Star TV dubs actress Sara Topham the IT Girl. For Topham right now, IT'S all about playing Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie at the Stratford Festival.

Did Glass Menagerie director Miles Potter let you go off and find Laura Wingfield for yourself first?

I came into the first day of rehearsals,after clear direction from Miles in the auditions and my own research, knowing that we were going to go in a direction that I now know is not really very traditional.

I do not know how I have made it to this point in my career, but I have never seen The Glass Menagerie on stage or on film.

I don't know how that's happened. So I didn't realize when we were working how different this Laura was than what people are used to seeing.

All I was working from was the text, and to me she seemed there in the words. It seemed very clear to me. We let Laura lead and she kind of went down her road and we just followed.

Miles was very encouraging about that in finding Laura's kind of weirdness and her strength.

A lot of people have said to me 'Oh, it's a play about this really kind of shy, weak, girl and this overbearing mother', but I don't see much evidence in the text that Laura is in fact weak.

You do not have a preconceived notion of Laura Wingfield in your head and that served you well in the performance.

I think Laura is incredibly willful. In a way, I think she actually runs that family.

She has the same 'Spartan endurance' that Amanda Wingfield has, putting herself through the same 'I am going to Rubicam's Business Collage' lie everyday.

That's right. Laura's primary objective in the entire play (we do this for our character) is 'everything must be the same tomorrow as it is today, and everything today must be the same as it was yesterday'.

There's no change ever. Laura is very willful in bringing that into being.

In this interpretation, I really noticed a delicate deceit in Laura.

'Deception, deception, deception'.

The thing about Laura is she doesn't do that out of spite, Amanda says later, 'You did all that for deception, why, why, why?'

For Laura, it isn't about the lying or the deception, it's about maintaining the status quo. She doesn't see it as deception because she didn't actually lie, she left the house everyday at 7:30 a.m. and came home after five.

And her mother said how was her day and she said 'Oh, it was good,' so she's very,very interesting. Very interesting.

I noticed the four of you (Seana McKenna as Amanda, Steven Sutcliffe as Tom, and Matthew MacFadzean as Jim O'Connor - The Gentleman Caller) have managed find of nice balance of comedy coupled with tragedy in the play aside from Amanda's infernal dinner mantra - 'cheeewww cheeeew' to Tom in the opening scene.

Miles talked to Seana McKenna about enjoying those lines so that the audience could enjoy it as well. But certainly with a lot of stuff involving Seana and the Gentleman Caller scene - we were never looking for a laugh, we were looking for honesty.

A lot of people have said to us, oh my gosh, I was not looking forward to seeing this because Glass Menagerie is three hours of whining, and depression. But in fact it isn't really. I think that's what actually makes the tragedy part of it worse is when you really love each other and you are in fact the worst thing for each other. That's sad.

Seana made a great comment the other day. If home life was so awful and Tom hated everybody so much, why would it be so hard for him to leave?

Thinking about Laura Wingfield and her analogy of the glass unicorn obviously, like Tom (based on Tennessee Willams himself) she too, has the same inherent writing talent.

We talked about about that. This is a play so much about imagination and Tom has imagination, which takes him outward,and Laura has imagination which takes her inward, and Amanda's imagination takes her into the past.

Really, the person in the play who lacks imagination is the Gentleman Caller. We all felt very strongly about that moment - he doesn't kiss Laura because he thinks it will be good for her or because he's a jerk.

He kisses Laura because in that moment I think he loves her and what he lacks is the courage or the imagination to think of his life any other way than it's currently going with (fiancee) 'sweaty Betty.'

Laura's self preservation is her imagination.