Susan Wefel's life in the theater

The most important moment in Susan Wefel's life may have come when she was 5.

She saw Mary Martin in the Broadway production of Peter Pan when it was televised for the first time in 1955, and was soon out in the backyard of her Cleveland home, directing siblings and friends in her own production.

"We used the swing set for the 'I'm flying' scene," Wefel recalled.

She starred in high school productions, studied drama at Boston University, and in 1978 joined the company at Hedgerow Theatre in Rose Valley, taking a room in the century-old Hedgerow House, where all the theater's new young actors lived.

She never left.

After 36 years, Wefel, now 65, still performs, still teaches, and still shares a bathroom with five others - whose average age is 24, and, on average, stay two years.

"This is home," she said.

"She is like a den mother," said Joel Guerrero, 26, one of Wefel's housemates. If it wasn't for her, we'd turn into a frat house."

Founded in 1923 as America's first resident repertory theater, Hedgerow has a notable history as a proving ground for playwrights from Eugene O'Neill to George Bernard Shaw. Actors would perform in the converted grist mill and live in the old Victorian half a mile up Rose Valley Road. Some stayed for life.

Wefel arrived at the end of that era.

"She connects the past generations to today," added Guerrero, one of five young actors living in Hedgerow House on two-year fellowships.

Wefel has a bedroom to call her own, the walls lined with posters of some of her favorite performances. She's done hundreds of plays, just about everything, but loves playing witches the best.

She played the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz, "with green skin and the nose in true Margaret Hamilton mode," she said. She played the Wicked Queen in Snow White, the Wicked Stepmother in Cinderella. And now she's preparing for the White Witch in Narnia.

She loves to sing; her signature song at parties, not surprisingly, is "I'm Still Here," from Stephen Sondheim's Follies.

In the middle of her bedroom is a music stand, where she memorizes and rehearses her lines day and night - just ask her housemates. "I've always got three scripts in my head," she said.

Wefel also loves Downton Abbey and the old ladies of British theater, and has a picture on her wall of her meeting with Judi Dench in London. In her current role at Hedgerow, as the mother in A Murder Has Been Arranged, she said, "I'm trying to imagine Maggie Smith."

Wefel is provided room and board, and a stipend of $11,000 a year, but she, like everyone who lives here, does everything: cleans bathrooms, cooks chili for the house on Sundays, pulls weeds, hangs fliers, and buys props and costumes at yard sales and thrift stores. She grocery shops for the house.

"Keep the toilet paper rolling," she said.

Wefel did not have health insurance until a few months ago when, after her 65th birthday, her housemates helped her sign up for Medicare. She's also getting Social Security now, enough to increase her income 66 percent. "It does make things easier," she said.

She drives a Volvo wagon, bought with money left to her by an aunt. She never married. Never had children.

"These are my children," she said, gesturing to three of her housemates, making dinner in the kitchen before a show. "I guess you could say I'm wedded to Hedgerow."

"This is a great place and a wonderful place to live," said Colleen Marker, 24, another housemate. "But to think of doing it for 37 years is the part I can't get my head around."

"I think it's really admirable," says Allison Bloechl, 23. "It's a testament to how much she's given to her art that she's been able to make it 37 years."

"She's not afraid to go big," said Lily Dwoskin, 24. "That's something she's taught me. 'Don't be afraid, and go all the way.' Suzie plays as old as she's cast. She recently played . . . the youngest child in A Christmas Carol."

Age does impose limitations, however. Wefel has finally stopped wearing her pig costume and doing Wilbur from Charlotte's Web, another favorite role.

"I've given up the pig," she said. "I can't get on my knees anymore."

She still teaches an array of children's theater programs at Hedgerow House and in the community, part of the theater's outreach.

One afternoon, for instance, she was at Chester Charter School helping nine first graders act out a book, The Enormous Turnip. She had them form a chain and all sway forward and back, as she sang out, "And they pulled and they pulled and they pulled - and still it didn't budge!"

Eventually, of course, the turnip came up and they all fell down.

Often on cold nights, after performances, Wefel and housemates will return to Hedgerow House, put a few logs in the fireplace, and relax. She might even sip a whiskey.

"I feel like I've lived a charmed life," Wefel said. "As long as my health is good, I can go on doing what I love."

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@MichaelVitez