you see the damaging effect that it has on them as they develop and grow. I am very eager to explore that. She is probably one of these people who would have been well-advised not to become a mother at all, but, of course, that probably wasn’t something that was an option for her. She did what was expected of her and had a pack of children. I don’t mean to imply for one second that she doesn’t love them or that she’s not devoted to them, but she is not really grown up herself is my assessment. I haven’t started rehearsing or exploring this with the director or the other actors yet; but right now, I think she is still a child herself.


TS: I keep wondering why Mrs. Conway seems to favor her son Robin over her eldest son, Alan?


EM: My instinct—again, this is without exploring it in rehearsal—is that she has a romantic fixation on Robin; she has substituted Robin in her mind as her husband; it is as irrational as that. Alan is, in her estimation, an uncolorful, unexciting guy. She just doesn’t get him; she doesn’t take the time to see what is there, to appreciate what the audience will about Alan. He is the one who has the wisest things to say. For me, he is the moral voice of the play, but Mrs. Conway cannot see that because she is caught up in Robin’s charm. I don’t think all mothers are maternal; they sometimes put their children in positions that aren’t appropriate for them psychologically.


TS: Priestley’s writing seems very modern to me in that way.


EM: Yes, it is modern in the sense that we now look at character from a psychoanalytic point of view, whereas the playwrights who wrote before Freud didn’t necessarily write about the subconscious.


TS: How do you see what happens in act two?


EM: I’ve never seen it in performance; but on reading it, I think it is very significant that Priestley ends with that quote that Mrs. Conway’s daughter Kay asks her brother Alan to tell her—knowing it will cheer her up. The quote basically says, “There is lightness and there is dark. There is both. That is the fabric of life.” My feeling is that Priestley is showing us that the Conway family we see in the first act is exactly the same family that we see in the second act, but it is their darker side. It is when everything has gone awry. That isn’t to say that in another decade they’ll have found their way again and things will be better. I don’t think that Priestley is saying that we’re all headed for hell and that life is going to be all bitterness and woe. The reason I say this is because Alan does


TIME AND THE CONWAYS UPSTAGE GUIDE 9


comfort Kay with those words. TS: How do you keep yourself inspired as an artist?


EM: I love these questions! I have invested a lot in my marriage and children, and that feeds me. It has given me the energy to stay really excited about the work that I do. I think if I lived for nothing but work, it would soon lose its allure. I’ve had years and years of being away from acting, and that makes me really hungry for it when I come back. I stay inspired by seeing other people’s work; that has always been really important to me. And it’s something that I share with my husband because he is someone who loves seeing things. Also, I love the process of acting. I find it hilarious and fun and, yes, sometimes I despair, but it’s always oxygen for me.


TS: A lot of public school students will be very well prepared for seeing this play, and they’ll be studying theatre as part of our program in the education department. If a young person were to ask you for advice about being an actor—what would you say to them?


EM: I would say to find the joy in every aspect of it. Find the joy when you do find work and also when you don’t have work, as strange as that sounds. Find the positive in not working; invest in life, invest in the opportunity to develop other parts of your brain, your body, and your soul—look at not working as an opportunity. If you are committed to doing that, you and your work will grow and grow and grow. That is not to say that there aren’t going to be frustrating times and times you feel you have fallen short or the business has disappointed you, but learn to forgive and forget. Find the joy.•


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