DISRUPTED TIME AS A THEATRICAL DEVICE


Time and the Conways sits among J.B. Priestley’s “Time Plays.” Written in the 1930s and ‘40s, Priestley explored different concepts of time across a group of plays (which also include Dangerous Corner and An Inspector Calls) in order to show how time changes people and how we react to time’s effects.


All playwrights make choices about how to structure time. Many plays—such as Oedipus and more recently Stephen Karam’s The Humans—take place in “real time”: a single setting over one uninterrupted time period. Most of Shakespeare’s plays employ an “extended time” structure: the action extends over months or years, with long time gaps implied between scenes.


In the 20th century, Priestley and other playwrights became interested in the theatrical potential of “disrupted time.” Playwright David Edgar explains the device, “in which incidents from the story are put in a different order from their


DISRUPTED TIME IN OTHER PLAYS


DEATH OF A SALESMAN by Arthur Miller (1949). As Willy Loman confronts failure, scenes of his subjective, sometimes altered memories flow in and out of the present tense.


“What is original about Salesman is that Loman’s memory is unreliable, and that we are invited to witness how these unreliable memories provoke his present actions.” (David Edgar, How Plays Work)


BETRAYAL by Harold Pinter (1978 -- Roundabout revival 2000)


A triangular relationship between husband, wife, and her lover unfolds in reverse time, so the audience first meets the characters in the aftermath, then watches the affair from end to beginning.


“Betrayal is a play that happens twice, once in front of your eyes, once in your head, when you revisit certain scenes to judge their proper weight.” (Julian Meyrick, The Conversation)


TOP GIRLS by Caryl Churchill (1982) The play follows one woman’s drive to succeed in business at almost any cost, but the last scene jumps backwards in time and reveals her greatest sacrifice: giving up her own child.


“This disruption of chronology is intentionally unsettling in that it refuses to allow the spectator to fantasize a sentimental ending for (her child) and people like her.” (Lisa Merrill, Modern Dramatists: A Casebook of Major British, Irish and American Playwrights)


literal chronology (including plays which flash backwards or forwards, or go into reverie).” Their plots could unfold in chronological order, but by re-ordering time, playwrights alter the significance of the events. Edgar asserts that disrupted time “disempowers the characters” because the audience is given “privileged information” that the characters do not have.


By using a disrupted time rather than a chronological structure in Time and the Conways, Priestley allows the audience’s understanding of events to surpass that of the Conways. But he also leaves open to interpretation whether the 1937 scene is a flash forward or Kay’s dream. In his essay “J.B. Priestley in The Theatre of Time,” Professor Jesse Matz suggests that we may interpret the play as an ironic comment about hope and disappointment over time, or as a warning to consider how the decisions we make today may shape our futures.•


TIME AND THE CONWAYS UPSTAGE GUIDE


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