Behind the curtain, across the years: See what this weekend’s BAYFEST Intergenerational Theater show is all about

By Macey Wurm
Reporting for West Seattle Blog

For a second year, performers spanning generations will take the stage together in BAYFEST’s Intergenerational Theater Project show this Friday and Saturday in West Seattle. We attended one of the final rehearsals to get to know the cast and learn about the age-defying connections that have blossomed since the group began rehearsing in February.

Unique to this program is the intentional age differences between cast members – six high-school students and six older adults. The spring show, titled “Verses, Voices, and Visions,” works to explore collective experience across generational lines through poetry and personal testimony.

“I’ve always been interested in this intergenerational connection, and noticing more and more that young people are disconnected from older people and vice versa,” said Robert Shampain, the founder and executive director of BAYFEST Youth Theater program. Shampain has been directing this specific project since he introduced it in West Seattle last year.

The poetry selections featured in the show were hand-selected by cast members, who work to deliver vivid, engaging recitations.

“We are doing acting, but at the same time analyzing poems,” explained Lucy Hostetter, a member of the teen cohort. “It also kind of feels like an English class.”

Shampain began Saturday’s rehearsal with a group working on a performance of “Filling My Purse with Commas” by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. He directed the mixed-age group with a certain passion and sincerity – tweaking details as the rehearsal ran, to align the cadence of the spoken word with the actors’ movements.

“Robert is very intuitive, and he’s very good at what he does. It is amazing to see what he sees, what he decides works, what doesn’t, and how beautifully he expresses it,” said Virginia Pellegrino, a member of the senior cohort.

When rehearsing “Where the Sidewalk Ends” by Shel Silverstein, Robert urged the cast to take the poem line by line. They considered which words Silverstein intended to lay emphasis on, and how this could be conveyed through performance. He read a line aloud, “What does this suggest to you?” he asked the actors.

“I’m giving them feedback like I would when I direct a professional production, and they respond. You don’t need to be a professional actor to really respond to the idea of what it means to perform honestly,” Shampain said.

A real sense of connection develops through the later half of the show, titled “The Personal Writings.” Cast members were each asked to describe an experience that any part of the poem selection invoked. The accounts will be read in the first-person by a member of the opposite cohort, oftentimes with teens reading of circumstances that they wouldn’t otherwise relate to.

“There’s a real magic in saying somebody else’s words as if they are yours in the first person. It sort of automatically makes you honor them,” Shampain explained.

While this sense of connection will unfold for audiences watching the performances next weekend, what they won’t see is the behind the scenes camaraderie that develops as a cast works towards their common goal.

“We are all working on the same thing and are being asked to be vulnerable in the same way,” Pellegrino reasoned. “My preconceived notion was that they (teens) wouldn’t really show up and want to engage, and that was not the case. I found it really joyful.”

“We don’t have the ‘teenage audacity’,” Lucy explained. “We’re not always on our phones,” her friend Sloane Pothier added. “I kind of expected there to be a cutoff dynamic between the older generation and the younger generation. We have definitely become more of a community than I thought we would,” Sloane continued.

“Half of them ride motorcycles!” Lucy exclaimed jokingly.

The two students were joined by fellow cohort member Eve LeBlanc, who explained that she was participating alongside her grandparents. Not only will she be bridging a generational gap, but doing so with members of her own family.

Shampain emphasized his intention at keeping the program small as it develops. Specifically, keeping it local to West Seattle. “It’s not something that we want to expand too much. Keeping this community based in West Seattle really, it feels right.”

“Verses, Voices, and Visions” will be performed, free admission, this Friday and Saturday (June 12-13) at three different locations. Friday’s show will be at 4 pm at the Center for Active Living (4217 SW Oregon). Saturday’s shows will be at 2 pm in the Fellowship Hall at Fauntleroy Church, and 7 pm at the West Seattle Golf Course Clubhouse Banquet Room (4470 35th SW).

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