Meet Marina Michelson (Emma Joseph) 
Tell us something about your family that has shaped who you are as a person.
My parents moved us to Los Angeles from Israel when I was 3 years old. We left a massive extended family behind in Israel to start a new life in the States, where my parents hoped to find greater opportunities for themselves and provide a better life for my brothers and I. This was the critical moment in our family’s trajectory. I remember being 19 years old and a theater student at NYU and having to go back to Israel to get out of my mandatory army service, since I hadn’t lived there in many years, and sitting in the hallway on a military base and thinking what a different life I would have had if we hadn’t emigrated. Just last year we celebrated 25 years in the US, and my brothers and I are very grateful for the life my parents have provided us and the risks they took in doing so. I am also eternally grateful that they ensured I maintained a connection with Israel and my family there by sending me back every year for 3 months at a time for summer camp and family time.
What social issue(s) are you passionate about?
I’m very interested in the Edward Snowden case right now. I recently watched Laura Poitras’ documentary Citizenfour and found myself riveted by him. He raises great questions about how our democracy is affected by government secrets and the growing gaps between the ruling classes and the citizenry. Should Snowden along with recent fellow whistle-blowers like Chelsea Manning be charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 as if they were covertly passing American information to enemies or foreign governments, as opposed to informing fellow citizens about our own government’s actions and intrusions into our privacy?
What was on your mind on the verge of the new millennium in 1999?
Y2K and whether or not the world was going to end! I was with my cousin Natalie in Israel and our parents had gone out to a party, we were 12 or 13 and we were home alone, ringing in the New Year by dancing in circles on the marble floors in front of the TV and watching American music videos. And I vividly remember watching the clock and wondering if time was going to stop or if disaster would strike, and if so–whether it would happen first in Israel, then in the States? Like how was the Y2K disaster going to negotiate our world’s time changes?
Tell us about one of your family heroes.
This is a tough question because I’d like to think that many members of my family are heroic for the way in which they raised us–my brothers, my cousins, and myself–and gave us opportunities they never had, and worked tirelessly and took huge risks to give us a better life. My parents who moved halfway around the world to start a new life with our nuclear family are heroic to me. But in the way that Emma relates to Grandpa Joe, I would say that I was in awe of my Grandma Leah who was our family matriarch. My parents would send me to Israel every summer for months at a time, and I stayed with my grandmother and spent my days with her. She was instrumental in bringing my father’s side of the family over from the Soviet Union to Israel, and helped countless friends and acquaintances make the move from the USSR and get settled in their new lives in Israel. She was a life-force – she never stopped moving. She was always cooking, setting the table, helping someone find a job, find a husband or wife, find a place to live, on the phone scheming how to help a friend or a family. She was also very funny and fun to be around.
What’s the biggest challenge for you in this production?
My biggest challenge in this production is in both crafting and preparing to experience an emotional and intellectual journey for Emma that will unfold while being onstage for almost the entirety of the play.
What do you connect to in this story?
Family, man. I come from a big, spread out, loving, ferocious, intellectual Jewish family that talks and sounds and interjects like the Josephs do in the play. I understand their cadences and their energy and their passion because they mimic my own. Plus, I love stories about families.
How do you prepare to work on a project like this?
Read the play, over and over again. Then research. I like to fuel myself with anything and everything I know about the character and their circumstances. I read every article and interview I can get my hands on. In this process, we’ve had documentaries to watch about the political circumstances of both eras that the play deals with – McCarthyism and the Free Mumia movement. I surround myself with details and facts that will fill out my experience and rendering of the character. And I also try to get a lot of sleep!
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