About the Play:

Constellations is a full-length drama by Nick Payne. This spellbinding, romantic journey begins with a simple encounter between a man and a woman, but the story branches off from there. An intimate and imaginative character play about life's infinite possibilities, Constellations plays with choice and chance, and charts the limitless possibilities of a single relationship.

Constellations is a two-person play about free will and friendship; it's about quantum multiverse theory, the infinite possibilities of love, and honey. Theoretical physicist meets beekeeper, but what happens next challenges the boundaries of the world we think we know. On paper, the romance between Marianne and Roland seems improbable, if not impossible: she's a quietly methodical theoretical physicist; he's a beekeeper. If there were only one universe, they might not be together. But in a quantum multiverse, many different versions of their relationship can unfold. It's like rolling the dice six thousand times. Constellations raises questions about the difference between choice and destiny and ultimately tests the boundless connection between two people.

Constellations premiered in 2012 at the Theatre Upstairs at the Royal Court Theatre, London. It transferred to the Duke Of York's Theatre in the West End, and Nick Payne was awarded the Evening Standard award for Best New Play 2012 (of which he was the youngest ever recipient) and was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play. In 2015 the play opened on Broadway at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre in New York. Since then the play had regional premieres at professional theatres across the US and has been mounted by colleges and community theatres.

Cast: 1 female, 1 male

What people say:

"Who knew that higher physics could be so sexy, so accessible—and so emotionally devastating? Constellations, Nick Payne's gorgeous two-character drama…may be the most sophisticated date play Broadway has seen. [Payne is] a wise and compassionate young playwright … And though Constellations is a supremely articulate play, it knows that words inevitably fail, that they are never enough to bind two people together forever. Time, it turns out, is a more effective breaker of hearts than human beings, with all their conflicted intentions, can ever be. This story of parallel universes is universal in every sense of the word." — The New York Times

"Nick Payne's smart, slushy and pretty superb Constellations [is] about the progress of any ordinary life, which begins with seemingly endless possibilities and then dwindles until death forecloses further choice…I wasn't alone in sniffling into my Playbill." — The Guardian (UK)

"Short and sweet and strangely haunting…The devilishly clever scribe is not playing games with either his characters or his audience, because with each iteration Roland and Marianne grow closer to one another—and become more important to us. And by the end of the play (has it really been only an hour?), we're fully invested in their lives. All of them." — Variety

"…a singular astonishment, at once eloquent and mysterious but which nonetheless articulates within its own idiosyncratic idiom something that touches an audience as real…a wholly satisfying and complete emotional journey…The well-judged dialogue, at once terse and trenchant, finds its own characteristic poetry." — The New Yorker

About the Playwright:

Nick Payne is a British playwright. After graduating from the University of York in 2006, he obtained an MA from London's Central School of Speech and Drama. As a young playwright he took jobs ancillary to the theatre to make ends meet, such as being an usher at the Old Vic, and working at the National Theatre bookshop, which he credits with giving him the time and resources to study numerous plays. He continued to hone his craft as a participant in the Royal Court Young Writers Program. Constellations, which had been commissioned by the Royal Court Theatre, is his most celebrated work to date.