INTERVIEW: Two Off-Broadway actors on the ‘Art of Leaving’
Photo: Audrey Heffernan Meyer and Jordan Lage star in Art of Leaving. Photo courtesy of Jeremy Daniel / Provided by BBB with permission.
The new play Art of Leaving, written by Anne Marilyn Lucas and directed by Matt Gehring, continues through Sunday, Dec. 14, at the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre at the Signature Center on 42nd Street in New York City. In the show, the audience follows the relationship difficulties of married couple Diana (Audrey Heffernan Meyer) and Aaron (Jordan Lage). Their marriage is somewhat falling apart, with Aaron emotionally abusing Diana and then deciding he’s going to leave his wife. The fallout from this pending divorce is what drives Art of Leaving’s story along. Even though the verbal fights are intense and the barbs cut deep, Lucas has fashioned this relational show as a near-constant laugh-fest.
In addition to the characters of Diana and Aaron, there are also Aaron’s parents in the show, Esther (Pamela Shaw) and Felix (Alan Ceppos), and the couple’s son and future daughter-in-law, Jason (Brian Mason) and Caitlyn (Molly Chiffer). They’re one big dysfunctional family, and everyone seems to have an opinion on what should happen to Diana and Aaron’s relationship.
“What attracted me to it is it explores marriage and then other nontraditional relationships that people enter and what all those nuances are like,” Heffernan Meyer said in a recent phone interview. “It’s a multigenerational play. It has three different couples. It’s six characters, so we’re pretty much a very close family, but quite dysfunctional, but very loving.”
Heffernan Meyer, known for her work in From Silence and Romance Language, said the show starts with Diana and Aaron having sex, but then quickly the scene devolves into him asking for a divorce. But here’s the thing: Aaron struggles to ask for the divorce one on one; he needs his family by his side.
“He doesn’t want to tell me,” she said. “He wants to do it with his whole family there to support him, and it’s because he’s gotten involved with a self-help guru who is telling him how to give back and find his masculinity and get away from the word feminine. … So it’s pretty hilarious with all that, and then I guess it’s called Art of Leaving because that’s his way of wanting to leave.”
Heffernan Meyer also explained that Aaron has been unkind to her character of Diana. This mistreatment includes verbal abuse and the uttering of some horrible words. “I’m an educated woman,” she said of her role. “I’ve got a good job at a museum, and I’ve just kind of gotten used to it. We allude to the fact that my character, Diana, also might have had a rough childhood with a dad who wasn’t so great.”
Throughout the play, the audience comes to root for Diana, hoping that this marriage does disintegrate so she can start anew. At different times during the play, Heffernan Meyer’s character receives applause and some cheers for the choices she makes and the words she says.
“We get some cheers and things because people want that for my character because she’s really been so strong and noble through the whole thing,” she said. “There’s a younger couple, too. It’s my son and his fiancé, and they’re discussing something really different throughout. And that is polyamory. They want to get married, but they believe in having other partners. Then there’s the older couple. … So there are three different views of what it means to have a partner, how do you treat them, what are the gender expectations, things like that. And how do you make a long love affair last? How do you stay married 59 years the way the older couple is?”
Heffernan Meyer said she appreciates how the play has many comedic moments, which reside right next to deep, serious introspections about relationships and the need to break away from toxic people.
“Even after the show sometimes, we go out to the lobby to say hi to friends or whatever, and there’s a lot of fans out there, too,” the actor said. “It’s a real catharsis for a lot of people who have suffered like that, and it’s just ironic that the playwright, Anne Marilyn Lucas, she brilliantly made this into a comedy. So you can laugh throughout, but then people gasp, too.”
Ceppos, an actor known for TV’s Gravesend and the movie That Cold Dead Look in Your Eyes, said he was attracted to the character of Felix because he strongly identified with the background of the role.
“Well, he had the same background as I did,” Ceppos said in a recent phone interview. “I’m a fifth-generation New York Jew, and so my family grew up in Queens, Long Island. And I felt he did, too. I saw in him my uncle, and it’s always attractive and fun to play someone that is not you, but yet you’re familiar with the person. That sort of attracted me to Felix.”
In Ceppos’ mind, relationships have essentially been the same for 50,000 years, but in 2025, partnerships have gone a little awry because of the added pressures of the internet and social media. That’s what makes Art of Leaving such an interesting snapshot of people coming together, and falling apart, in contemporary times.
“I think this opens up the world to especially the younger generation and how they’re thinking about it, which is something we or me didn’t really realize when I was younger because you didn’t have the communication we have now,” he said. “So it’s very relevant for today in not only the evolution of relationships, but more important in the communication of the evolution of relationships.”
Ceppos has many plaudits to say about Gehring, the director of the piece. He called him extremely enthusiastic, someone who put his entire heart into the show.
“He stands behind his feelings, and he’s very creative,” the actor said. “When a show opens, the director really basically is no longer there. Matt has been coming very often to see the play, how it is, how we all are. He’s very invested mentally in the play, and you can tell that from the first day. He’s very mentally and emotionally invested in the play, and that shows in his directorial style and as a human being. At the end of the day, whether you’re a writer or an actor or a restauranteur, working with people that you like is the most important thing because at the end of the day that’s all we have. So Matt has been just such a plus for that because we all like him.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Art of Leaving, starring Audrey Heffernan Meyer and Alan Ceppos, continues through Sunday, Dec. 14, at the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre at the Signature Center on 42nd Street in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
