Jim Petosa on 'The Next Five Years'

In Jason Robert Brown's musical The Last Five Years, a young couple-Cathy and Jamie, both artists-enter into a relationship full of hope. Five years later, the relationship is over. How did it happen?

Ordinarily, a play might adopt a his-and-hers set of contrasting viewpoints. In this case, the he said / she said is augmented by a nifty narrative trick: we see Cathy's perspective on the relationship told backwards, starting at the end and tracing backwards to the start, whereas Jamie's story is told in the usual manner, from start to finish.

In the New Repertory Theater's production of the play, Aimee Doherty starts as Cathy and Mark Linehan portrays Jamie. The actors are directed by Jim Petosa of the Boston University School of Theatre. Biographical information at the BU website also shows that Petosa has been, and remains, the long-time Artistic Director for the Olney Theatre Center for the Arts in Maryland, a post he has held for seventeen years. Moreover, the bio notes, Petosa "also serves as artistic director for the National Players educational touring company and as one of three artistic directors for the Potomac Theatre Project, a company devoted to the presentation of political works."

At one point in a recent chat between Petosa and EDGE, Petosa's own political passion emerges. But first, a bit of background. The Last Five Years is Petosa's second directorial project with New Rep; his inaugural project with the company came about last year, when he directed Michael Hiollinger's drama Opus, a play that features a larger cast (Benjamin Evett and Bates Wilder, along with Shelly Bolmna, Michael Kaye, and Becky Webber starred) but shares a certain similarity with The Last Five Years in that Opus is driven by music. The Last Five Years is a musical.

"That was the first time I had directed at New Rep, which was actually my first time directing outside Boston University universe since I got here in '02," Petosa told EDGE. "And it was a great experience. We had a wonderful time with the at show. It was very successful, and Kate Warner, the artistic director at New Rep, asked me if you would come back to do The Last Five Years this year. The schedule worked out, and I'm happy to be there."

Asked about the differences between directing musical versus non-musical productions, Petosa reckoned, "It's really the vocabulary. You're still mining the human dimensions of a story. The nice thing about music is that it immediately propels you into an unrealistic mode that is inherently theatrical, so the art form tends to respond when you apply music to it."

The Last Five Years, Petosa noted, has " a really accessible narrative that people have kind of glommed on to. It was first done in '02, and since it was first done it has really become a bit of a cult musical in terms of acquiring more and more fans as more and more people become aware of it. My guess is that it's the universality of the story, but also the music itself grabs the listener in a way that connects with them."

A film titled Blue Valentine, which also related the origins and ending of a relationship over a span of years and played tricks with time, came to mind for this EDGE correspondent upon learning about the storyline for The Last Five Years. With Blue Valentine having drawn attention thanks to nominations by the Academy Awards-which made the film part of the Oscars earlier this month, though it did not win-EDGE ventured to ask whether Petosa worried (or hoped) that the film and the play would be connected in people's minds.

"I'm not worried about that," Petosa said easily. "Lost love is as iconic a human story as anyone can imagine. The device in this particular play of one character going backward in time while the other moves forward across those five years, so that they only intersect in that one scene in the middle, makes the story new in the way that you can recognize components and ironies inherent in the relationship as it regresses and progresses at the same time.

"It actually reminds me more of Sonheim's Merrily We Roll Along, which is a musical told backwards about a group of friends," Petosa continued. "It's a novel way of achieving the chronology of the story by going backwards, which reveals a lot of interesting things that I don't think we would get if we were doing it in a linear way."

Since Petosa and his own same-gender life partner are approaching their 20th anniversary (the date falls in August), EDGE offered congratulations and wondered about his perspective when it came to directing plays in which the central characters are same-sex versus mixed-gender couples. Were there different challenges involved in each sort of relationship? Or were the central issues the same, regardless of gender combinations?

"Oh, I've directed a couple of plays with same-sex couples," Petosa chuckled. "A same-sex relationship can impact the story depending on when and where the play is located. A same-sex relationship in 2011 in Boston would certainly be very different from dramatizing the same-sex relationship in Alabama in 1950. Like everything, context does [affect] the challenge and the conflict" of a play.

"I'm trying to imagine if this were done as a same-sex couple, would it have to change in any way, and my guess is probably not," Petosa mused, "other than the vocal range of the soprano! Other than that, I have a feeling that you could probably translate it pretty easily."

In this case, the characters are a heterosexual couple. EDGE inquired as to whether actors Aimee Doherty and Mark Linehan shared the kind of chemistry that makes a play crackle.

"They are very generous with one another," Petosa said. "The early going is always the roughest because you are just digging, digging in for the raw material of each number, and if there was any sign of defensiveness or any sign of concern about this being a two-hander, [the process could become difficult]. The two actors are extremely good to each other and very supportive of each other in a way that makes the rehearsal really pleasant." Added the director, "When you have fourteen songs and two people in a seven-hour working day, you want to be sure that the room remains fertile and doesn't become oppressive. They are both very gifted at maintaining a real sense of generosity toward one another in the room and that makes the work really good."

EDGE can't help asking about how the old Catholic adage applies to the theatrical craft when it comes to plays centered around relationships. The saying tells us that there are three people in a relationship: two people, and God. Insofar as God, in the theatrical world, is the director, how might Petosa approach material that portrays something as intimate and personal as the joys of a new love connection-or the pain of its conclusion?

"I can't imagine feeling myself to be God!" Petosa exclaimed. "But I think I understand where the question comes from... If God is the urge through which creativity gets stimulated, then I'll accept that role," he added.

"My job is to provide thoughts, provide stimulus that the actors don't necessarily come up with on their own--provide a different perspective, provide a moment of 'Aha!,' of possibility," Petosa continued. "Directors didn't used to exist in theater. In fact, it was the actors who invented the job. Our task as directors is to have them leave every rehearsal glad that they came up with the idea of us, so I view it as a real stewardship role. I feel good in the is particular process. I feel that I have a good relationship with the two of them. I have their trust, and they have mine.

"That's a great thing about the theater," the director added. "We have to take these relationships [that are depicted in a script], and we have to presume their value and presume their worth. It's amazing, when you do that, how often we don't let each other down [in real life]. It's one of the great things about the culture that the theater provides us."

Given the government's recent attacks on the arts-the House of Representatives has recently voted to defund PBS, National Public Radio, and the National Endowment for the Arts, perennial targets of Republican majorities in Congress-EDGE asked whether the local theatre scene was in for some painful cutbacks.

"We lost the culture wars of the early '90s, and I feel that with the ascendency of the conservative-controlled House they are looking for ways to kind of flex their muscles a little bit," Petosa opined. "Frankly, the $166 million the NEA [has to spend] does not do all that much to helping the real economy. The NEA's biggest job is not so much in the dollars it spends, but in how much money it provokes the private sector and individual philanthropists to spend. When you get an imprimatur from the NEA, it's sometimes easier to loosen corporate foundation and individual acts of philanthropy.

"If we're going to play this petty political game over cutting back the NEA... the current deficit, it feels silly, really very silly to me," Petosa said. "These are politicized games in which the right wing is trying to hold the arts community and the medium of public radio as being the bastions of left-wing liberalism, and therefore they're going to cut government spending in those [areas]."

Would the public stand for it?

"I guess we can just stay tuned and see, and hopefully the American people will be more astute the next time they go to the ballot box than we were last November," Petosa said with a chuckle.

The Last Five Years continues at The New Repertory Theater, located at 321 Arsenal Street in Watertown, through April 17.