ageing, for which the theatre is a natural element of expression. As a complement to this triple perspective, a fourth view could be added, regarding theatre as a potential source of exchange, whereby meanings of age can be circulated and, consequently, an integrative discourse of ageing can be re-constructed. This fourth view is developed by different projects involving senior theatre, but is especially implemented by those that connect local communities with artistic and/or academic institutions. These fruitful interdisciplinary and transversal forms of collaboration have generated spaces of communication with a strong potential to overcome social barriers of different kinds, including those generated by age-based stereotypes. Nevertheless, as Lucy Munro and Miriam Bernard claim, “[d]espite many valuable critiques, the role that older people play in making theatre . . . is poorly understood” (2015, 61).

This chapter attempts to give academic consideration to senior theatre as a source of anti-ageist artistic practices and, consequently, of alternative conceptualisations of ageing. In particular, three British senior theatre companies that successfully create, to borrow Gullette’s pun (2011), an “age-wise” circle of conversation between communities and their respective artistic or academic domains will be considered as case studies. These are “Ages and Stages”, the company formed within Bernard’s age-and-theatre project with the New Vic Theatre from Newcastle-under-Lyme; Feeling Good Theatre Company, the long-lasting ensemble associated with Leeds Playhouse; and The Elders Company, based at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester. A corpus of unpublished playscripts written by and/or for these companies serves as the basis for the study. These plays are examined through close readings developed within the framework of ageing studies, complemented with data from fieldwork conducted with the three companies in 2018.¹ These data were mostly obtained through participant observation in workshop sessions of two of the three ensembles (Ages and Stages and The Elders Company), as well as through several semi-structured interviews with members of the three companies and their artistic directors.

The analysis of the companies’ creative processes and their resulting playscripts, together with the consideration of testimonial narratives generated by our fieldwork, enhance the integrative, anti-ageist and developmental view of old age that these ensembles promote. In particular, the work produced by Ages and Stages, Feeling Good, and The Elders Company can be aligned with an “affirmative” discourse of ageing, in Linn Sandberg’s terms (2013), which surpasses deeply-rooted cultural binaries of decline and success related to old age and youth, respectively. As will be shown, the dramaturgical mechanisms whereby the three formations re-present old age in their plays, as well as the artistic strategies through which those mechanisms are prompted and explored, foster a complex representation of later life that both counteracts and at the same time accepts and highlights the so-called challenges of age. The chapter is divided into two sections, which correspond to the double observation of the companies’ dramaturgical and workshop methods. The conclusions of the study describe the companies’ particular ways of using theatre as a vehicle of self-expression and social empowerment for the anti-ageist agenda they all have in common, an ideological feature that mainstream theatre is only beginning to display.

Re-Presenting Old Age: Dramaturgical Mechanisms for an Anti-Ageist Theatre

In an extensive review of the cultural value derived from experiences of theatre-making by older people, Bernard and Michelle Rickett contend that, with very few exceptions, “the aesthetic quality of older people’s drama” and the “transformative potential of devised productions, derived from co-constructed research with older people” remains under-researched (2016, 22 – 23). Indeed, the scripts that result from some of the workshops and co-devised work of the companies considered in this chapter offer an interesting source from which both their theatrical creativity as well as the narrative of age that results from it can be observed. Significantly...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: Perspectives on Cultural Aging at a Glance
• Ethics and Ageing
• Towards a New Theory of Ageism
• The Arts and Old Age
• About the Authors
• Person Index