PLAY GUIDE

THE LAST FIVE YEARS A MUSICAL

written and composed by

Jason Robert Browndirected by Meredith McDonough

Oct. 7–262014

ABOUT THIS PLAY GUIDEThis play guide is a resource designed to enhance your theatre experience. Its goal is twofold: to nurture the teaching and learning of theatre arts, and to encourage essential questions that lead to an enduring understanding of the play’s meaning and relevance.

Inside you will find information about the plot and characters within the play, as well as articles that contextualize the play and its production at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Oral discussion and writing prompts encourage your students to reflect upon their impressions and to analyze and relate key ideas to their personal experiences and the world around them. These can easily be adapted to fit most writing objectives. We encourage you to adapt and extend the material in any way to best fit the needs of your community of learners. Please feel free to make copies of this guide, or you may download it from our website at actorstheatre.org. We hope this material, combined with our professional development workshop, will give you the tools to make your time at Actors Theatre a valuable learning experience.

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IN THIS PLAY GUIDE

THE LAST FIVE YEARS

3 SYNOPSIS, SETTING, CHARACTERS, AND GLOSSARY

4 MUSICAL NUMBERS

7 LOVE WON AND LOST: THE LAST FIVE YEARS

9 MEREDITH AND MUSICALS 10 WRITING PORTFOLIO

11 BRIDGEWORK

12 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

13 OTHER RESOURCES

THE LAST FIVE YEARS STUDENT MATINEE & THIS PLAY GUIDE ADDRESS SPECIFIC EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES:Students will identify or describe a variety of roles needed to produce a dramatic performance.

Students will analyze how time, place and ideas are reflected in drama/theatre.

Students will explain how drama/theatre fulfills a variety of purposes.

If you have any questions or suggestions regarding our play guides, please contact Steven Rahe, Director of Education, at 502.584.1265 x3045.

316 West Main StreetLouisville, KY 40202-4218

ARTISTIC DIRECTORLes Waters

MANAGING DIRECTORJennifer Bielstein

DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION Steven Rahe

EDUCATION MANAGER Jane B. Jones

EDUCATION COORDINATORBetsy Anne Huggins

RESIDENT TEACHING ARTISTSJustin Dobring Liz FentressKeith McGillKarin Partin Wells

EDUCATION/TEACHING ARTIST INTERNSCasey FlythBen Niewoehner

CONTRIBUTING WRITERSJane B. JonesHannah Rae MontgomerySteven Rahe

GRAPHIC DESIGNAmie Villiger

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PLOT SUMMARYJamie is a writer whose star is on the rise. Cathy is a struggling actress. With narratives that move gracefully in opposite directions, Jamie tells their story from first infatuation, while Cathy moves backward in time from the closing notes of their marriage. This musical journey through their relationship—in all its elation and heartbreak—captures the beauty of being in love, no matter how fleeting.

SETTINGNew York, New York. Over the course of five years we watch the two characters moving on opposite timelines through their relationship.

CHARACTERS

JAMIE WELLERSTEIN is a successful young writer. The audience watches Jamie move forward in time from the end of his first date with Catherine to the end of their relationship.

CATHERINE (CATHY) HIATT is a struggling young actress. The audience watches Catherine move backward in time from the end of her relationship with Jamie to their first date and first kiss goodbye.

GLOSSARYSHIKSA: a word of Yiddish origin for a non-Jewish woman.

JCC: Jewish Community Center.

SONNY MEHTA: publisher and editor-in-chief of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., a division of Random House.

RANDOM HOUSE: the world’s largest trade-book publisher.

JOHN UPDIKE: two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American fiction writer.

DAISY MAE: A character from the satirical comic strip Li’l Abner by Al Capp, which ran from 1934-1977.

STILL HURTING - CATHERINE

SHIKSA GODDESS - JAMIE

SEE I’M SMILING - CATHERINE

MOVING TOO FAST - JAMIE

A PART OF THAT - CATHERINE

THE SCHMUEL SONG - JAMIE

A SUMMER IN OHIO - CATHERINE

THE NEXT TEN MINUTES - JAMIE, CATHERINE

MUSICAL NUMBERS

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A MIRACLE WOULD HAPPEN/WHEN YOU COME HOME TO ME - JAMIE, CATHERINE

CLIMBING UPHILL - CATHERINE

IF I DIDN’T BELIEVE IN YOU – JAMIE

I CAN DO BETTER THAN THAT – CATHERINE

NOBODY NEEDS TO KNOW – JAMIE

GOODBYE UNTIL TOMORROW/I COULD NEVER RESCUE YOU - CATHERINE, JAMIE

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Relationships are never easy, especially when it feels like both partners’ lives are going in different directions. In his musical The Last Five Years, composer and lyricist Jason Robert Brown takes a close-up look at two people fighting to stay together, even as the demands of balancing their careers and life as a couple push them apart. The story follows twentysomethings Jamie and Catherine through the various stages of falling in (and out) of love: from the infatuation of a first date, to moving in together and getting married, to eventual heartbreak. This may sound like a familiar tale, and for anyone who’s plunged head over heels into a new courtship or tasted the bitterness of a breakup, it is—poignantly so. In The Last Five Years, Brown depicts the relatable twists and turns of a constantly evolving relationship with wry humor, soulful intensity, and beautiful music.

It’s rare for any two people in a failing romance to see eye-to-eye on what went wrong between them; both have their own version of events, and it’s not always clear who (if anyone) was in the right. The Last Five Years captures this ambiguity perfectly through its unique structure. In a series of emotionally intimate songs, we move alongside Jamie and Catherine through the course of their five-year involvement, entering into each of their perspectives at opposite points in their love story. When we meet Catherine, a struggling actress, she and Jamie are on the verge of divorce. We then follow her into her history with Jamie, a successful novelist, traveling in reverse through their marriage. Meanwhile, Jamie’s tale begins as he’s smitten in his earliest encounters with Catherine, and moves forward in time. While the two are often both onstage at once, they don’t interact directly or inhabit the same moments, with a single exception: in the middle of the show, their timelines meet up.

For Associate Artistic Director Meredith McDonough, who will be helming our production, this complex and character-driven dynamic is just one of many things that make The Last Five Years so compelling. “I’ve loved this piece since 2001, when I saw it premiere at Northlight Theatre in Chicago,” she enthuses. “It’s extraordinary how the way in which it unfolds—telling a love story and the story of a breakup simultaneously—makes us ask questions and challenges our assumptions about what’s happening in this relationship. Just like the story, who you side with keeps moving backwards and forwards.” McDonough is also a huge fan of the show’s score, which she describes as “a good cross between pop and musical theatre.” Brown’s songs sound contemporary, but they’ll stick in your head just like the catchiest classic showtunes. Because

The Last Five Years is almost entirely sung, with little to no dialogue in most of its scenes, the music is essential in pulling us into Jamie and Catherine’s world. A live band—comprised of an electric bass, two cellos, a guitar, piano, and violin—will accompany the actors in every performance. As McDonough explains, “They

are the other character in the show, really.”

With its two award-winning Off-Broadway productions and an upcoming film adaptation, it’s no accident that Jason Robert Brown’s resonant depiction of the beauty and anguish of living in love has proven so successful. Through its nuanced examination of Jamie and Catherine’s relationship, The Last Five Years invites us to re-examine our own loves (won and lost) with greater thoughtfulness. “It acts as a reminder to look at our pasts without oversimplifying, demonizing, or aggrandizing; to take note of the little things and to reflect in a bigger way,” says McDonough. This is a musical about much more than song and spectacle. It’s a show that gets inside its characters’ heads, and into their—and our—hearts.

—Hannah Rae Montgomery

LOVE WON AND LOST:THE LAST FIVE YEARS

In a series of emotionally intimate songs, we move alongside Jamie and Catherine through the course of their five-year involvement, entering into each of their perspectives at opposite points in their love story.

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Associate Artistic Director Meredith McDonough . Photo by Mark Kitaoka.

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Associate Artistic Director Meredith McDonough’s upcoming work as the director of The Last Five Years is far from her first foray into musical theatre. In a chat with Literary Associate Hannah Rae Montgomery, she talks about her extensive experience with developing new musicals, and what makes storytelling through music so powerful.

HANNAH RAE MONTGOMERY What sparked your interest in musicals, and how did you get started working on them professionally?

MEREDITH MCDONOUGH Whether you love or mock musicals, chances are that if you’ve made a career in the theatre, the first thing you saw and fell in love with was a musical. Musicals have always been a huge passion for me. I performed in them as a kid, but in high school I had surgery that affected my voice, so in college I shifted to directing. After graduate school, I worked for two years at the National Alliance for Musical Theatre, a not-for-profit based in New York. Each fall we produced eight staged readings of new musicals, and invited producers and not-for-profit theatres to come see them; it was sort of like a trade show for new musicals. I acted as a liaison between the writers, composers, and those other theatres. Since my time at NAMT, I’ve worn nearly every hat in new

musical development—as a director, producer, dramaturg, and all-around advocate. Most recently I’ve been the dramaturg on Fly By Night, a new musical which premiered at Dallas Theater Center and then opened at Playwrights Horizons in June. That’s been my longest relationship with a musical—I was with that show for four and a half years.

HRM Are there special things you have to think about when you’re directing a musical, as opposed to a play?

MM I always try to keep music in my work. For example, I asked Chris Miller, a musical theatre composer, to write original compositions for The Whipping Man in the 2012-2013 Season. It’s really useful for a director to think about sound as an active part of a play’s landscape; music allows for an extraordinary entrance into emotion. But in a musical, the songs are your deepest points of access to the characters. They work on such a complex level to communicate the themes of the story, as you’re getting that information through both the lyrics and the emotional journey that the music itself takes. I find the confluence of those two things super exciting to geek out about—and I appreciate the challenge of figuring out how to work with that onstage.

MEREDITH AND MUSICALS

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NARRATIVE: CCRA.W.3

In The Last Five Years, we see Catherine and Jamie’s relationship depicted from two different perspectives in time: Jamie’s story unfolds chronologically, and Catherine’s is told in reverse, starting from the end of their relationship and ending at their first date.

Since the audience knows from the beginning that their romance doesn’t work out, you could view the play as a mystery, trying to discover how their relationship fell apart and who is to blame. However, the play shows each character’s perspective, and it becomes clear that it is more complicated than assigning fault.

Disagreements often arise from not being able to see or sympathize with another person’s perspective. Write about a time when you were in a disagreement, and describe what happened from your perspective. Next, try to describe the situation from the other person’s perspective. What do you notice?

ARGUMENTATIVE: CCRA.W.1

In The Last Five Years, we only meet two characters – Jamie and Catherine. While the play takes place in New York City, a bustling metropolis, no other characters, mentioned or inferred, are shown. The characters also move through time and location with minimal costume or set changes to keep the play flowing smoothly.

The Last Five Years has recently been made into a major motion picture. Films often show all of the minor characters or extras that are inferred in plays. They can also cut to various locations, and realize costume changes that would be clunky in a play. What are the major differences between the forms? What are some of the benefits and drawbacks of turning a play into a film? Are there aspects of the play that you think might be lost, or aspects you think would be highlighted? Do you prefer one over the other, and why?

INFORMATIVE: CCRA.W.2

Write a review of the performance of The Last Five Years that you saw at Actors Theatre of Louisville. What parts of the play (the actors’ performances, the set, props, costumes, lighting and sound design, etc.) were most effective? Which parts were least effective? Back up your claims with evidence and details from your experience of watching the performance.

Actors Theatre of Louisville c/o Jane B. Jones316 West Main StreetLouisville, Kentucky 40202

WRITING PORTFOLIO

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BRIDGEWORK

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AT YOUR DESK

1. The Last Five Years is mostly sung through, meaning that instead of spoken lines, the characters sing their thoughts and feelings. Some of the songs are funny and some of them are sad, but they cover pretty much everything that happens to the characters: meeting, falling in love, success at work, failure at work, and falling out of love. Think of something in your life that doesn’t seem that song-worthy—like taking a test, riding the bus, or babysitting—and write a song about it. You can use the tune to a song you already know, but adapt the lyrics to be about your own experience. How do the music and lyric choices inform your audience how you feel about the experience? Does it make you see it in a different way?

2. In The Last Five Years, we see the story from the two characters’ perspectives, one moving forward in time and one moving backward through the course of their five-year relationship. From the beginning of the play, we know that their relationship does not work out, and we see it come full circle for both characters. What is another cycle that would be interesting to depict from two different perspectives? Pick a cycle (a school day, a school year, a lifetime, etc), create two characters that would be involved in this cycle (a student and teacher, a senior and a freshman, a parent and a child), and then plot one of them moving forward in time and one of them moving backward. What do you notice? Do you see any similarities or differences between their experiences? Is anything revealed to you about these cycles that you wouldn’t normally think about?

AWAY FROM YOUR DESK

1. As a class, listen to the first two songs from The Last Five Years, “Still Hurting” and “Shiksa Goddess” (both are available on YouTube, but note that “Shiksa Goddess” has mild cursing). These songs represent the end and beginning of Cathy and Jamie’s relationship, respectively. Divide the class into two groups and have each group create a dramatic interpretation of one of the songs. This could be accomplished by creating tableaus of the feelings in the song, a group dance number, invented dialogue between the characters, or anything else they can dream up. Perform the interpretations for each other and discuss why each group chose to interpret the song the way they did.

2. I’m not going to tell you how I feel; I’m going to sing it! The Last Five Years is mostly sung through, meaning that instead of delivering a monologue or having dialogue, the characters sing their thoughts and feelings. Divide the students into two lines. The students at the front of each line will begin to improvise a scene (be sure to choose a specific location and goals for each character) through song. When one of the actors cannot think of what to sing they move to the end of the line and the next student will take their place.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

PRE-SHOW

1. In The Last Five Years, the main characters are quite young, just a couple years out of college and starting their careers and lives together. Jamie’s career is taking off while Cathy’s is struggling. How do you think this will affect their relationship? Do you think it would be different if the roles were reversed and Cathy was more successful than Jamie? Why or why not?

2. Jason Robert Brown, the writer and composer of The Last Five Years, was inspired to write this musical after his own failed marriage. It may seem odd to turn your own heartbreak into a musical, but writers have often been inspired by personal events. If you were to turn an event in your own life into a musical, what moment would you choose? Would it be a comedy or a tragedy? What elements would you need to be sensitive about depicting in order to remain fair to the real people involved?

POST-SHOW

1. The plot of The Last Five Years shows us the course of a failed relationship through the alternating perspectives of the two characters. As more information was revealed about each character, did you find that you were more sympathetic to one character or the other? Did your loyalties shift through the course of the play? Why or why not?

2. The Last Five Years has garnered somewhat of a cult following over the last decade. Was there a song that particularly appealed to you? What about the story do you find most engaging?

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BREAK-UP MOVIES:

(500) Days of Summer (2009)Better Off Dead (1985)The Break-Up (2006)Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005)Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)The First Wives Club (1996)He’s Just Not That Into You (2009)High Fidelity (2000)Swingers (1996) War of the Roses (1989)

BREAK-UP NOVELS:

Love, Loss and What I Wore by Ilene BeckermanAftermath: On Marriage and Separation by Rachel CuskThis Is How You Lose Her by Junot Dìaz Play It As It Lays by Joan DidionThe Big Love by Sarah DunnHeartburn by Nora EphronSplit: A Memoir of Divorce by Suzanne FinnamoreTender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth GilbertWild by Cheryl Strayed

OTHER RESOURCES

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BREAK-UP SONGS: “Since U Been Gone” by Kelly Clarkson“Somebody That I Used to Know” by Gotye featuring Kimbra“Call Your Girlfriend” by Robyn“Nothing Compares 2U” by Sinead O’Connor“We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” by Taylor Swift “Un-Break My Heart” by Toni Braxton“Irreplaceable” by Beyoncé“I Fall to Pieces” by Patsy Cline“I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted” by Jimmy Ruffin