CONSTELLATIONS to Open Central Square Theater's 2017-18 Season

Underground Railway Theater will present Nick Payne's Constellations from September 7 - October 8, 2017. Constellations is directed by Scott Edmiston. The press performance is Monday, September 11 at 7:30PM. Constellations is a Catalyst Collaborative@MIT Production.

A mesmerizing romantic journey begins simply. Marianne and Roland meet at a party. They go for a drink. They fall madly in love and start dating. Or do they? There are infinite possibilities, and a single word may alter their lives at any moment. Scott Edmiston, five-time Elliot Norton Award-winner for Outstanding Director, leads MariAnna Bassham and Nael Nacer in Nick Payne's play about love, possibility, bees, and... quantum physics. Discover the reason The New York Times asked: "Who knew that higher physics could be so sexy?"

Constellations plays at Central Square Theater, 450 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, September 7 - October 8, 2017. Tickets may be purchased by calling 617.576.9278 x1, at the Central Square Theater box office, or online at CentralSquareTheater.org.

Constellations explores the relationship between Marianne and Roland through the cosmological lens of multiverses, imagining a multiplicity of possible paths for their romance. Imagine you come upon a fork in the road with an infinite number of roads all leading to different destinations (or an infinite number of roads that lead to the same ultimate destination).

In an article written by playwright Nick Payne for The Telegraph, he says that Constellations is an "attempt to dramatize" the dilemma of "the urge to remember versus the need to forget. But crucially it is also a play in which the science at the heart of quantum mechanics is explored through the many and varied possible lives of a single couple: cosmologist Marianne and artisan beekeeper Roland."

Constellations premiered at The Royal Court Theatre in January 2012, with Rafe Spall and Sally Hawkins in the lead roles and direction by Michael Longhurst. The play receivEd Strong reviews from critics and subsequently transferred to the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End in November 2012. In November 2012 Constellations was named the winner of the best play category at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards, making the 29-year-old Payne the youngest winner of the award.

Constellations premiered on Broadway in a Manhattan Theatre Club production at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on January 13, 2015 and closed on March 15, 2015. The cast starred Jake Gyllenhaal (in his Broadway debut) and Ruth Wilson. Ruth Wilson received a nomination for the 2015 Tony Award, Best Performance By a Leading Actress in a Play. The play received three Drama League Award nominations: Best Play, Best Actor, Gyllenhaal, and Best Actress, Wilson.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Nick Payne (Playwright) who won the prestigious George Devine Award in 2009 with his play If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet. Produced at the Bush Theatre in October 2009 and directed by Josie Rourke and starring Rafe Spall. In 2012 it went to the Roundabout Theatre, New York, starring Academy Award nominee Jake Gyllenhaal and directed by Michael Longhurst. Mr. Payne studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama and the University of York, making his debut at The Royal Court Theatre in September 2010 with his comedy Wanderlust. ??In January 2012, Mr. Payne's play Constellations opened at the Royal Court Upstairs starring Rafe Spall and Sally Hawkins and directed by Michael Longhurst. Constellations transferred to the West End in November 2012 where it received universally glowing reviews. It also won the Evening Standard Best Play Award and was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best New Play. In 2015 Constellations transferred to Broadway. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Wilson and directed by Michael Longhurst it won outstanding reviews. Mr. Payne also writes for film and TV. He has adapted Julian Barnes's The Sense Of An Ending for BBC Films, to be released in 2017 with Jim Broadbent starring and Ritesh Batra directing. In development are an adaptation of David Nicholls' Us as a three-part TV drama for the BBC and an original piece, Wanderlust, for Drama Republic and the BBC.

Scott Edmiston (Director) returns to Central Square Theater where he directed Tony Kushner's But the Giraffe and Brundibar for Underground Railway Theater. Mr. Edmiston has directed more than 60 Boston-area productions at American Repertory Theater, Lyric Stage Company, SpeakEasy Stage Company, New Repertory Theatre, and Gloucester Stage, among others. For The Nora Theatre Company, he directed Betrayal (2003 Elliot Norton Award Outstanding Production) and Molly Sweeney (1998 Elliot Norton Award Outstanding Director). His 2017 production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf received the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production; and his 2015 production of My Fair Lady was named among the best of the year by the Wall Street Journal and earned him the Elliot Norton Award, the IRNE Award and the Arts Impulse Award. Other highlights: Long Day's Journey into Night, The History Boys, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Time Stands Still, Casa Valentina, The Light in the Piazza, Five by Tenn, Other Desert Cities, Next Fall, In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play), A Marvelous Party, Reckless, The Women, Miss Witherspoon, A Marvelous Party, Nixon in China, and Dinner with Friends. Scott is the recipient of four Elliot Norton Awards, three IRNE Awards, the StageSource Award, and the Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence in Theatre. He is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Theatre Northeastern University. Among his publications, he is the author of "Acting Misbegotten: The Creative Journey to Eugene O'Neill" in the anthology Critical Insights: Eugene O'Neill (Salem Press, 2012). He received the 2014 Penn State Alumni Award and the 2017 Excellence in Faculty Research and Creative Activity Award from Northeastern. Later this season, he will direct Shakespeare in Love for SpeakEasy Stage Company and Anna Christie for Lyric Stage Company of Boston.

MariAnna Bassham (Marianne) is delighted to return to Central Square Theater, where she appeared with The Nora Theatre Company in Antigone, Not Enough Air and CST in Matt & Ben. Around town: I Was Most Alive with You, Becoming Cuba, Our Town, The Luck of the Irish (Huntington Theatre Company); Blackbird (Elliot Norton Award), Reckless (IRNE Award), In The Next Room (or the vibrator play) and Hand to God (SpeakEasy Stage Company); Hedda Gabler, A Streetcar Named Desire, Far Away, King Elizabeth, and The Real Thing (The Gamm Theatre); and many other productions at The Lyric Stage Company of Boston, New Repertory Theatre, Stoneham Theatre, Boston Playwrights' Theater, and Actors' Shakespeare Project, where she is a resident acting company member. Film/TV: Olive Kitteridge, The Makeover, Moonrise Kingdom, and the upcoming Hulu series Castle Rock.

Nael Nacer (Roland) returns to Central Square Theater after having previously appeared in Underground Railway Theater's Sila and Distracted. Other area credits include: A Doll's House; Bedroom Farce; Come Back, Little Sheba; Awake and Sing!; Our Town (IRNE Award for Best Supporting Actor); and The Seagull (Huntington Theatre Company), 45 Plays for 45 Presidents; It's a Wonderful Life: a Live Radio Play (Merrimack Repertory Theatre), Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play; Intimate Apparel (Elliot Norton Award, Best Actor); The Temperamentals; and Animal Crackers (Lyric Stage Company of Boston), A Number; Pattern of Life; Lungs; The Kite Runner (New Repertory Theatre), Bank Job; The Flick (Gloucester Stage Company, IRNE Award, Best Actor), A Future Perfect; Tribes (SpeakEasy Stage Company), Rhinoceros; Windowmen; The Farm; Gary (Boston Playwrights' Theatre), Love Person; 1001; The Aliens; The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (Company One), and Shear Madness (Charles Playhouse).

The artistic and design team includes Susan Zeeman Rogers (Scenic Design), Charles Schoonmaker (Costume Design), Jeff Adelberg (Lighting Design) , Dewey Dellay (Sound Design & Original Composition), Amelia Broome (Dialect Design), & Sabrina Dennison (Director of Artistic Sign Language/American Sign Language Consultant). Nora Mally is the Production Stage Manager with Brian M. Robillard taking over from October 4-8. Aisha Stewart is the Assistant Stage Manager.

Central Square Theater (CST) opened in 2008 through a groundbreaking partnership between The Nora Theatre Company (The Nora) and Underground Railway Theater (URT). This collaboration has been called a model for the arts community (The Boston Foundation, Culture is our Commonwealth, and The National Collaboration Prize), as it has paired two like-minded performing arts organizations in a strategic alliance with the City of Cambridge and MIT, resulting in the development of a state-of-the-art performing arts center in the heart of Central Square. CST has a mission to support its two theaters-in-residence while maintaining a shared vision of artists and audiences creating theater vital to their communities. The Nora and URT have a combined track record of over 50 years producing award-winning theater. Located in Central Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and steeped in its multiracial, intergenerational, ethnically and economically diverse neighborhoods, the CST theater experience exudes a democratic energy where classes, races and age groups come together to be inspired, entertained and energized.

Please note: Central Square Theater is accessible to persons with special needs and to those requiring wheelchair seating. For further information, call 617.576.9278 or visit CentralSquareTheater.org.

To post a comment, you must register and login.