'Menopause The Musical' pokes fun at 'the change'

Sandy DeWoody has been in “Menopause The Musical” since 2003. And she hasn’t become weary of doing the role of the Iowa Housewife.

“I’m absolutely still having fun,” DeWoody said. “I don’t think I’d keep doing it if it wasn’t fun. It’s a different show with different audiences. And each city has its own personality.”

Even though the topic is something women go through in their later years, more and more men are coming to the shows.

“The men get dragged there,” she said. “Ha! We know that. In 15 minutes, they get it. They get a big kick out of it, especially when they see their significant others on the stage. They really get it.”

DeWoody, 54, was in the cast when the show opened the 2008-09 season at the Springer Opera House.

“It was fabulous,” she said of the run at the Springer. “What a fun theater that is.”

She’s the only actor from that cast who will be in the Bill Heard Theatre this weekend.

“Each tour is different. They mix us up, depending on who can go out at that time.”

The show had two different tours until recently when they merged. This weekend DeWoody is working with three women she’s never been on stage with before.

“We’re getting along great; we blend well. It’s working out very well.”

This tour began Jan. 12, and will continue through the beginning of April, when the performers get one week off. Then they tour until May 12.

DeWoody said the tour will go from one end of Florida to the next. She and her family live in Winter Park, a suburb of Orlando.

“My family will stand on I-4 and wave as we drive by,” she said with a laugh.

Because her son, Spencer, is 16 years old, DeWoody is grateful her 25-year-old daughter, Samantha, is living at home.

Samantha picks up Spencer from school, cooks dinner and keeps the house clean while mom’s on tour.

Her husband, Stephen, teaches drama at a Winter Park, Fla., middle school. For 18 years, DeWoody followed her husband as he worked for Sea World in Orlando, Ohio and finally in San Diego.

“I was unhappy the whole time we were in San Diego,” DeWoody said. She had just had Spencer and missed her family in Florida. “It was really hard. Stephen ended up leaving Sea World.”

When they got back to Florida, there wasn’t a position for him at Sea World-Orlando, so he went to work at the Hard Rock theme park in Myrtle Beach.

When that park closed, he went back to teaching.

Then “Menopause” came along.

“Patty Bender, the choreographer, worked with my husband,” DeWoody said. “They were recasting and she called me and said, ‘You really should audition for this.’ I had been working in the school system and had retired from show business.

“But I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh! I can do this.’ So I auditioned and what a wonderful blessing it is to make a living doing what you love.”

DeWoody became the sixth Iowa Housewife, and hasn’t looked back.

You can find the cast in the RiverCenter for the Performing Arts lobby after each show.

“We will be collecting money for (“Menopause” playwright) Jeanie Lender’s foundation, There’s No Place Like Home, which raises money to build homes for women who lost their homes to catastrophic causes.”

The foundation works with high schools in the areas where houses are built and the students taking shop help build the homes.

“It raises their awareness of the problem (of women losing their homes),” DeWoody said. “We’ll be in the lobby, shaking our cans … both of them.”