"Aging & Achieving: Staying Active in the Industry for Decades"

[As long as I’ve been sentient, theater people have been protesting the treatment older people in the profession have received as they age.  This has been especially, though not exclusively, true of actors, and most demonstrably of women actors.  The Actors’ Equity Association, the union that represents professional stage actors and theatrical stage managers, has been trying to address this apparent inequity pretty much since it was formed.  

[The situation may be looking up.  The Winter 2020 issue of Equity News (vol. 105, iss. 1) ran an article on the progress that’s being made in an issue titled “Aging & Achieving.”  I’m posting the article on Rick On Theater as part of my occasional series about issues in the industry.  Here is Gabriela Geselowitz’s “I’m Still Here: Aging and Longevity in the Theatre.”  Geselowitz is Senior Writer and Project Manager at Actors’​ Equity.]

“I’M STILL HERE: AGING AND LONGEVITY IN THE THEATRE”
by Gabriela Geselowitz 

Marjorie Horne was about 23 when she got her Equity Card. It was for a chorus contract, earning $100 a week in summer stock in Michigan‘s upper peninsula. While rehearsing the third production of the summer, producers ran out of money, and on her very first union contract, they had to use the bond to send her home. Horne was undaunted:

“It was very clear when I was offered my card, there was no going back,” she said. “I just looked totally ahead and was there.”

That year was 1967, and now Horne is a successful stage manager and Equity councilor who has been working in the industry for over fifty years.

Theatre is for all ages, and that’s for audiences and artists alike. For those who have made their careers on or backstage, the industry isn’t just a youthful pursuit, but a lifelong occupation. Despite its reputation to the contrary, successful theatre professionals can achieve career and financial stability. Equity members in particular have access to protections that give them the freedom to age on their own terms, and stay active in the industry as senior citizens. Many actors and stage managers slow down or cease working in later years due to dwindling job opportunities, health necessity or personal desire. But some artists continue working well into their sixties, seventies or beyond.

Why keep working at an age when their peers are retiring? Do decades of experience bring the luxury to choose when and how you participate in theatre, or does the hustle last forever? Equity News spoke with several working members about aging in the theatre, changing opportunities and, for some, how the drive to make art never goes away.

“I have always thought that I wanted to do this until I die,” said actor Anita Hollander, 64.

“Actors don’t retire. Do actors retire? I’m not retiring,” asserted actor Sally Wingert, 62.

The average age of retirement in the United States is 65 for men and 63 for women, thanks in part to Social Security, though that number is likely to rise as Americans have greater difficulty acquiring the resources to stop working. Most would not likely guess that theatre actors could be among those who can choose to retire and live off a nest egg. However, Equity offers a 401(k) plan, and as members reach their 60s, they may start collecting the pension that they have been feeding through union contracts over the course of their career.

Even though Equity affords protections for members as they age, no one spoke of that as a motivation for joining the union. Some members had no idea what Equity was when they joined, and others recalled wanting to earn their card as a sign of prestige, only appreciating later the extent of the practical benefits it would afford.

“I never thought of old age,” said Delphi Harrington, 82. “Who would be called an actor and think about old age?”

“It wasn’t that I was particularly mature or thinking ahead. Certainly I was not thinking about retirement in the way that I should have been,” said Wingert. “The fact is I have told so many young performers that I’m working with currently that it is the complete and utter gift of my union to have a solvent, significant pension, and those are going the way of the dodo bird.”

“As a 62-year-old performer that knows I’m going to be using my pension within the next decade, I could not be more grateful that I joined my union when I did,” she added.

With exceptions, members can usually begin collecting on their pension at 65, and they must by age 70.5. Many Equity members belong to SAG-AFTRA as well, and may be pulling funds from multiple pensions, in addition to Social Security payouts. But finances can be a complicated, frustrating matter, as actor Dale Soules, 73, learned firsthand.

“In the years of the recession things weren’t so jolly,” she recalled. “I went to The Actors Fund and talked with them about what to do. I applied for food stamps and after difficulty reapplying for unemployment, it came through – for $67 a week.

Soules’s fortune improved, first with Hands on a Hardbody (her seventh Broadway show), and then, after a career predominantly onstage, when she became a series regular on Orange is the New Black. And then, in what she described as a “perfect financial storm,” she, by law, had to begin collecting her Equity pension and Social Security, and along with her television work this moved her to a higher tax bracket. She also took a hit from the new tax laws that limited her ability to claim deductions . . . and then got audited. During that process she received a history of her earnings under Equity contracts over 50 years, and it totaled just under $500,000 – an average of $10,000 a year.

“I would not have been able to survive a number of dry patches in my career if it weren’t for the fact I live in a rent-controlled apartment,” she admitted. “The day I can’t make the four flight walk-up things may get a little tricky but for the moment I’m still in shape and it’s like having a free gym!

“Actors often subsidize their own careers, and they subsidize the theatre,” she reflected. “But I do have that pension. And whatever I lost in taxes, even if I were to lose everything I made I would be OK. I could get by because of social security and that pension.”

Some stories are more serene. Stage manager Bob Bennett, 75, began taking his pension when it became available while continuing to work, stage managing fewer shows each season. He doesn’t want to leave the theatre, but the pension allows him to take fewer jobs and pursue other passions in his new spare time.

“It makes it possible for me to do some of the things that I might not be able to do as freely,” said Bennett, who is a long-distance hiker. “It’s one of the great benefits of our union.”

“I think it’s a huge credit to the business that I’ve not felt ageism at all,” he added, “I don’t feel it from my cast; I don’t feel it from my crew. The most I hear is, why am I still working? Because I like to. I don’t know that I’d find that in other businesses.”

Others have not been as fortunate in avoiding discrimination.

“There’s a patronizing attitude people have about aging that in some way you’re diminished,” said Harrington, who moderated an Equity panel on ageism in the theatre this past spring. “I don’t feel diminished. I feel expanded, richer, deeper, more various, stronger! I don’t like people to make assumptions about me.”

Some theatre artists have actually been denied roles based on their age.

“I’ve lost work because I was honest,” says Marjorie Johnson. She recalls an employer asking her age, and when she answered honestly, they told her they thought she was younger, and she lost the part. It is actually prohibited by federal law to discriminate against anyone 40 or older based on their age, and anyone in a similar situation should contact Equity, but Johnson no longer makes her age public.  [Respecting her wishes, I’ll only add that Johnson is in the middle of the range of ages of the Equity members interviewed here.]

“I just thought, ‘Oh, I guess I shouldn’t have said that,' and so from that point on I just don’t,” she said.

“I do think that roles are harder to find for women as we age,” added Greta Lambert, 63. “They’re not impossible, but for example my first season here [at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival] there would have been six to eight shows where I could have had a role as a young leading lady, and now there’s one show, maybe two in a year where there’s an age-appropriate role.”

“Usually directors like to hire young people and make them look older,” said Virginia Wing, 82, noting that even roles written as older characters are no guarantee.

Many professionals, however, have been surprised to find that their golden years are some of their best working ones.

“When I reached my fifties, I entered into probably the most significant decade of work that I’ve had in my life and it seems to be continuing,” said Wingert, who credits ample job opportunities in the Twin Cities, “Any given year I have worked between 35 and 60 actor work weeks.”

“Actors more than stage managers have the option of not retiring,” explained Horne, since at least some plays have characters of advanced ages that are cast appropriately. And yet, she too is still working, both new and recurring gigs like the Tony Awards.

“I’m making more money than I had ever seen in my whole life in a year. It is nuts,” she said. “I’m still putting into my pension because I’m still working on contract a couple of times a year.” 

The land of semi-retirement can be a fertile one, as members work on their own terms. For some, that means declining to take understudy roles, or a refusal to audition. Stepping away from solely acting or stage managing may also mean broadening one’s theatrical horizons, pursuing other technical work, directing, writing or teaching.

Lambert lives in Alabama, and while that meant passing on New York and the opportunities it offers, it also meant that she found an intimate home, where there’s always a way she can participate in the theatre, and where she runs into audience members at the supermarket. She has been part of the same company on and off since 1985, served as faculty for an MFA program and held titles of Director of Education, Director of Fellowship Company and Associate Artistic Director.

“I’ve had to redefine what success means for myself because it’s not about what the business tells me it’s supposed to be about” said Lambert, “For me, it’s been about playing great roles and being part of a community – not only other artists but the community I live in now.”

Lambert has also found that aging publicly, in front of an audience, can be a daunting proposition.

“I don’t know how much longer I’ll be willing to perform because of my own vanity, that I’ll be able to keep letting audiences watching my growth,” she confessed, “I don’t think my struggle is any different than any other person who ages. If it’s difficult it has very little to do with my business. It’s the culture of aging.”

Ernest Abuba is transitioning in the opposite direction; now retired from teaching theatre and in his seventies [he’s 73], he is looking to act more than he did when he was working at Sarah Lawrence College. (He has also worked as a director, playwright and founding member and resident artist of Pan Asian Repertory Theatre.) He thinks he may have more opportunities now, in part because fewer older working actors means less competition, and because he has seen improvements overall for actors of color.

“For many years it was all about stereotypes,” said Abuba, who has worked in the theatre for 50 years. “Now the way I look at it, the system has opened up more, it has been opening up more for the Asian American, in the last ten years or so.” An activist for better representation and an early member of Equity’s Equal Employment Opportunity Committee, Abuba now hopes to enjoy some of the hard-won progress.

Even if the work opportunities are present, other complications arise as Equity members age in the business. For those struggling with health issues, the choice to keep working can be very much a privilege. Some members spoke of actor friends who had to leave the business when they could no longer memorize lines.

“As long as I’m still functioning and my brain is still functioning, I’m in it for the long haul,” said Johnson, “Thank God my memory is still intact.”

Hollander is acutely aware of how to navigate physical wellbeing and an onstage career. When she was 26, she had her leg amputated due to cancer. She was back performing on stage four weeks later, and she spoke about how working with a disability prepared her for aging in the industry.

“I was not only under pressure for how I would make a living, I was now a cancer survivor and an amputee,” she said, “I was definitely not going to ever let anything get in my way. I am aging, and I am noticing, ‘Oh my gosh, this is not easy.’ But I’ve been disabled since my twenties and working in this profession. I didn’t go into this so naïve that it wasn’t going to be difficult and painful and worrisome, but I wasn’t going to give up on that.”

Hollander is one of many members who finds she is working more now than she ever has, in part on the strength of autobiographical solo shows. However, steady work never fully addresses her concerns.

“The results are happening and the irony is, I’m still struggling to get my insurance,” she said, “This industry has been very challenging to navigate as any kind of performer, but particularly a performer with a disability – and add to that an aging performer with a disability.”

Hollander is grateful that in the 1980s she found a home in Manhattan Plaza, a federally subsidized residential complex that takes her medical expenses into account. She is also aware of The Actors Fund Home, a short and long term care facility in New Jersey, as well as other resources.

“I’m just hoping that I can be OK, but I do feel fortunate that The Actors Fund exists,” she said. “I have been working all my life and there may be a time I need help.”

Members agreed that a support network is crucial for survival in the industry long term, not only in terms of health and finances, but professionally and socially. Hollander, for example, directs as well, and she casts her peers who are also aging actors with disabilities. Horne has decades as a stage manager behind her, and that means decades of connections.

“I have good relationships with the people that I work with,” she said. “The new jobs that I’ve gotten have come from other people that I’ve worked with and their recommendations.”

“I have a group of friends that are very, very supportive of each other,” added Johnson. “I have a very strong network of performers in my age category. Even if we have the same audition, we’ll work with each other, including gathering to read opposite one another or record one another for virtual auditions."

By now, members know that a spate of good working years does not mean permanent comfort, and that a dry spell does not spell the end.

“For the last ten years I would say I’m in my retirement mode, and then the next week I’d have a job,” said Johnson, who in 2016 received critical acclaim for a leading Off-Broadway role in Dot, playing an aging woman struggling with Alzheimer’s.

Soules was optimistic, thinking that a general aging population would create a mirroring effect in the arts world. But she knows that all she can do is continue to perform as best and as long as she can.

“You never really know on what criteria you’re being judged,” she noted, “The only thing you have any control over is the work that you put into it.”

“When you love what you do,” said Harrington, “You don’t quit.”

[A note about one of the Equity members interviewed above: Marjorie Horne, the 76-year-old stage manager, is also featured in another Equity News article I posted on ROT: “Get Me to the Stage on Time,” part of “Stage Managers,” posted on 30 January 2017.  “Stage Managers” is an entry in another ad hoc series on ROT, introducing and explaining the work of performing arts jobs theatergoers seldom know much about.]