Jeanie Linders didn't set out to become playwright. All she wanted to do was write a simple story and silly songs that might help women of a certain age get through an experience nobody seemed to be talking about.
Menopause.
The result was Menopause the Musical , a popular touring production that uses pop song parodies and four characters who serve as the voice of women reaching, struggling with and eventually accepting the biological inevitability of "the change."
"When I came up with the idea it just seemed like something I could, I should, do," Linders said in a telephone interview from her Tucson, Ariz., home. "You always write about something you know. I was a 50-year-old woman and this I understood. It's not really about theater. It's about women."
The show began being staged in front of small audiences in a storefront theater fashioned from a former perfume shop in Orlando, Fla., in 2001. Since then, productions have been staged in more than 250 cities and 14 countries.
Linders said she felt confident that the show, stuffed with song parodies including Puff, My God I'm Draggin' and Stayin' Awake/Night Sweatin' would succeed artistically. The show's success continues to surprise.
"I knew it would be successful because I am my audience," she said. "But I certainly didn't know what that would mean. I really had no idea that there were so many women out there that needed something to hang their hat on. It surprises me still."
Linders said some of the success might stem from the organic nature of Menopause's creation. She said when she sat down to write, she did so with a stack of records and inspiration drawn from her experiences.
"Stuff just pops in your head," she said. "I had all these ideas about menopause and aging and I put them on my bulletin board. Then I played all my old 45s and started to discover what worked. I'd like to say there was a brilliant formula, but there really wasn't."
Linders said Menopause did not start as a message musical: Morals, lessons or lofty ideas aren't the point of the play. The idea is to remind women that aging is a universal experience.
"It's funny because the women that go to this, some of them have never been to the theater," she said.
"It has been a very interesting thing. Because there are writers out there that feel like they have to make some sort of statement. I don't. I never have."
That doesn't mean that Linders doesn't believe Menopause the Musical can't make a difference. She said it allows women an opportunity to laugh at what sometimes can be both a physically and emotionally difficult period and it has also proved to be a powerful tool for raising funds for charity.
Since 2005, a portion of each production's proceeds has gone to ovarian cancer charities. She said that, and her original goal of finding the fun in a sometimes taboo subject, have been the real reward.
"A lot of people write masterful plays and never sell a ticket," she said. "That was never the point with this. This was something I wanted to see and my girlfriends wanted to see and made us laugh. It still does that."
WHAT: Menopause the Musical
WHEN: 8 p.m. Tuesday-March 18; 2 p.m. Wednesday
WHERE: The Imperial Theatre, 745 Broad St.
COST: $45; (706) 722-8341
The Augusta Chronicle ©2012. All Rights Reserved.
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