Marnie Perrin may best be known as the artistic director of the Surrey International Children’s Festival but it’s her study of how we age that’s bringing a play she created to Coquitlam’s Evergreen Cultural Centre next week.
Four years ago, Perrin started her Seniors Create Project at the South Granville seniors centre in Vancouver to gather stories about what it’s like for the elderly to navigate today’s world.
She got the project idea as a theatre undergraduate at SFU and through discussions with her mother-in-law, who worked in a seniors’ centre, and her father-in-law, who asked her, “When did I become invisible?”
He had experienced people cutting in front of him on the road and in grocery store lineups; teens also ignored him as they passed by on the street, Perrin was told.
Through series of workshops, with mostly female participants, Perrin tried to understand the generational dynamics while capturing what the seniors said on film.
With their words — and the help of dramaturge Natasha Nadir — Perrin turned the conversations into a one-act, four-character script.
Last year, View From A Window toured at seniors’ centres to critical acclaim and, now, it’s being staged at Metro Vancouver venues, starting in Coquitlam Oct. 1.
“The thing we kept hearing over and over is, ‘The younger audiences need to see this,’” said Perrin, who’s 47 and describes herself as a “senior-in-training.” “They need to hear about what seniors are experiencing and what’s to come.”
Marnie Perrin
For the tour that will also include performances at Presentation House Theatre in North Vancouver, the Kay Meek Arts Centre in West Vancouver, Centre Stage in Surrey, the Chilliwack Cultural Centre and The Act in Maple Ridge, Perrin has recruited actors Yvonne Adalian and Gina Stockdale — both of whom have been with her project since its inception in 2016 — as well as Tom Pickett and Bernard Cuffling.
In November, View From A Window will also play out at the Provincial Summit on Aging, a United Way event.
Perrin said what she found in her workshops is that seniors are “empowered, vital and wanting to engage with the community. There are a lot of programs at libraries and resource centres with youth teaching seniors about technology but where’s the reverse of that? Seniors hold a lot of information but there are few public opportunities for them to pass it down.”
Perrin added, “Seniors are often seen as incapable, infirm or the ‘silly grandpa.’ We need to flip that message. They’re a wealth of information. If you have your health, you can also have a full life.”
View From A Window runs Oct. 1. Call 604-927-6555 or visit evergreenculturalcentre.ca.
