There is one unifying thing that everyone shares from the moment we are born … we are all getting older. Obie-winning actress and playwright Kathryn Grody shares her perspective on this thing we call aging in her newest work, “THE UNExPECTED 3rd: A Radical, Rollicking Rumination on the Optimism of Staying Alive,” which will be at the M.V. Playhouse from Sept. 26 through Sept. 28.
The play is an eclectic, devastating, and hilarious potpourri of discoveries as Grody finds herself at 75, becoming … not quite old, but elder. “Old starts at 95!” she declares. “I’ve just completed my late youth.”
When Grody came to New York City from Los Angeles in her twenties as an actress, she found a home at The Public Theatre, where she performed in 10 shows. Founder Joseph Papp and his wife, Gail Merrifield Papp, became mentors for life. The Public Theater also became the home for her first production.
“When I was a young mother, I was actually asked, ‘Are you working now, or are you just staying home having fun?’ I thought that was extraordinary. I told Joe and Gail I would like to answer that question theatrically. And Joe said, ‘If you write it, I’ll produce it.’ But you have to understand, I had not written anything.”
Papp gave Grody a Selectric typewriter and a table down the hall from his office, and she wrote her first play. “A Mom’s Life” was a three-character, one-woman show in which she performed her three-year-old, seven-year-old, and herself, and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award.
Continuing to write about life as we age, Grody’s next play was “Falling Apart …Together,” about midlife, empty nest syndrome, and families falling apart but reuniting.
Now, at 75, she says, “I’ve been very obsessed, really, for years with how you are invisible, certainly in my business, in your forties. And in the culture at large in your fifties. So, I wanted to write about my feelings and my experience being an ‘elder’ or heading toward that direction.”
Grody began THE UNExPECTED 3rd in 2022. “It’s a play that combats every cliché imaginable, and at the same time, there’s a lot of shocking stuff. Especially for baby boomers who coined, ‘Don’t trust anybody over 30.’ It looks at what is phenomenal to still be here, what is hard, and everything in between. It’s about how to fight the invisibility you get, and I wanted to address that.”
The M.V. Playhouse website describes it thus: “Marching onward through crumbling democracy, a boiling planet, and an increasingly dead roster of friends and colleagues, [Grody] is buoyed by discovering parts of herself she didn’t know were in hiding. Perhaps these parts were waiting for this period to bloom. Mother, artist, wife, grandmother, friend, and accidental influencer Kathryn Grody is astonished with her life, your life, and the stunning, hilarious, heartbreaking impermanence of it all.”
Grody has teamed up with her college friend and director of all her solo shows, Timothy Near. Near is an award-winning freelance director with over 80 plays and musicals under her belt. Still a work in progress, they have workshopped the play over the years, which now will include a stop at the Vineyard.
“The developmental period for these things can be endless. And I say I don’t have that kind of time. I can’t spend ten years developing this. This is it, let’s get it up, and we’ve been saying yes to wherever we’re asked to do it.”
Grody shares that what people say in talk-backs after the performance is fascinating. “What was amazing to me was I knew people over 50 would identify with a lot of it. But I’ve been stunned by younger people’s response.”
A young woman approached Grody after a performance, weeping. The woman told her, “My generation says unless I have my person, my place, and my profession and my Botox account by 35, my life is over. And your play says that is not true.” Grody reflects, “That was the greatest compliment I could have. It is thrilling to help young people not be horrified to be alive. I don’t like putting people in groups. I don’t believe all two-year-olds are alike or all teenagers are alike. Or anyone is. That includes people of certain ages. We’re all individuals with our quirks and idiosyncrasies. If we keep moving, hopefully, we get more of those.”
“THE UNExPECTED 3rd: A Radical, Rollicking Rumination on the Optimism of Staying Alive” runs Thursday, Sept. 26, Friday, Sept. 27, and Saturday, Sept. 28, at 7 pm. For tickets, visit mvplayhouse.org/theater/2024/09/the-unexpected-3rd.
