Carole Jane Healey

Carole Healey, 63, was born on November 12, 1959 at Good Samaritan Hospital in West Palm Beach, Florida and died on January 9, 2023 in Wakefield, Rhode Island after a long and courageous battle with cancer. Daughter of the late Honorable Edward J. Healey whose family is originally from Rhode Island, and Maureen O’Shaughnessy Healey, she attended Twin Lakes High School where her many extra-curricular pursuits included theatre and speech. In her senior year, Carole won the Florida State Championship in Dramatic Interpretation. She attended Florida State University, majoring in theatre. She later attended the Burt Reynolds Institute for Theatre Training earning her Actor’s Equity Association membership, the professional actors’ union. In 1992, she graduated with a Masters in Fine Arts in Theatre from the Professional Theatre Training Program (PTTP) at the University of Delaware.

During her long and varied career, she played major roles at many of our country’s best professional theatres including The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Utah Shakespeare Festival, The Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Southwest Shakespeare, Great Lakes Theatre and many others. Carole produced an original translation of “The Misanthrope,” and the New York premiere of “The Libertine” with The Hartshorn Theatre, which she founded. In addition to her acting career, Carole shared her talents by teaching and directing for the Theatre Department at Montclair State University and at Fairleigh Dickinson in New Jersey. Simultaneously, she created her own interior design business with her partner Andrei, and together they transformed many clients’ apartments into beautiful, comfortable living spaces.

Carole is survived by her beloved partner of thirty-three years, Andrei Hartt, her brother Mark Healey, her sister Elizabeth Healey (Luciano Conde), her nephew James Conde (Melissa), her nieces Sarah and Ana Conde, her great niece and nephew Elena and Samuel Conde, her loving extended family and her Cairn Terrier, Henry.

Carole will be greatly missed by her family, friends and members of the American professional theatre community: actors, directors, playwrights, designers and audiences. Wherever she went as an actor or director, Carole’s apartment, her porch, and/or the gardens and orchards of her unsuspecting neighbors became sites for her creation of events that forged friendships between artists that lasted well beyond the end date of their contracts. Her appetite for life--for the stimulation of shared personal narratives, for a perfectly prepared flan, for a shatteringly good bottle of wine, for a hike in Zion National Park that had to finish at 4:00 PM so that a three-course dinner could be prepared, for a penetrating analysis of why a production succeeded or failed--burned bright, and the glow from that fire enkindled a world of lasting friendships and memory.

A memorial celebration of her life will be held on March 31, 2023 at 11:00 AM at St. Ann Cemetery in Cranston. Good night, sweet princess, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.