" ...everyone has a Mr. Hyde, another version of the self. A direction not taken, perhaps. A road we didn't know existed, or had no name for, We each of us carry our choices about, don't we...? And every choice is a rejection, when you think.
But there is, too, a kind of shadowland where the Other always lives. Or at least, never dies. Just goes on. Hard to stumble into happiness if you don't leave your shadowland behind....Theatre people don't, as a rule. Goes with the job. Everything is so precarious, almost all of the time. Makes it hard to settle. One gets fidgety. And when you're someone else, every night, and twice on a Saturday, you can forget what it's like being you.
I always felt, you know, two hands are needed here. One to wave farewell, the other to close the heart....[E]asier said than done. I don't know that anyone succeeds.
Questionings. Dawn-thoughts. Mind ticking like a watch. Four in the morning but you're staring out a window. What if I had married that other person? Or remained unmarried? What if I had accepted that job, or emigrated or stayed, or lived my life in a different way, a way that was truer to me, perhaps, but I was afraid of what people might think or say?
You see, part of you DID do those things. To imagine is to do.
And there are moments when you feel a murderous envy of that part. The self that escaped. The self that chose freedom.
So, out comes the rage. But already too late.
It's the only thing one's learned. We're in shadowland.
[Ellen Terry] "
― Joseph O'Connor , Shadowplay