Interview with A Life director BJ Jones and actor John Mahoney
With Northlight resident dramaturg Meghan Beals McCarthy
March 3, 2010

MM: So, how are rehearsals going?

BJ: Very smoothly.  We’re in the first week and we’re pretty much blocked.  Which means we know where we’re walking, we know where things want to be, where people come and go and so forth.  So the blueprint is laid out.

JM: For me, as one of the actors, it’s going great; I think BJ cast superbly.  I think they’re really into what they’re doing and very, very knowledgeable about the play.

MM: The play is set in 1937 and ’77 and we’ve got two sets of actors playing the groups of friends.  How has that impacted your rehearsal in terms of process, or how you talk about the play or how you talk about characters?

JM: It’s interesting.  Matt [Schwader] and I, who plays the younger Drumm, we’ve sort of been watching each other and looking for little idiosyncrasies, gestures, ways to laugh, ways to do something, so you can see the process of this man to old age, and it flows sort of seamlessly as being sort of the same person.  It’s really easy to pick up on.  You really don’t even have to be told what to do.  And I find that very interesting.  Also just talking about character, getting a younger perspective on it, and how that goes along with the older perspective of it.  It’s been great.

BJ: John asked perhaps the most compelling question the first day and that is “Why do these people care about Drumm?”  We’ve been going through the play stubbornly, both by watching as the younger Drumm goes through his journey in the opening incidents of his life, and through John’s older Drumm going through the one day in his life where he discovers and refreshes much of his past - and I think we’re discovering those things that people are attracted to with Drumm.  The fact that he had a tragic family life, and for me, the fact that when most people find out that they are facing the end, they may collapse in on themselves.  Whereas Drumm is quite brave and decides to face all the truths in his life, which activates and impassions this particular day.  To go to all the darkest, most troubled places in his life is quite brave, isn’t it?

JM: It is actually, and to think about it, it is a revelation for him too.   As Hugh Leonard said, “This play isn’t about the past.  This play is about the past and the future.  The past and the future that coexist together.”  And I’ve been finding that and that’s been helping me a lot, through viewing my younger days and my younger self and my younger mistakes and my younger passions as new.  Because you know we all lie to ourselves and we all white-wash certain aspects of ourselves.  It’s just human nature.  But he’s seeing it now and realizing those lies and realizing he’s not the man he thought he was, he’s not achieving what he hoped to achieve, and now he’s finding out why, sort of where he went wrong, the mistakes he made in his life that will daunt him forever.  And it’s a huge revelation to watch him discover this and come to terms with it.

MM: What are you looking forward to the most in the coming weeks, with another week to go before tech and previews?

JM: I’m really looking forward to an audience.  You know, you’re in rehearsal for so long and you think “gotta have an audience, gotta have an audience” and that usually comes out in the second and third weeks.  But, here, I’m dying for one now, I really am, because this play was a revelation to me when I heard it out loud for the first time.

And it made a huge impression on me then but I don’t remember humor.  And thinking of the play, what’s it about?   It’s about a 70-year-old man getting ready for retirement, finds out he has cancer, he knows he only has 6 months to live, and he sets about rebuilding certain burnt bridges from his past, setting things right.  What’s funny about that?  But then you have to factor in the fact that it’s Irish, so then you know that in the middle of your deepest sob you’re going to find a laugh, and in the middle of your most hysterical laughter you’re going to break down crying, because it’s just the nature of the beast when it comes to Irish literature, plays or theatre.  I look forward to an audience to assure me that I’m on the right track, and if not, to help me find the track that I should be on.

MM: Well, it’s great that we have so many preview performances too, because we learn from that.

BJ:  The audience helps you shape the performance in a way.  The thing about this play in particular is it’s very Irish.  Hugh Leonard’s says he’s not an Irish writer, that he’s a writer with a greater global view point.  You know, he doesn’t write about just Irish things, and I think there’s a certain overall universality to the play which I think we’ll all recognize even though there are poetic turns of phrase which are inherently Irish and nearly Shawvian.  He’s kind of got a little bit of Shawvian wit in his writing, which we will appreciate, but it may only be a smile and not a house laugh.

MM: And so those are all the things we will discover with our audience.

BJ: Absolutely.

MM: Well, thank you for your time guys and enjoy your time at rehearsal and I will see you soon.

BJ & JM: Thank you.