Ageism is a Trap! Let’s Work Together Instead

I had the weirdest experience in an improv comedy class a while back. During a game, we were told to all act super-ancient. Suggestions were given to us: clutch your back, mime using sticks and walkers. Pretend your false teeth fell out. Maybe pretend to be incontinent or walk in the wrong direction forgetfully. It felt surreal. When I asked in the moment, “Isn’t this kind of… ageist?” I was reassured happily that no – it’s not. I mustn’t worry. Making decrepit oldies the butt of the joke isn’t in poor taste.

“My name isn’t sweetie, dearie or love: I am usually called Dr Elliott.”

I found the response confusing. Was I having a sense-of-humour failure? We need to be able to make fun of ourselves, after all. Clowning around with human frailty is integral to any artform. But I’d studied enough comedy by that point to know that some topics need careful attention so that they don’t perpetuate a culture of ‘punching down’*.

*To punch down: to make jokes at the expense of a person or group that’s in a position of social, political or economic weakness relative to oneself.

The teacher and my mostly 20- and 30-something classmates moved on to the next exercise. What was 50-year-old Buzzkill me concerned about? It was a games-driven comedy class, after all, so surely not massively problematic to have this throwaway gag? It was definitely intense but there’s no denying it: people get older. We’d created momentary caricatures in an experimental space. Was I overreacting?

Well, yes and no. Beyond this extreme example there’ve been many slower, scenes-based classes, jams and shows where I’ve noticed unhelpful or ageist labelling. Mature players, myself included, have all had a scene partner (especially if that person is an inexperienced improviser) blurt out: “Dad”, “Mum”, “Gramps”, or “Grandma”, even when we’ve endowed ourselves as someone else. It’s really not surprising: in the heat of the moment, they’ve responded to the person, not the player. They read the face before they listened to the offer. It happens and, I’d argue, it isn’t malicious. But it’s hard to play against, especially if the older player isn’t hugely experienced either. It can perpetuate the feeling that these are spaces for younger people and that elders are only welcome if wearing the teacher’s hat.

Certainly, I was the (older student) elephant in the (class)room. Improv comedy is marketed, primarily, for and in response to interest from 20-40-year-old adults who are in the process of finding friend groups and relationships that resonate before they settle with families or big careers and have fewer evenings and weekends to burn on improv and/or pubbing and clubbing.

But I was already in my mid-40s when I discovered improv. I tried a class, fell in love with it and retrained via endless improv courses and a Masters in Applied Theatre. I became the novice all over again and worked like a dog to fast-track my expertise. It was less about friendship groups and post-show laughs than a consuming need to gain mastery. Happily, it paid off and I now make my living through improvisation. My face fits my experience level.

For a time, however, I was the oldest person in class AND the greenest. I was a mature adult yet a total rookie. Apart from Keith Johnstone, my teachers were invariably younger than me and vastly more experienced. It’s an unconventional dynamic that was distracting and tiring to navigate – certainly for me but also, I imagine, for my half-my-age classmates. Get out of our playground, Mum!

The very notion of ageism occurred to me less due to my maturity (I was definitely in denial about that) and more thanks to great ethics training. My MA course convenor Sue Mayo (an outstanding intergenerational arts practitioner) described to us a poster in NHS hospital corridors. Under the photo of a standard-issue, grey-haired Nana, it read: “My name isn’t sweetie, dearie or love; I am usually called Dr Elliott.” Underneath that? ‘Ageism is everywhere and can be so insulting. Think about what you say. Think about what you do.’

To acknowledge the wider context for a moment, that public service announcement will only become more relevant. In February 2021, the UN announced the number of centenarians worldwide will rise to around 573,000 this year (from a mere 20k in the 1960s), causing Statista.com to ask: “Is 100 the new 80?” With 34 percent of the planet’s population now over 50 and with population figures predicted to plummet, older folks may well increase in number in improv rooms as much as anywhere.

However, I realised I was partly looking at my comedy-class ageism moment through the lens of defensiveness. I’m not getting any younger, after all; on the cusp of a demographic leap (55+) I’m definitely feeling my age. And society’s age boundaries are becoming more complex and divisive. To generalise, the rewards of golden-age capitalism served Boomers well; the inequities of late-stage capitalism keep Millennials from their goals. A career-switching Gen X-er like me is also constantly striving to maintain; gaining and losing power in equal measure every day.

And yet, these days, there’s also a positive blurring of boundaries and disintegration of generational walls. The internet lends power to all. For starters, it disarms our elders’ ancient right to gatekeep mastery and it puts knowledge, if not wisdom, in everyone’s hands. By the same token, any older person can hop online and curiously sample the next generations’ historically autonomous zones. The disintegration of these generational barriers definitely means that ageist labels sting more. But it also means we might find more in common than we expect in our lives, our scenes and on stage. We can be even more playful with a more creative, diverse richness of references.

And this has become my ‘in’. What if I view age gaps with a ‘Yes, And’ improv attitude, happily curious about the universal human experience rather boxing myself in with reductive stereotypes? For instance (digital privilege notwithstanding) you might, whether you’re a pre-teen or a pensioner, have a pocket super-computer within reach right now. This weekend my mother-in-law shared a cute Easter-themed TikTok in our family WhatsApp channel; she’s 80-something. Tuning into the bigger picture makes scene offers involving false teeth or naps either redundant or ironic.

It’s hit me that I won’t be listening to Vera Lynn in the Old Folks’ Home as I’d been ‘sold’ as the norm when I was a kid: I’ll be listening to my first-generation dance music heroes who are now all hitting their 50s and 60s. Just this weekend, Fatboy Slim, 57, invited TikTok users (an app whose demographic is 50 percent 18-34-year-olds) to recreate a 2001 dance video by a then-58-year-old Christopher Walken (#MyWeaponOfChoice). We older types need to keep up even as we let go because the tropes don’t work. One way of swerving stereotyping is to be the player initiating with a contemporary offer.

Happily, online improv during COVID has helped to widen up the playing field to even more elders worldwide keen to try improv for the first time, while dedicated ventures, such as the annual Vintage Improv Festival, work tirelessly to create a broader, more diverse platform.

 It’s important we bake age-acceptance into our relatively nascent UK improv community because these younger, newer players will find life creeps up, just like it does for all of us, and they might want to carry on playing even after the career and the family. To give the 60-something improv comic Josie Lawrence a (deserved) ‘National Treasure’ label yet continue to stereotype / diminish / erase older people in amateur improv comedy character studies is misguided – even if served with a side of: “I’m not ageist; some of my best friends are over fifty.” We have to make the scaffolding and vertical learning more robust, for longevity’s sake. Improv for all! Let’s dismantle ageism just like every other ism!

So, whatever your age, digital use, social-media preferences or nap habit, let’s agree that ageism or age-related discriminations in improv spaces are limiting, tiring and hard to navigate. Let’s actively build an Anti-Ageism Toolkit to protect us all – businesses, schools, theatres, teachers, students, audiences – against age-based clangers. Reject your inner oppressor, ditch the clichés and follow the fun.