In her blog, Dr Georgia Bowers at the Guildford School of Acting at the University of Surrey examines how theatre challenges our ageist attitudes both internally and externally.

We’re delighted that Dr Bowers will be leading a session at our Future of Ageing Conference on Thursday 6 February 2025. You can find more details here

From the moment we are born, we are all ageing, yet British culture teaches us that growing older is a process that one must resist and conceal. Ageism, a term coined by Robert Butler, defined it as a “… distaste for growing old, disease, disability; and fear of powerlessness, “uselessness,” and death”. 

Ageist tropes begin early in children’s fairytales that portray older women as haggard, villainous Witches. Birthday cards often feature ageist jokes where being another year older is the punch line, and beauty campaigns frequently promise to repair, revitalise and generate younger-looking skin. The World Health Organisation has declared that one in two people globally exhibit ageist behaviours towards older adults. However, due to the universal fact that we are all growing older, ageism continues to go unchallenged and remains society’s most acceptable form of prejudice.   

As an ageing studies scholar, I specialise in using theatre to examine the experiences of those growing older in the UK. My research discovered that theatre activities with older people, such as storytelling, character development, and improvisation, sew a fertile ground for stories of ageism to emerge as participants share the stories that they want to tell. Participant recollections included beauty campaigns that fuel pressures to maintain a youthful, able-bodied and slim appearance, combined with tales of ‘Elderspeak’, where older people are spoken to like children.

Through interviews with older adults, I learnt that these ageist encounters can lead older people to experience feelings of shame. Shame is one of the most powerful, complex, and multifaceted emotions within the human psyche. Brene Brown describes shame as ‘… the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging’3. However, my research found that regular engagement with theatre exercises increases resilience against ageist-induced shame. Theatre workshops formed shame resilience by giving older adults a sense of authentic pride, connection, belonging, joy, laughter, and purpose – elements instrumental in lowering shame levels.  

 By 2030, 1 in 6 people worldwide will be over 65; by 2050, the number of people over 60 globally is expected to be 2.1 billion4. Advancements in life expectancy are a societal achievement. However, if ageism continues to go unquestioned, one must ask what our later life experiences will entail. I recommend that governments issue policies and laws to tackle age-based discrimination. Language must be revised, and terms such as ‘anti-ageing’, ‘over the hill’ or ‘past it’ to be deemed unacceptable. Unconscious ageism training within the workplace should be mandatory to unearth how ageism lives within our psyche.

Finally, art forms like theatre can be harnessed to raise awareness of ageism, call for societal change and act as a tool to reduce the shame that ageist encounters have created among many older people. Without these acts of intervention, I fear that the ageist accounts I have heard will one day become mine and you, the reader’s story, as well.

Sources 

Butler R. N. (1969). Age-ism: another form of bigotry. The Gerontologist, 9(4), 243–246.  https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/9.4_part_1.243

The World Health Organisation. (n.d). Ageism. https://www.who.int/health-topics/ageism#tab=tab_1

Brown, B (2007). I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t): Making the Journey from “What Will People Think?” to “I Am Enough”, Avery.

The World Health Organisation (2022, October 1). Ageing and Health. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ageing-and-health