As we approach our final week of MILLENNIUM APPROACHES, and I reflect back on the past two months, I can’t help but ruminate on how fortunate I am to have been part of this production.  There is always a paradoxical emotional rollercoaster for me in this process.  I strive to get these jobs and then when I do get one I inevitably feel anxiety, even dread, at the expectation of doing it.   I love the process of discovery that takes place in rehearsal but the prospect of people coming to the show is always a little terrifying. But then when a show closes there is always an accompanying sense of loss.  The sense of loss with the closing of this show I anticipate to be particularly acute.

For the past two months Salt Lake Acting Company has been my home and the talented cast and crew of this production, my family.  Not exactly a very long time but when involved in such a special project, as this has been, it is easy to become attached.  This theater offers such a nurturing and supportive environment and the talent that they assembled for this production has been such a joy to be around day after day.   But it isn’t just the people, who will all go there separate ways when the show closes, that I will miss.  It is also the work and the character.

Kushner has created such a complex emotional world in this play.  So many of the characters are deeply conflicted and struggle against a universe that is like, as Roy states, “a sandstorm in outer space with winds of mega-hurricane velocity, but instead of grains of sand it’s shards and splinters of glass.”  For Joe Pitt, that storm is happening inside of him.  He wants so deeply to be simple, good.  And he is good, a caring and considerate man.  But his idea of what is goodness is in direct contrast to what is going on within him.  I think this has created a great deal of anger in him that stems from the contradiction that he is forced to depict.  He wants so desperately to be able to fulfill the moral expectations that he has placed on himself or have been placed on him by his family and upbringing.  He is not able to be who he wants, an idea of goodness and righteousness, and also he is not able to be who is really is, so he must live without authenticity.

He is full of contradictions, struggle, humanity.  At times he is so closeted and closed off and unable to express what is really going on with him.  And then at other times he speaks in intensely poetic language, the language of the heart.  I feel for this man, his confusion, his arduous journey.

At the center of Joe’s struggle is his relationship with his wife.  These two people have an intense spiritual connection that unfortunately is devoid of sexual passion.  I can’t say how auspicious it has been for me to have Christy Summerhayes as Harper Pitt to help guide me on that journey.  Joe’s sexual passion is directed at Louis Ironson played by Alexis Baigue, who I am grateful to for being so gentle and considerate with my “first kiss.”

One last thing strikes me.  The night of our first audience, as I was standing back stage with my cast mates waiting to go on stage, Charles Lynn Frost, who plays Roy Cohn, said to me, “You ready for this. Joe Pitt, role of a lifetime.”  You could plug in any number of characters from this play into that statement and the moniker would still be fitting.  My thought when he said that to me was, “Oh #%&?, I don’t know.”  I can only hope that I have done it some justice.