Founding Member Joseph Ziegler takes a break from Death of a Salesman rehearsals to chat about his role as Willy Loman and how discussions with his wife Nancy Palk (who appears as Linda Loman) have informed the rehearsal process.

Michael Murphy (MM) 
I know that the idea for doing Death of a Salesman has been gestating for a couple of years here at Soulpepper. How did it come about for the 2010 season?

Joseph Ziegler (JZ)
Well it's a play that Albert and I have been talking about for about six or seven years. I think it came about because we were both ready. This was a play we both really wanted to do. It's astonishing when you take this play apart how well-constructed it is, in addition to which how moving and how rich it is. It is a real masterpiece - it's great storytelling. And the use of language is one of the things I find most surprising about it. The more I work on it now the more I see that Miller uses such detailed characterizations, even in the way the characters talk. There are things that my character Willy Loman says that another writer might have said more eloquently, but Miller says it the way Willy Loman says it.

MM
Your wife, Nancy Palk, is playing Linda Loman. How have your discussions at home informed the rehearsal process?

JZ
Well, we will have been married for 31 years in a couple of weeks. We have three sons, who are not the ages of the characters in the play. Biff is 34 and Happy is in his early 30s. Our oldest boy is 25. Anyone who has children wants them to have a future. One of our sons is in his second year of university and we're talking about his future and what he wants to do. In this play, maybe Willy isn't the best father in the world, but he loved his sons and he tried his best. He wants his sons to succeed, maybe too much. But with Nancy and I, any play we're working on - whether one of us is in it and the other is not - that's our whole life. We met in theatre school; we were in the same class working on plays together. Our whole life we've been talking about theatre. That's just what we do. We have talked a great deal about the fact that the relationship between Willy and Linda is very loving, it's pretty far from being perfect, but their need for each other is a beautiful thing. You could so easily make a play where the husband and wife are fighting all the time, but Linda is the one constant that Willy has in his life - his wife supports him and loves him. I guess maybe that's the way the world was then; we've travelled a ways from that, since 1949. He says that Linda is his foundation and his support, which is a wonderful thing to acknowledge. He recognizes that. These aren't the most enlightened people, not the most highly educated, but the relationship they have and the need they have for each other, it feels pretty true to me.

MM
With Glengarry Glen Ross earlier this season, there has been talk about the salesman as an allegory for acting and but also as a tragic figure. Has that come up at all in rehearsals?

JZ
I was working on the play a lot while Glengarry Glen Ross was running, and when I saw it again this year I noted that what these playwrights are saying about America - about the American Dream, about capitalism - is that if you can step on somebody's back to be successful, do it, as doing that will get you ahead. That kind of society, which is the world of Glengarry Glen Ross, is also Willy Loman's world in Death of a Salesman. It's a terrible and tough world for these guys. So yes, that has definitely come up in rehearsal. You have to remember that the play was written in 1949, so the action of the play goes between flashbacks from the 20s, 30s, and 40s. Willy Loman was a salesman during the Great Depression, which couldn't have been easy. Arthur Miller was never really clear - I think purposefully so - about what it was Willy was selling. The life of a travelling salesman at this time was a really brutal way of making your living, really tough. And something else to remember is that whatever you might say about Willy Loman, his house is paid for. By the end of the play his house is paid for, and many people lost their homes in the depression. One way or another, this guy paid for his house.