A couple years ago, I started teaching some senior acting classes. This led to a core group of myself and two others, venturing into a totally different world for us. The three of us began a collaboration on a series of episodes regarding three friends – aged 68, 78 and 83 – the different levels of aging and how to deal with them. It turned into a fabulous adventure, not only in the writing process, but using our own personal experiences and funny stories to create these episodes.

Yesterday we had our first recording session. The episodes will be available through the theatre and I’ll have complete information on that later. Our first story is about online dating. The three women are all widows and the two oldest have been out of the dating scene for many years. Using a computer is something new for all of them.

All of the stories deal with things we encounter as we age. The next will be about technology in general and includes another member of our cast – a young man in his 50s who is the tech support for all three ladies. We have another episode about death, funerals, and celebrations of life. The final one for this year has to do with the paranormal, complete with a seance and medium to guide us through it. We will continue this in the coming year as well. We’ve also added some commercial messages with another senior actor to deliver those. With each episode we tried to mix humor into the equation, because you need a sense of humor if you’re going to grow old.

All of the episodes were originally planned to be done as live performance on stage, but with the pandemic, we had to adapt to an ancient form of entertainment – the radio broadcast. All three of us grew up listening to stories on the radio. It was a different time, when imagination was sparked and creativity stirred. In a way, it’s funny how we have come full circle with this.

The process itself has been so energizing and has given us something to look forward to in these dark days of isolation. We all need that, no matter what our age may be. We need to have something that keeps us eager to get out of bed every morning and to get our creative juices flowing. Innovation always has a way of sneaking in when the times are tough. Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say. I never thought I’d be teaching classes online. I didn’t have the slightest idea that technology would someday be my friend, but here I am.

Getting old doesn’t have to be the end for us. With all that’s available to us in this world today, we have an abundance of opportunity. It’s up to us to make the best of it.