Puppeteer Returns To FL Alma Mater With One-Woman Show About Alzheimer’s Disease

BRADENTON, FL — Puppeteer Molly McFadden has traveled the U.S. and the world as an actor and playwright in the decades since spending her young adult years in the Sarasota and Bradenton area.

Now, the 72-year-old returns to Florida Saturday evening with her acclaimed one-woman show, “Living on the Moon,” in which the writer-performer grapples with her mother’s demise from Alzheimer’s, as well as learning that she has the gene for the disease and her own diagnosis with mild cognitive impairment.

“It’s really a love story between a mother and a daughter,” she told Patch.

The show takes place at the State College of Florida in Bradenton, her alma mater, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are available here.

Born in Colorado, McFadden also spent some of her youth in Tennessee before moving to Sarasota with her mother, Marietta Scates.

Her mother was a pillar in the Bradenton community, teaching the first grade there for many years.
McFadden always had “a very vivid imagination,” she said. “I was constantly putting on shows — with a broom, animals, my friends.”

The move to Florida provided her a greater access to theater and the arts, opening her mind to new opportunities and inspiration.

As the home of the Ringling Brothers Circus, she attended Sarasota High School with the children of circus performers, as well as Paul Reubens, best known as the character Pee-wee Herman.

After graduating in 1970, McFadden spent two “fabulous years” at Manatee Junior College, now the State College of Florida, she said. “I dove into theater — lighting, writing and I even did a two-week tour of Europe. I was experiencing all forms of theater.”

She went on to attend a master of fine arts program for acting at Sarasota’s Asolo Repertory Theatre, a partnership with Florida State University.

She moved to Rochester, New York, after receiving her MFA and launched her professional career with the Geva Theatre. From there, she went to New York City.

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“I was auditioning for plays, TV and film. I did off-off-Broadway productions and regional theater. I spent time singing and studying voice, and singing in cabarets,” McFadden said. “I was living the dream doing commercials, soap operas and films.”

She also befriended some puppeteers who worked with Jim Henson, including a couple that went on to create “Shining Time Station.”

The couple asked her to step in for a show in Las Vegas because the wife was pregnant and couldn’t travel.

“I said, ‘I don’t do puppets,’” McFadden recalled. “[They] told me, ‘You’re a natural. You got this.’ I came into this by accident.”

She started writing her own works after moving to Cleveland in 2015 to be closer to her daughter.

She was still living in New York when her mother received her Alzheimer’s diagnosis, which she lived with for 12 years.

“It was brutal,” McFadden said.

During this time, Scates moved to New Jersey, where her daughter became her care partner.

Four years ago, McFadden received her own diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment and learned she was at high risk for Alzheimer’s.

“Immediately, I wanted to hide. Immediately, I wanted to see how I could still function in the theatrical community,” she said.

Eventually, she realized to “face my reality and not hide or deny that I have the gene for Alzheimer’s,” McFadden said, adding, “What’s key is that I caught it early.”

Unlike her mother, she had a chance to get ahead of the disease by changing her diet and exercise routine. She also receives Leqembi infusions, which are used to treat early-stage Alzheimer’s disease.

From all this, her one-woman show “Living on the Moon” was born, which is about her mother’s illness and their relationship, as well as self-advocacy in health care. She’s performed the show at various venues, including the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

“The show opens with me welcoming [the audience] to my cabaret act and they get to know me as a performer,” McFadden said.

Then, a knocking comes from a trunk on stage with her, she said. “It’s my mom — and I reassure the audience it’s not really my mom. But it houses all my memories of her. I miss my mom and through the course of the show, she’s part of it.”

During the course of the at-times macabre cabaret show, her mother, in puppet form, cheers on her daughter as she navigates her own journey with Alzheimer’s and relinquishes any guilt she might have.

McFadden said there’s still a stigma around Alzheimer’s and cognitive issues, which she hopes to dispel.

“I feel good about my ability to use my talents to share my narrative because I want to do it in a more hopeful way,” she said. “I’m trying to help people realize the importance of brain health and any bumps in the road in terms of memory and having to fight for yourself. It’s not just getting older. It’s not just age. It’s something different. And it’s not something to be embarrassed by.”