Actor Michael Joseph Pierce returns to Close-Up Culture to chat about his work on Questioning, a live theatrical production about the 2024 government interrogation of artist Julia Weist.
Questioning is based on a real government interrogation and uses the woriginal recorded dialogue. What was it like performing words that were actually spoken during such a strange and consequential encounter?
This was such a collaborative and unique experience with the producer, Julia Weist. She was so accommodating through the rehearsal process with all the actors in the show. What was very interesting is that because this was based on an actual interrogation, the entire staging was seated. And because of the fact that we were seated and lip-syncing to the dialogue, we held our rehearsals over Zoom.
The producer Julia is in New York, and the other two actors were in Los Angeles, and I reside in San Diego, so working on Zoom was so unique and added such a different element to the rehearsal process and the show.
Beyond that, it was fascinating to perform the real-life words that were originally spoken rather than a composed written script, because human beings don’t speak perfectly under stress. Re-enacting that strange environment made the high stakes of the interrogation feel real.
You played John Goldman, one of the officials conducting the interrogation. How did you approach portraying a real person when the audience is hearing his actual words?
Honestly, I don’t think I approached John any differently than I would any other play or performance. The only exception was that, in my mind, I knew this was somewhat of an art piece as opposed to a traditional play.
What I mean by that is this wasn’t a play written for the stage where there is a deliberate beginning, middle, and end with a standard theatrical arc. Instead, all the actors were re-enacting the actual, unedited interrogation. Because the audience was hearing John Goldman’s actual voice, my job wasn’t to interpret a character that had been written by an author, but to portray the nuances and the rhythm of how this person actually spoke in that room, his real-life pacing, sighs, and speech patterns.
The play sits somewhere between theatre, performance art and documentary. Did that change the way you thought about acting, particularly when you were lip-syncing to the original audio rather than delivering the dialogue yourself?
Oh my gosh, I have talked about this so much, it changed the game. I had to let go of the freedom of my own timing. In traditional theater, you can interject pauses, hold a beat, and emphasize a word when it feels natural to you.
With this show, I couldn’t do any of that. I had to learn all the in-between breaths, the hesitations, and the subtle nuances of his speech pattern. Here’s the deal: I had to completely surrender my own instincts and sync myself to the exact rhythm of how John Goldman spoke in real time.
What fascinated you most about the central question of the piece: where does artistic enquiry end and something like investigative work begin?
What fascinated me most is that Julia Weist actually had to be an investigator just to protect her art – which, throughout the piece, the questions constantly relate to her being an investigator as well as an artist. She walked into that room and hit record on her phone because deep down, I think she had a gut feeling they were never going to hand over their official recording. And she was 100% right.
Close to the end of the show, in the interrogation she asks how she can obtain a copy, the investigators tell her the process, and then when she actually requests it, the state claims they ‘lost it’ or can’t find it. That is where the line totally disappears. She couldn’t just be an artist in that room; Julia was also an investigator. She had to protect herself and capture the truth because she knew the state wasn’t going to.
You’ve described Questioning as feeling more like a piece of art than a conventional play. What do you think made it so different from the theatre projects you’ve worked on before?
I think this was art and theater, the best of both worlds. Being in such an intimate space made the audience feel like a fly on the wall because it felt as if they were right there, part of the interrogation. Every night after the show, the audience seemed amazed at the precision of the lip-syncing; they truly felt like it was our voice. This could never be done in a large theater, because you would lose too much.
You’ve recently moved between screen work, traditional theatre and this much more experimental project, while also self-publishing your memoir. Has this period changed how you think about your identity as an actor and what kinds of stories you want to be part of?
I generally always say this, but I love to play characters that sit right in the gray area, and that was Goldman. He isn’t a bad guy or a good guy; he’s just a real person doing his job.
Moving between screen work, traditional theater, this experimental show, and writing my memoir hasn’t changed how I look at acting, it just reminds me of why I love it. I get to tell stories. At the end of the day, I don’t want a clean perfect character. I like people who are complicated and live right in that gray space.
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