Oakland, CA
A Senior Theatre Company that uses theatre and storytelling to bridge generation gaps and break down stereotypes about aging.
What began in 1978 as an acting class at a senior center, quickly bloomed into an intergenerational force for community enrichment. Stagebridge Senior Theatre Company channels the creative talents of senior citizens into programs such as theatrical productions, storytelling in the schools, and nurse sensitivity training. Their programs foster innovative connections across the community, leading to better mutual understanding among citizens of all ages.
Nuts and Bolts:
Successes:
A Senior Theatre Company that uses theatre and storytelling to bridge generation gaps and break down stereotypes about aging.
What began in 1978 as an acting class at a senior center, quickly bloomed into an intergenerational force for community enrichment. Stagebridge Senior Theatre Company channels the creative talents of senior citizens into programs such as theatrical productions, storytelling in the schools, and nurse sensitivity training. Their programs foster innovative connections across the community, leading to better mutual understanding among citizens of all ages.
Nuts and Bolts:
- Stagebridge is the nation’s oldest senior theatre company.
- There are more than 150 members of the Stagebridge Theatre Company, ranging in age from 50 to 92.
- The company receives support from the “Friends of Stagebridge” and grants from government agencies, foundations, and corporations.
- Stagebridge produces original plays by and for seniors. Between 1980 and 2000, the company created 30 new plays.
- In 1991, the annual “Grandparent Tales” began by adapting popular children’s books about grandparents into performances for large school audiences. This evolved into the “Storybridge Schools Program,” which brings older adults into schools to tell stories and teach kids how to interview their grandparents.
- The “Performing Arts Training Institute” provides classes in acting, improv, storytelling, puppetry, dance, movement, singing, and playwriting. More than 130 students participate in 3 sessions per year, taught by the area’s top professionals. Students have the option to earn a “diploma” or work toward teaching certification. Classes are made affordable through support from the National Endowment for the Arts and two local foundations.
- The Nurses Training “See Me” Program works to help nurses better empathize with older patients, by revealing the aging experience through theatre, song, and sensitivity improvisation work.
- Other programs include a performing arts summer camp for older adults, and the “timeslips system,” which uses creative storytelling to engage people with dimentia.
Successes:
- Stagebridge fulfills a need for our nation’s changing demographics. As quoted in the Theatre Bay Area Magazine, founder Stuart Kandell points out that Stagebridge fulfills a “growing demand for challenging opportunities where [older adults] can learn, take risks and give back.”
- The Nurses Training Program has been wildly popular with both the company and the students. “Being able to see people at their best, in their element, is inspiring,” says a nursing student who went through the program. According to nursing professor Jennifer Winters, that inspiration doesn’t fade. “I’ve had students two years after the fact…say something such as ‘I thought about Stagebridge today and I remember what Joanne said in her story. They don’t forget it.” This unique program was honored as a winner in the Blair Sadler International Healing Arts Competition, and was formally incorporated into the Samuel Merritt University curriculum in 2007.
- The Storybridge program earned a federal grant to study the impact of their program for 3 years. “What we’re finding” says director Stuart Kandell, “is that the children are reading better, their language is improving, [and] teachers are learning new skills that they can use in the curriculum.” In addition to education skills, Kandell is quick to point out that the program encourages another factor critical to childhood development: positive interactions with older adults.
- The Performing Arts Training Institute won the American Society on Aging/MetLife Foundation Mind Alert Award in 2009 as an outstanding example of continuing education for adults.
- Stagebridge believes that much of their success comes from their honest approach to aging. “We don’t put makeup on people’s wrinkles, we don’t say don’t go on with your walker, your cane, your oxygen,” explains founder Stuart Kandell in an article earlier this year. “This is what 60, 80, 94 looks like.”