When Heart of the Hills Players brings Galaxy of Stars to Mount Clemens Oct. 23-25, its cast will include people in their 90s as well as performers decades younger. The Southeastern Michigan troupe is made up of people 50 and older, and the upcoming variety show will feature music, dancing, comedy and skits at American Legion Post No. 4, according to The Oakland Press.
For Bill Fry, now 90, the production is another return to a stage he had not stood on since high school before joining the group about 20 years ago. He told ClickOnDetroit that he had to relearn the words when he came back to performing. The show has roughly 16 cast members, plus a crew, The Oakland Press reports.
A local production, a broader arts landscape
Heart of the Hills Players began in 1985 with about 10 performers at a Rochester Hills elementary school, The Oakland Press reports. Today, the group stages productions and also performs music, comedy and dance at nursing homes and memory-care facilities around the area, according to ClickOnDetroit. The troupe says it welcomes people without theater experience for onstage and backstage roles, including ushering, on its about page.
National figures offer background, not a measure of this troupe. The National Endowment for the Arts’ 2022 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts found that 52 percent of U.S. adults created or performed art during the 12 months ending in July 2022; 48 percent attended at least one arts event in person. Those figures cover adults generally and do not establish who takes part in Heart of the Hills Players or who will attend its Mount Clemens show.
Michigan’s population is also aging: the Michigan Center for Data and Analytics projects that the state’s population age 65 and older will grow by around 17 percent from 2025 to 2050. That statewide projection is demographic context, not an explanation for the group’s membership or its audience.
A different example of older adults making theater
Older-adult arts programs have taken different forms elsewhere. The University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Special Collections and University Archives records that Elders Share the Arts, founded in New York in 1979, began with a living-history theater workshop in the South Bronx and later developed participatory arts programming. It is a separate organization with a different approach; the comparison places Heart of the Hills Players’ variety-show work in a longer history of arts participation by older adults without suggesting the groups are connected.
For its October run, Heart of the Hills Players is preparing a community variety show in Mount Clemens. The troupe is recruiting for performing and backstage roles and posts information about the production and joining the group at hohplayers.org.
