I just had to catch up with the indomitable Lynn-Ruth Miller whom I interviewed at the 2009 Brighton Fringe and luckily managed to meet up with at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe.
She adeptly deploys her incisive wit to tackle the misconceptions and ignorance that fuel Ageism. She shows that the elderly can be as productive, entertaining and full of fun as any younger artist. After all, we are all aging and the number is only transitory. Go Lynn-Ruth…
1. What inspired you to become an all-round entertainer and comedic Sage?
I have always had a need to communicate my thoughts to others. I began when I was ten years old, composing essays and poems sending them to magazines and newspapers. That writing eventually expanded into several published books.
I have two degrees in education because I am compelled to teach others what I think I know. It is my way of sending my ideas out into other minds and testing their validity in the area of public discussion. That way, I can alter and adjust my own thinking and avoid getting stuck in one channel. These two needs dovetailed when I took to the stage to do comedy at the age of 71. The comedy soon branched out into storytelling and then cabaret.
Sadly, my stories, which are a direct result of my writing, and the truest observations I share, are my least attended shows. The comedy and the cabaret are sufficiently different to attract a fan base.
My goals have changed as I have aged, but now that I am 77 years, my goal is to produce compelling shows that break down the preconceptions that age is inept and incapable of creating quality entertainment that appeals to everyone of every era. Creativity is not unique to one person. It is in us all and doesn’t stop until we do. Its appeal is universal and enduring. Mine has grown, changed and expanded over the years as my life has been lived.
2. What’s your show about and where are you taking your show after the Edinburgh Fringe?
My listed show GRANNY’S GONE WILD is stand-up comedy about being an old lady, laughing at the things people think that aging is and loving what I am right now.
People often ask,”Why should I listen to jokes about being old?” and I say “Because I am your future….if you are lucky. And isn’t it better to no longer fear the process…because I revel in every wrinkle, every new thing I learn and new way I live. You will too when you get to where I am.”
GRANNY’S GONE WILD is comedy at its worst with a touch of song guaranteed to destroy your digestion. I have the dubious title of THE WORLD’S OLDEST COUGAR and I am on the prowl! I rap about age; I sing about it and I tell jokes about what it has done to me. My show is horrifying proof that even though your body parts drop to your ankles, they still can move with enough zest, raise an eyebrow….but nothing else!
My unlisted show at the Laughing Horse has labelled “Lynn Ruth Miller’s Late Night Cabaret” a revival of AGING IS AMAZING, the show that made the headlines in the London Times in 2008 and won STAR OF THE BRIGHTON FESTIVAL in 2009. It was so well received in Edinburgh in 2008 that I decided to give people who have not seen it a chance to experience an old lady doing a strip tease that excites no one but my chiropractor. So why not indulge your funny bone with songs to make you want to grow old with the bouncy, outrageous and delectable me, in a rollicking hour in the Kasbah Room at Espionage every night at 10:45 until August 30?
I will be taking my shows to Dublin after Edinburgh and hope to get them “down under” as soon as I can afford the airfare. In the fall I will also present them in the San Francisco Bay Area and try to get them before the rest of the United States before I am too old to romp around like a teenager showing off a body that should be kept under wraps.
3. What are you most proud of?
That I have managed to write, stage and produce my several shows and bring them from San Francisco to Edinburgh and then to London, Brighton and Rome while living on a tiny pension, without any help from anyone. They have been appreciated and even praised, with four and five star reviews and audiences that return every year to see what else I am up to. I have proven that you don’t need a lot of money to get noticed on a stage and you don’t need a whole team to make you a star. All you need is a dream and the determination to make that dream happen!
4. If you had a chance to work with anyone of your choosing, who would it be?
I would like to work with Guy Masterson because he directs and produces the kind of shows I do best and I think he is a genius at what he does. My first step though is to get him to one of my shows because I know that once he sees one, he will want to work with me.
5. What kind of questions do you most like to be asked about your work and why?
I like to be asked why I am doing this when other people my age are playing bingo and sitting in front of a television set, afraid to drive at night, bored by the limitations they think their body has given them and afraid to try something new. My answer is so simple: “Because I can. And because I can, I will.”
6. Do the reviewers of Fringe shows do a good job?
Yes they do, especially the ones at Three Weeks. They are brutally honest and yet in my experience they are very fair. I am not important enough to be reviewed by the major newspapers but perhaps someday I will be. When that happens I can evaluate them but for now Three Weeks and a variety of websites come to my shows and give them very fair assessments.
Several of the performers have complained when they did not get a good review and my answer is, “These people are your audience…and why on earth are you doing this if not to charm an audience?” I am spoiled by the reviewers these days and rarely get anything negative but when I do, I ponder what the reviewer said and I think, what can I do to make my show reach that person, because he and hundreds like him (or her) are people I would like to attract to my shows. My work has a message and I need to get it out there: I may be old, short, funny looking and forgetful but that isn’t what matters at all. I am me and I am still a work in progress. I am working on becoming the best me I can possibly be. Isn’t that what life is about?
7. What do you feel about the current state of Arts funding available?
There can never be enough funding for the Arts. We see what the real world is and where it is going on the stage be it in drama, dance, comedy or music. All theatre is the result of what life has done to us all. It gives us truth. We need to get that message out to everyone everywhere and we need to promote that creative spark in each person that makes him an individual instead of a carbon copy. There isn’t enough money in the world to finance that.
8. Which three famous people would you invite to dinner and why [dead celebrities included]? And what tasty treat would you prepare?
I would invite Jack Benny, Joan Rivers and Shirley Temple Black.
I would serve a simple ethnic meal: perhaps a salad of tomatoes, green peppers, onion and celery marinated in vinegar and oil; chicken soup and blintzes with sour cream.
Jack would love the food because it is the kind of meal his mama served him, Joan Rivers would be reminded of the days when she was a homely little girl in Detroit that no one noticed and Shirley Temple would realize that Jews can transform simple ingredients into a banquet.
We would have great conversations about differing definitions of The Good Life and how their careers have changed us all. I would show Shirley Temple Black my old Shirley Temple dress and tell her how she coloured my dreams when I was growing up. I would ask Jack how show business has changed since he first took to the stage and perfected the art of pausing in all the right places and I would show Joan that she could still be funny and famous without mutilating herself with plastic surgery and standing before a microphone tearing down all the values that are really so important to being human. I think it would be a lovely, stimulating evening, don’t you?
9. What do you do to relax?
I don’t have time to relax. I am 77 years old and I don’t know how much longer I have left. I need to make every minute count.
10. What would be your dream come true?
That my shows become recognized for what they are: a new definition of what aging can be for us all. That the glass walls I meet wherever I go because I am old and a woman (and believe me both are in operation far more than we believe) would dissolve and everyone my age or older would get out of his chair, put on his tap shoes or his motorcycle helmet , his tutu or his body suit, whatever he fancies and dare to fly to the moon, reach for the stars and be more tomorrow than he is today.
6. Do the reviewers of Fringe shows do a good job?
5. What kind of questions do you most like to be asked about your work and why?
6. Do the reviewers of Fringe shows do a good job?