Will you still send me a Valentine?
You’re two years from retirement, but not ready for it and can’t afford it anyway. What do you do? Call an encore career coach, that’s what. Writers Jane Keller and Sandy Brewer have turned that into cabaret in Yep, Still Got It.
Brewer, president of Porirua Little Theatre, was delighted with the opportunity to work with Keller at Circa.
As well as helping with the script, she had a hand in writing the title song.
Michael Nicholas Williams wrote the music, and Keller and Brewer contributed lyrics.
‘‘It’s a bit of a mash-up of all our ideas,’’ Brewer said.
Keller said she got a fictional mentor to help her into a new calling.
‘‘She gives me some very bad advice and sends me off into all sorts of situations,’’ she said. The first one is as a phone sex operator. ‘‘That goes badly and it’s all downhill from there.’’
Thinking career advice can’t be all that hard, Keller becomes a career coach and begins dispensing her own bad advice.
‘‘The beauty is that I can sing all sorts of songs as well as play all sorts of characters.’’
Keller is a professional singing teacher and finds many of her students in need of advice.
She and her fellow teachers think a secondary role of life mentor comes with the voice coaching territory.
‘‘We feel like we are therapists and we feel that we are life coaches. When we are not singing we are trying to help and giving life coach advice.’’
Keller said the whole concept of life coaches was rather funny.
For the most part Yep, Still Got It pokes fun at them, but it has its poignant moments.
‘‘One is talking about senior divorce. What years they have left they don’t want to spend with their current partners.’’
The most popular moments in her past shows have been the risque songs and there would be plenty of those, she said.
‘‘Not filthy but risque.’’
Yep, Still Got It,