You know the way you have no choice but to laugh when you get caught in the rain — your clothes are soaked, your shoes are ruined, and the expensive bakery chocolate cake you’re carrying looks more like mud mousse?
That’s the way actor Melanye Finister laughs when she thinks about her life. So funny, it’s bad. So bad, it’s funny.
Here’s why: These days, Finister’s on stage as Lorene, a 50-year-old woman caring for her dying 101-year-old grandmother, in the world premiere of “Ladysitting” at Arden Theatre Co. Jan. 18 through Feb. 25.
Offstage, Finister’s enroute to Maryland where she helps her 88-year-old father tend to her mother, Delores Finister, 86. Finister’s mom uses a wheelchair and needs help getting out of bed and going to the bathroom.
“It’s life imitating art, imitating life, imitating art,” laughed Finister.
“In both cases, I get completely worn out with my body whether I’m doing it at home or here. There are so many parallels and there’s also something so sweet about it,” Finister said.
There are more — and complicated — layers:
The Lorene that Finister is playing is also the playwright, Lorene Cary, who sits in on rehearsals, watching her story shaped scene by scene.
Cary drew the play from her 2019 memoir, “Ladysitting,” about her and her family’s experiences when they moved her beloved Nana into their home for her final months.
Making adjustments
For the play, Cary and Finister had to make their own separate adjustments.
“It’s interesting,” said Finister.
For Cary, the adjustment centered on disengaging herself from her own story.
Writing the memoir began the process, because it required a dispassionate trimming of aspects of her life that didn’t fit the theme. More trimming took place from memoir to play to accommodate stage set practicalities.
Cary said renowned author John Edgar Wideman taught her that “writing a memoir is not a photograph. It’s a construction. You’ve constructed a piece of work with some facts of your life. The actors embody it. It’s their interpretation of my scaffold of my structure,” Cary said. “I recognize that there is a difference.
“Melanye is doing a terrific job,” Cary said. “One of her many innate gifts is that she works so hard to make it look natural.”
Finister’s adjustment centered on disengaging herself from Cary.
It was a challenge. Cary is well-known. In 2003, her novel, “Price of a Child,” about an enslaved woman who escaped, became the first book selected for One Book One Philadelphia. Cary also served on Philadelphia’s School Reform Commission, founded the Art Sanctuary and teaches writing at the University of Pennsylvania.
Finister said she struggled at first to determine how much of the real Lorene she should embody. “Oh my God, I have to fill those shoes,” Finister said. “I was being a slave to my ideas of who Lorene is, but that’s not necessary for this play. I just need to tell the story as best I can.”
Story is where Cary and Finister come together, both at the Arden, and in their twin experiences.
“One of the things that I love about this play is that it’s making me aware of the history, the legacy, the passing of stories and the need to share that,” Finister said. “I need my parents’ stories — what their lives have been about.”
“It’s wonderful and it’s rich, but when you are in the trenches, it’s hard to look beyond the immediate needs,” Finister said.
“The tasks at hand – getting dressed, getting bathed, getting the medicine in, making sure things are in order and reachable, that clothes are clean, that the bed is cleaned, and food is prepared — they seem so pressing.
“It’s just as important to sit and listen and ask,” she said. “It’s a real reminder to take that time, because soon you won’t be able to gather those stories.”
Cary’s perspective?
“I don’t want people to take a message from this,” Cary said. “I want this story to keep them company. As a society, we’re so alone with death, we’re alone with the old people in our lives. We talk about love every day of the week, but we don’t pay attention to this kind of love.”
Caregiving shows up on several Philly stages this winter.
At the Wilma, Ukrainian playwright Sasha Denisova’s “My Mama and the Full-Scale Invasion” centers on her worries for her stubborn and feisty 82-year-old mother living in war-torn Kyiv, Ukraine.
The relationships between a wealthy graduate student with cerebral palsy and his female caregiver and a husband tending to his wife after a terrible accident form the plot of “Cost of Living,” Martyna Majok’s Pulitzer Prize- winning drama, at the Philadelphia Theatre Co.
“Ladysitting,” Jan. 18-March 3, Arden Theatre Co., 40 N. 2d. Phila. 215-922-1122
“My Mama and the Full-Scale Invasion,” Jan. 30-Feb. 18, Wilma Theater, 265 S. Broad St., Phila. 215-546-7824
“Cost of Living,” Feb. 2-18, Philadelphia Theatre Co., 480 S. Broad St., Phila. 215-985-0420
