New musical 'Senioritis' to debut in Oakdale

When Donna Lipari was 18, she got a job at the A. Holly Patterson Extended Care Facility in Uniondale. More than 50 years later, she’s turned that experience into a musical.

“Senioritis: We’re Still Here!” runs May 16-17 at the CM Performing Arts Center in Oakdale. The uplifting show, about eight seniors who move into a care facility on the same day, draws heavily from Lipari’s old job.

“I needed to work,” she said, explaining that her parents wanted her to pay for her own clothes and car. Through a friend, she got a job in the activities department at Patterson, where she worked when she was a high school and college student.

During her time there, Lipari said she noticed a pattern. “I started to observe that aging is a choice,” said Lipari, 74, of Deer Park. Some guests were happy to listen to the music she played on the small piano she wheeled from room to room, or to participate in karaoke events or the glee club she started. Others, she said, “would just slam the door in my face.”

You’ll find them all in “Senioritis,” where the facility is now called the Holly Jolly Home for Senior Living. There’s an Italian couple, a Jewish couple, a gay couple and a widow and widower (it shouldn’t be hard to figure out where this senior romcom is heading). Rounding out the cast are two young activities directors, Dolly and Dave. And Lipari is quite clear — “Dolly is me,” she said.

Lipari has shared her experiences with Christina D’Orta Muens, who plays Dolly. But D’Orta Muens, 48, said Lipari and director Alyse Arpino “let me do my own thing” in interpreting the role. Unlike Dolly, the Ronkonkoma resident said she’s “always enjoyed hanging out with people older than me. I’ve always appreciated the fact that age is just a number.” By the play’s end, Dolly happily realizes the residents refuse to accept being old. “They’re not too old to be happy, to have fun and dance and sing,” she said. “They’re not too old to fall in love.”

The show is dear to Lipari's heart, she said.

Shortly after getting her master’s degree in education from Adelphi University in Garden City, she taught special education classes in the North Bellmore school district for about five years before deciding to explore “the road less taken” and pursue a career in music. The singer-songwriter performed with several bands and said she ran a business writing parodies for clients including jewelry designer Judith Ripka and cosmetics guru Adrien Arpel.

She has also given voice lessons for 30 years, which she considers one of her greatest accomplishments. “Starting children with the right foundation gives me so much joy,” she said, noting that her students have gone on to careers on and off-Broadway, and on TV shows like “The Voice.” Noah Marcus, who grew up in Dix Hills, began studying with Lipari when he was 7. “She told me I had a gift, that my voice should really be shared,” said Marcus, 26, who is appearing in the Off-Broadway children’s show “The Very Hungry Caterpillar.” “That was so important to hear,” Marcus said. “She really fostered my love for theater and for singing.”

Lipari also has a practice as a medium, which inspired her first play, a one-woman autobiographical show called “The Medium … the Music … and ME!” She performed the piece Off-Broadway in 2018 at the United Solo Theatre Festival, which named it best premiere. She later staged the show on Long Island at CM and at the BACCA Arts Center in Lindenhurst, and she was invited to bring it to London, but the pandemic intervened.

In that show, Lipari talks about how she discovered her spiritual side as a young child, though her parents were not supportive so she basically hid her proclivities. “I talk to the dead, that’s what I said,” goes one of the songs, “and I guarantee they’re talking to me.”

She said she studied with renowned British psychic Robert Brown and gets clients primarily by word of mouth. “It’s not an easy road, being a medium," she said. "There’s a lot of skepticism.”

Of her first musical, she said,  “I bared my soul” addressing personal hardships including family trauma and two divorces. She said she hopes the show helps audiences feel they can overcome their obstacles. “A lot of people cry,” she said.

During that New York City run, she said producer Kenneth Greenblatt, known for “Menopause the Musical,” saw an online video of the production and told her to let him know if she wrote anything else. “I’ll be honest, at the time I couldn’t pay some of my bills,” she said, so she remembers thinking about what she might do. “When you go to the theater on Long Island, you look around and all you see are gray heads,” she said. “I have a hip replacement, I have arthritis in my hands. Why not write about this?”

She credits Greenblatt for helping her navigate  using parodies that make up much of the show along with three of her original songs. Consider the opening number, “Senior Living” (to the tune of “Summer Nights” from “Grease”) — “Senior living, it’s very clear that our children wanted us here.” Or “Holly Jolly Seniors” instead of “Holly Jolly Christmas.”

“We read the script and loved it,” said Marc Hollid-Ausset, CEO and president of CM. Even at 49, Hollid-Ausset said he saw the appeal, and it "put a smile on my face.". Beyond that, he said the theater is “always looking for inclusivity in our programming. We have programming for young kids, we have programming for teens, we thought we wanted to reach out to the senior community as well.” 

Rick Wilson, who plays the lonely (but not for long) widower Ernie, called it a positive show. “The message is to live in the moment, with joy,” said, Wilson, 64, of Baldwin.

Joe Kassner, 65, who plays Giovanni, a former drag queen, agreed.

“The show is about embracing aging,” he said. The characters come to realize that life is not over, said the Dix Hills resident. “One couple finds romance. Others just discover new things about themselves as they adjust to aging.”

Stephen Grossman plays Sid, who is initially disgruntled about being sent to a senior facility. Throughout the show Sid develops another life, and Grossman, 74, of Lake Grove, said he hopes that audiences take away the importance of continuing to make memories.

“The only memory they have when they die shouldn’t be from their youth," he said.

Carol Giorgio Bjorklund, who plays Sid’s wife, Mitzi, echoed that sentiment. “I remember when people were 80, they were on a porch on a rocking chair,” said Bjorklund, 80, of Holtsville. “It’s not that way anymore." Just because people are a certain age, she said, “doesn’t mean the end of the road.”

That perspective drives the show, said Lipari. In the beginning, Dolly and Dave have pretty much written the seniors off, deciding they are just there to play bingo and sit around with the other residents. “They assume these people having nothing to offer,” Lipari said. As the show unfolds, she said it becomes clear that each senior “has something very unique and special.” One woman runs fashion shows because she used to be a designer, a man uses his knowledge of movies and television to host an improvised game show. And of course there’s the love story with its happy ending.

Ultimately, said Lipari, Dolly and Dave — and, she hopes, the audience — realize they don’t need to be afraid of aging, that when they’re not young anymore “their life is going to go on and they’re not going to be miserable. I want people to walk out celebrating their life,” Lipari said. “We have today and we don’t know what tomorrow’s going to bring. So let’s make the most of today.”