The Sunday Read: Miles Potter on Proud by Michael Healey

Michael Healey

The Play (not the controversy) Is The Thing
Michael's Shavian examination of right wing Canadian politics could be a delightful surprise.
by Miles Potter

Last year I was listening to my radio one morning in my kitchen when I heard Michael Healey's name mentioned. Now this was CBC, and while it's not totally unusual for artists to show up on the CBC, it's not usually on the national news. I tried to pay closer attention while cooking or cleaning or whatever I was doing in the kitchen; I live in the country when not away working, and I don't get newspapers so I'm often woefully out of the loop when it comes to the theatre news. But hearing Michael's name on the news made me think I'd better listen up; the report was almost over, so I only got a partial version of the story. 

So I went and booted up my steam driven (it seems) dial-up internet to see if I could find out what Michael was up to. I got an article from somewhere laying out the bones of the story; I gleaned the facts that he had written an apparently controversial play and his “home” theatre, the Tarragon, didn't want to do it. And so he had quit. Interesting. I was actually in a kind of conversation with another theatre at the time, and I suggested that this would be a great time for some theatre to step in and grab it, which was probably foolhardy as I knew virtually nothing about the play, but in any case that particular conversation went nowhere anyway. 

Opinion: Michael Mitchell on The Healey Affair

Proud and Chilly
by Michael Mitchell

As many of you probably already know, not the least through previous posts right here, the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto declined to produce Michael Healey’s latest play, “Proud”, on the basis that it might possibly engender some kind of libel suit from Our Fearless Leader--whoever he or she may be. (The spectre of libel was raised by a member of Tarragon’s board; a retired lawyer who also happens to be Don McKellar’s father.)

According to reports, Healey went out to seek another legal opinion from a libel expert and was told that his play, being a satire, fell well within the realm of what constitutes reasonable public discourse.

First Person: Brad Fraser on The Healey Affair

LET’S NOT NOT TALK ABOUT IT

BY BRAD FRASER

(Written for The Charlebois Post)

I can’t claim to know Michael Healey particularly well. I know of his great success as a playwright, of course, and we’ve corresponded a few times on facebook in a “shared pithy observations about something in common” sort of way. He seems professional and even-tempered, so when he gives an interview stating that Tarragon Artistic Director Richard Rose (with whom Healey has shared a professional relationship for over a decade and a number of play productions) has decided not to program his latest political satire because someone on the theatre’s board of directors felt some of the material could possibly be libelous to our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, I find no reason to doubt Mr Healey’s veracity. Nor was there anything in Healey’s public statements that seemed vindictive or petty. Add to this the fact that Richard Rose has refused to confirm, deny or elaborate on these comments in any way and it’s pretty hard not to conclude that something happened that was unpleasant enough for the playwright to need to take the kind of stand playwrights generally don’t take because it can screw up their livelihood. 

As I see it there are most likely two possible explanations here.