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Interview With Michael Healey
In the development and original production of Reading Hebron, Michael played the role of Nathan. He spoke with Susannah Schmidt from his home in Toronto. As one of the actors in the workshop of Reading Hebron, you were called upon to give your own feedback about the subject at hand. How did the collaborative process of developing Reading Hebron impact its outcome? What evolved as a process for [the creation of Reading Hebron] was essential. We had to develop a fair amount of intimacy with the material, and some of it's fairly dry, being based on political theory and history. [Reading about and discussing the Hebron Massacre] helped our being intimate with understanding the politics we were looking at. Our coming to an understanding with some of the issues forced Jason to deepen his own position. There was a down side to the process [of actors giving feedback] in that some discussions in rehearsal degenerated to "I don't want to do this," which is perhaps not the best thing for an actor to tell a writer. There was an amount of objectivity lost at times, and, as an actor, you have to play the character presented to you. You were playing the lead role of Nathan in the Factory Theatre production, and the script was in development almost right up to the performance. How was that different from acting in a piece where you get the finished script from day one? It was difficult because it was a long time before we actually got a script we could rehearse from and know. It meant we had to take a lot of responsibility for it. When you're in a play where the script's just handed to you, if it sucks there's a point that you can say, well, I'm not really responsible for it. But that wasn't the case. I spoke at length with Niki (Landau) about how challenging performing Reading Hebron was since she had a lot personally invested in the piece, and in the questions it posed. What was it like for you? The performance itself it wasn't as difficult for me as for Niki. I'm not directly involved because I'm not Jewish. For her, she would go home to family members and have to talk. I could do my work and walk away. Still, when I understood the full impact of how much it stirred up, it made me want to push it to the limits. You were also in [the Sherman play] Three In the Back, Two in the Head. Was its development similar to Reading Hebron's ? For Three In the Back, Two In the Head it was a five week rehearsal
period, so it was more straightforward. Actors had some input, but Jason
wasn't as involved . There was a director, Richard Rose, and a dramaturg,
DD Kugler, and the bulk of the conversation happened with them after
rehearsals. Still, Jason was a friend, so I could tell him what I thought.
I would take him out to the bar and get my licks in.
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