The Last Six Days - by Mark Linehan

One of the facets of this profession that I used to find frustrating but I have learned to embrace is the understanding that no matter how long I rehearse, or how hard I work to perfect my role, I will still be able to look back ten years later and discover ways to make certain moments more active, more specific and more alive. I try my best to banish this future specter of judgment while I’m working on a new show, but it’s always been a struggle of mine. I can hide it from most directors. A particularly good director will call me out on it after a week or so. It took Jim Petosa two days.

The two characters in The Last Five Years both express a desire to escape where they are from, and to a certain extent, who they are. Jamie wishes to escape his Jewish heritage and community and Cathy wishes to overcome her small-town, blue-collar upbringing. Although one story is told forwards through time and the other goes backwards, we see how their separate histories begin to re-assert themselves as their marriage falls apart, and how a mutual desire to escape is a weak foundation for a relationship. There are many clichés that seek to define the need for change, the urge for something different, the wonder of the unknown. However, this personal battle for identity and its perceptions and realities is universal. Who am I? Where am I going? And since the only thing I am sure of is where I’ve been and where I’m from, how much does that matter? Is it a determined value or a variable that I can alter to suit my needs?

Laurence Olivier writes in his autobiography, Confessions of An Actor, that acting is not much more than convincing lying. While I must give Lord Olivier his due, I have to say that my challenge is not so much to lie well, but to be totally honest to the world of the play and its truths. However, the trick along with that is to be true to myself. I can’t allow myself to get caught up in how Jamie has been played before or how other men may play this role and I cannot allow myself to edit my own performance while I perform it. I have to be all at once accepting and embracing of who I am, who I was, and not spend time worrying about how it might turn out or be perceived. This play is about a relationship between two people. Like love, this play does not seek to boast or condemn or judge, but allows the story to unfold in the way that this relationship’s story must be told. And my full challenge is to allow myself to tell this story, while being true to Aimee and Todd and Jim and this beautiful story we’re all telling.