Pigs Do Fly Closing On Work Focused On’Over 50′ Plays

Patti Gardner and Geoff Freitag in Pigs Do Fly’s last production Better Late

By Bill Hirschman

The curtain is coming down.

Nine years ago, lobbyist and part time actor Ellen Wacher was mulling over spending more time back on stage, but she kept running into what she characterized as a prejudice against, shall we say, older actors.

“I found that if you’re over 50, they figure you must have gray hair. Where is that written, man? So I got really angry,” she said this week.

She brought up changing that bias at a meeting of the Screen Actors Guild of which she was on the board.

“And they said, ‘That’ll happen when pigs fly,’ ” she recalled.

It struck a nerve, “That’s it: Pigs do fly. Oh, my God, that’s wonderful.”

And so as executive director she created a new theater company entitled Pigs Do Fly to highlight actors over 50 living their lives in interesting, involved and exciting ways. All of the company’s plays would be about and feature actors over 50.

The plays highlighted “a viable, fully involved, full of life character,” its website read. “Their goal is to tap into the 100 million plus Americans who are over age 50 and are under-recognized by the marketers of products, entertainment, etc., with theatre that reflects their world and resonates with them.”

But this month, Wacher is closing the operation after last month’s Better Late, described as a “bitingly funny December-December-December romance.”

Ellen Wacher

Among the shows the company produced were Painting Churches, The Long Weekend, The Affections of May, Morning After Grace, Cemetery Pub, The Savannah Sipping Society, Helen on Wheels, The Lost Virginity Tour, 2 Across, The Ladies Foursome, and Impressions.

Two intersecting reasons for closing: While the company has been producing in the vest pocket space at Empire Stage in Wilton Manors, traffic has been decreasing. In the past few years, casting for middle-aged and older artists has improved both on stage and on film and television. A portion of older audiences are not going to the bother of attending shows on stage can see themselves more often if only by watching something on a cellphone, Wacher said.

She “feels horrible” because the local pool of older actors remains. “I had 300 actors show up for auditions. Because I paid equity wages…. I got the best of the best.”

Wacher currently serves as Vice President of the SAG-AFTRA Miami local.  Her activity on the SAG-AFTRA National Women’s Committee included a live screening of a report on Women over 50 in SAG-AFTRA.

Prior to becoming a full-time actor (Rumors, The Sisters Rosensweig, Joseph Andrews, The False Witness), she had been a teacher for all grade levels, worked as a college instructor of criminology and criminal justice and a government lobbyist specializing in transportation issues.

A show tentatively slated for March, Bonnie and Claire, has been cancelled, although she hasn’t ruled out mounting a show a year.