Pig Iron Theatre Company presents 'The Caregivers'

Her father, suffering end-stage dementia, has been on hospice for almost three years. Strosser, a creator/performer in Pig Iron’s innovative new “social-practice” performance, lent her story as one thread in this fresh, poignant show about the often-invisible experiences of caregivers.

You can read more about director/creator Nell Bang-Jensen’s immersive, community-guided process in this WNWN story.

A cast of nine performed this peculiar but irresistible mix of storytelling, re-enacted dialogue and movement, hallucinatory dream sequences, and musical numbers. The production was staged in front of a sold-out house on folding chairs and bleachers in Pig Iron’s intimate studio in South Kensington.

Seven of the performers are real-life Philly-area caregivers (also credited as show creators) who are taking to the stage for the first time, or for the first time in a long while: Strosser, Kathleen Lucas Cardinal, Evelyn Goldberg, Cyndy Krieger, Kinshasa A. Lumumba, Ivan Villa, and Rosalyn Williams. Professional theater artists Johanna Kasimow and Bradley Wrenn were heartfelt, versatile additions to the amateur ensemble.

University of the Arts students Mark Delucca and Dante Green provided live music. Green, who composed the show’s original music (with Polyphone Festival dynamo César Alvarez credited as musical advisor), also became a warm, naturalistic onstage interlocutor.

On duty for more than 20 years

Goldberg, a longtime Northeast Philly resident, anchored the show with her dynamic presence and her story of round-the-clock care for Bill, her husband of 54 years. He has Parkinson’s, and she has been caring for him for 21 years.

“It’s hard to watch the person you love so much and is your hero become sicker and sicker… If he takes a nap, that’s your break,” Goldberg said, in dialogue modeled on the experience of interviewing a caregiver for hire. In words and in tender physical collaborations, the ensemble brought life at the Goldberg home to the stage, including a beloved parrot, a universe of medications, the practicalities of trips to the toilet for someone with advanced Parkinson’s, and keeping kosher.

Goldberg and Wrenn teamed to show what the Goldbergs call “our dance.” When Bill sits in a chair, his feet become “like lead,” his wife explained, and it’s her job to coax him upward, keep him steady, and help him walk. They achieve this like a slow-dancing couple in junior high, arms around each other, swaying from step to step in a gentle rhythm that, for now, defeats the shaking in Bill’s limbs.

Beyond caregiving

Caregivers took us from the dining room of Goldberg’s childhood home to the synagogue dance where she met Bill, an English teacher, who approached her because he noticed how she made her friends laugh (she made sure to follow her father’s rule not to dance with anyone who didn’t have a college education).

Appropriately, Bill isn’t the only piece of Goldberg’s story. She was the oldest of nine children born in 10 years and was raised to be a caregiver for her siblings before she knew anything else. Now, she is a mom of two, grandmother of five, and great-grandmother of two. She’s also a registered nurse, an expert glassblower, and a ham-radio operator and earned her master’s degree at 43.

Goldberg met Lumumba, her friend and fellow Caregivers ensemble member, at a support group. Lumumba is a mother, grandmother, sudoku maven, and expert social worker. But “nothing prepared me for what I’m going through today,” she said of caring for her father, who has prostate cancer and dementia. Recently she had to dismantle her own window with a screwdriver and crawl back into the house after her hallucinating dad locked her out, screaming, “You’re not gettin’ the eff in here!”

Telling the future

There are also lovely stories, such as Villa’s memories of his dad finessing troublesome customers at home in the family’s Peruvian bakery, and funny stories, as when Strosser’s mom came to the dinner table and refused her vegetables: “I don’t eat anything green. It’s weird!”

Strosser’s coping mechanism is a “chocolate life raft”: a large Hershey’s bar stolen in “tiny, secret breaks.”

Throughout Bang-Jensen’s staging, the caregivers swapped places with ensemble members portraying their loved ones to show their fellow actors how to play the family roles properly. In this way, the audience could understand the true character of their lives.

The style underscored the show’s collaborative nature and the caregivers’ agency in making it. It also emphasized a phrase that was spoken onstage only once but echoed in my ears all the way home: “One day, this is gonna be me.”

The show concluded with the most satisfying standing ovation I’ve ever experienced. I think I clapped not only for a touching, lively, heartbreaking, unique piece of theater but for the unsung work the show’s stars do at home every day.