The Young Thespian Players have wanted to challenge themselves, and transforming into the Old Thespian Players is certainly a good way to do it.
With “Spirit!” by Peg Kehret, a production set in the Happy Hollow Rest Home, Young Thespians director Penni Hansen found a vehicle for some of her young actors not only to try their hand at portraying the elderly, but also to tackle a different kind of play than they are accustomed to performing. “Spirit!” will run Jan. 25 and 26 and Feb. 1 and 2 in the Black Box theater at the Emporia Arts Center.
“I’ve just done comedies and musicals,” Hansen said. “The kids in this particular show have really wanted to stretch. This show is a comedy, but it really has some serious overtones toward the end.”
Four of the play’s eight roles are those of rest home inhabitants, including the lead role, 83-year-old Clara Panowski. A rebel inside the home, Clara organizes activities with her friends that antagonize the manager of Happy Hollow.
“She’s a resident there, but she doesn’t like all the rules that they have in place,” Hansen said. “She has secret poker games. She’s writing a book; she’s actually written a book and sold the rights, but nobody knows. So she actually has money, but nobody knows. And it’s just about her resisting the people that are running the retirement home, and what she goes through.”
Clara is played by Taylor Mayers, 14. Taylor believes that portraying Clara, who uses a cane to walk, is making her a better actress.
“I don’t know how old people feel,” Taylor said. “I don’t know what they have to go through, I don’t know what kind of pains and stuff. So walking was the hard thing.”
Tagan Trahoon, who turns 14 next week, plays Joe Johnston, another Happy Hollow resident and former longshoreman known for his love of cigars, poker and women.
“Now I kind of know how my grandparents feel at times,” Tagan said of playing an older person. “It’s a pretty big experience. You don’t usually get to see through the eyes of somebody that’s older. Since we’re still young, we had to learn how to walk like someone in their 80s. So it was pretty hard, having to see how someone walks like that, seeing how someone has to live like that.”
To research for the play, Hansen took the cast and crew to Presbyterian Manor to visit with the residents and workers. Challenges in teaching the actors playing the rest home residents to act like old people included teaching them proper vocals and movements.
“The tendency of someone very young is to think that an old person hardly moves at all,” Hansen said. “When we went out to Presbyterian Manor, they got to see that yeah, people that are older, many of them can still walk — maybe with the aid of a cane, but they can still get around.”
Hansen said the play’s sad ending was the reason she chose it. Tarah Pearson, 12, plays Arby Clements, a young aide at Happy Hollows. Tarah said the ending will make her adjust, because she has to shift from being a happy, outgoing character to handling a scene where she cries.
“But I think I can pull it off, because — I don’t know, I just think I can,” she said. “It’s gonna be a lot different, because I go from being really happy because (Clara) gets to stay, and then I go into sad, because... I’m not gonna say what happens, but because of what happens.”
With a longer rehearsal process than previous productions, and the developing experience of the actors, Hansen believes “Spirit!” has a chance to be the Young Thespians’ best show.
“Many of the kids here have been with me all four years,” she said. “So by now, they know my auditions, so they’re prepared. They know that I want to push them further, and so when I say I want their lines done by a certain point, they’ve got ’em done, and then we can go forward on that.
“But I would say the other is a genuine love of what they’re doing.”