Please heckle The Mental Health Players

The audience in the Uniondale Hempstead Senior Center has been quietly watching The Players perform one of its vignettes -- a sketch about a woman with mental illness and her "nosy neighbors."

In the five-minute scene improvised before 30 people or so who have just finished lunch at the center, the actors playing nosy neighbors "Estelle" and "Audrey" are paying a visit to "Pat," a woman recently released from a mental hospital. They engage in chitchat, but when one of the nosy visitors uses an emotionally charged term, a wave of gasps and nervous laughter runs through the room.

"She just got back from a loony bin!" Estelle says of Pat, throwing a twist into the improvised scene that provoked reactions from audience members.

From a seat near the back of the room where she had been watching the vignette unfold, Lynn Borum, 59, of Uniondale, begins to show her dislike of the "loony bin" remark by talking back to the actors -- something the audience was encouraged to do before the start of the skits. "I don't like that word," she remarks.

While most theater groups generally discourage heckling, Borum's reaction is exactly what this unusual acting troupe looks for with their mostly unscripted vignette, "Neighbors Visit."

After the skit, Borum approaches the actress playing Estelle to apologize. Estelle, which happens to be her real name, reassures Borum, saying it's OK to react with strong feelings.

"If the audience doesn't participate, we have no place to go in the scene," says Estelle Hoyt, 84, of Seaford, a retired Brentwood School District social worker who has been a member of The Players for more than a dozen years. "I never used that term before," she says of the "loony bin" remark, "but I just threw it out because you kind of look for a phrase that would either touch a nerve or make them laugh."

One audience member got into the spirit of the performance, moving her chair from the back of the room to the front so she could hear better. Verona Thompson, 81, of Roosevelt, a retired licensed practical nurse wasn't shy about offering her opinions, either. "You have to think. You have to relate to what you see," Thompson says. "I enjoyed it."

Long Island is a home to many theater groups ranging from professionals to small drama societies. But The Players (sometimes referred to as The Mental Health Players) go beyond entertaining audiences to improvising scenes about often challenging, real-life issues that many face as we grow older. Founded 20 years ago and sponsored by the Mental Health Association of Nassau County in Hempstead, The Players perform at senior centers, libraries and practically anywhere they're invited.

"We want to bring up emotionally charged issues that are typically taboo and people don't necessarily talk about," says Fran Mendelowitz, 51, of Merrick, The Players' facilitator. Mendelowitz, a licensed clinical social worker and consultant for Nassau's Mental Health Association, introduces the vignettes and leads discussions afterward, coaxing shy audience members to participate.

Just about anyone can become part of the troupe, which currently has 25 active members. Some are drawn to the group "because they have experienced mental illness themselves or in their family, but most are just interested in the topic because they want to help others," Mendelowitz says.

The all-volunteer group includes social workers, business people and community theater actors. Before each performance, Mendelowitz assigns the roles and gives the actors points that need to be covered in the scene, and a closing line to nudge questions from the audience.

All the other dialogue is improvised, and few, if any, subjects are taboo.

"We cover the gamut from mental illness to aging," says Mona Russo, 76, of Mineola, a retired Long Island marketing executive. One sketch that never fails to wake up a sleepy crowd, says Russo: "Sex and the Seniors."

Whether the subject is memory, depression or any of the other 36 vignette topics in their repertoire, The Players say they need to be able to keep the scene going and stay in character even if they are caught off guard.

"You've got to be quick," says Russo, who credits her marketing background for her ability to think fast and communicate with an audience. She joined The Players seven years ago because, she says, "I felt the need to educate people about mental illness, getting older and changes in life and how to adapt to them." She has a special interest because she's close to someone with mental illness, and she reads articles, books and attends forums for a better understanding.

Like their audience members, most of The Players are 50 or older, so aging and its issues are topics covered in a number of sketches.

At the Uniondale Hempstead Senior Center performance, another vignette is about a feisty octogenarian who won't relinquish her car keys despite a tendency to drive the wrong way on one-way streets. Hoyt plays the older driver, while Pat Tropea, 70, of Levittown, plays the police officer who escorts her home after an accident. When Tropea appears in the skit wearing an oversized police cap with a big star, she draws a laugh from audience members, who offer a solution to the problem: The mother should give up her license and her adult daughter should drive her where she wants to go.

One of The Players' most active thespians, Tropea has performed in shows at the CM Performing Arts Center in Oakdale and at The Merrick Center when it was known as The Stage. Tropea also writes comedy and sings. Like the other actors, she is called by her real first name in her scenes. And with situations that attempt to mirror real life, audience members sometimes confuse the actors with their roles.

Once, after playing a college graduate who has had a mental breakdown, Tropea was approached by a man from the audience who asked, "Do you act out if you don't take your pills?" The man told her that his son suffered from a pill addiction. "He was so sincere," she says. Tropea recalls that she stayed in character and answered, "Yes, I really have to stay on my meds."

The grandma role is a favorite of Audrey Schiller, 88, of East Meadow, who has been acting with The Players for seven years. "Whether a grandmother has to give up her keys . . . has meaning for me as well as the audience." Schiller, who ran a marketing research company in Levittown for 30 years, finds the kind of improv practiced by The Players inspiring. "It gives you a lift and all of a sudden you are a bright star on the stage," she says.

In general, audience reactions range from applause to an occasional walkout. But, mostly, The Players are on target with their topic selections, Mendelowitz says. "Inevitably, someone will come up afterward and say, 'I didn't want to tell anyone about this, but this is what happened to me.'"