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Photograph by Skye Dunlap

Actors Valerie Millare and Bert Cardoza finish up a scene during a recent rehearsal with the De Anza Senior Thespians. The acting troupe is currently closing out its ninth season.

Senior Thespians take to the local stage

By Justin Berton

Valerie Millare, 67, understands acting.

As a girl growing up in a small town in England, she visited the local repertory theater and was swept away by the thespians of her generation: Olivier, Redgrave, Richardson and Gielgud.

After studying the craft in high school and becoming a lifelong theater fan, she now finds herself a member of the acting troupe called the De Anza Senior Thespians.

"Life is a learning experience," said Senior Thespian member Kenneth Wong, 62, "and now, we're entering our second learning experience."

Ranging in age from 61 to 91, class members are putting on the final performances of their ninth season this week before breaking for the summer.

The class gives the 19 seniors enrolled a chance to express and challenge their emotions on stage, Millare said.

"Inside," Millare said, "you are really no age. The body gets older, but the soul doesn't."

The group has performed plays such as Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire.

Wong, who joined the troupe last year with his wife, Josephine, said the class has allowed him to pursue his lifelong dream to act. "I was always afraid to just do it. You always think everybody's so competitive, or everybody wants to critique you," Wong said. "But not with this group."

With a few extra acting classes, Wong has launched a second career in his retirement. He has appeared in a PG&E commercial and a Nash Bridges episode with his wife. "You really couldn't call us extras," Wong said of his experience on the set of the CBS cop show starring Don Johnson. "More like, we were in the background," he laughed.

The teacher, Andy Willyoung, who has taught drama at Monta Vista High School, said he has learned more about acting from his class than he expected.

"I didn't live through World War I or World War II," Willyoung said. "I was a baby in Vietnam. They have lived through this stuff." With those life experiences, he said, the seniors were able to reach an emotional range not possible for high school students.

The troupe began, Willyoung said, when member Willa Beeson suggested what seniors needed was an activity that allowed for expression. Shortly after, Willyoung found himself teaching senior citizens the craft of acting.

Willyoung, who is a documentarian, decided to use the Senior Thespians as the subject of a new film. The project, titled "The Faces We've Worn," follows the class for one year. He's currently negotiating with PBS and hopes the documentary will be aired soon.

Acting is a risk at any age, Millare said, only the risks now come in a different form when she takes the stage.

"As you get older," she said, "your memory does conk out on you a bit."

But Millare added, "If I don't take the risk now, when do I take it?"

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, May 27, 1998.
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