What started off as a reading in Webster's Bookstore Café, 128 S. Allen St., eventually sent a Penn State professor to Manhattan.

That professor was Mary Gage, who turned the reading into a staged performance, Evensong, which made its Pennsylvania debut Wednesday in Boalsburg and continues until Saturday.

Gage grew up in England and also lived in Australia for many years, where she began writing plays. In 1987, the Australian Studies Center at Penn State invited her to teach screenwriting for a semester in State College, and that semester ended up lasting 15 years. She researched Evensong through a grant in Midland, Mich.

"I had to think of something to do," Gage said. "So I researched the lives of all the people there in the senior citizens home, and I found six people who lived very interesting lives."

She interviewed people between 80 and 101 years old.

"I feel within America old people, it's really a very youthful country, where youth is revered, and age is not, and a lot of their stories go unheard," Gage said.

She said each person's story involved overcoming hardships in life and eventually becoming a success.

The stories range from a black man who came to Alabama alone at a young age and wanted to become a doctor, to a woman from Romania named Marie who was an only child taken to America where she married and reached her life's ambition by having 12 children.

The piece was a reading that she performed at Webster's. She decided to stage the reading and turn it into a play.

"Mary did a reading of it a long time ago," said Peg French, who plays Marie, "and she just invited some people who were then working in the department."

She said her role of Marie deals with the adjustment of her parents to the American culture.

"It was hard times to make a living and everybody struggled, it was a time when people really struggled, immigrants really struggled," she said.

Evensong was read twice in a Manhattan Theatre Club in June, and the cast and that director, Dick Caram -- who is an associate professor of theatre at Penn State -- went from the reading to the performance.

"When [Gage] decided to try staging it then, she invited some of us who had done it the first time to come read it again," French said.

Half of the cast at the performance in Boalsburg is the same as the Manhattan cast, including retired professors French and Helen Manfull.

Manfull, who plays a 101-year-old woman named Gwen, became involved because Gage was her colleague in the Theater department. Gage had done the reading, and explained that she'd really like to see it staged, so Manfull agreed to help.

She said Gage created "wonderful poetic language" with their stories, using their own words from taped interviews.

"They've got a lot of spunk and energy," Manfull said. "They take you through the experiences of their lives."

French agreed. "I think one of the fascinating things about the play is that these are all true stories," she said.

Manfull said the performance also appealed to younger audience members. "Young people who saw it really liked it and seemed interested in these old people," she said.

The play will be presented tonight through Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Boal Barn Playhouse in Boalsburg. It is being funded by the State College Community Theatre and is free and open to the public. Donations will be accepted at the door.