School of Performing Arts, Emera Astronomy Center collaborate in a production of ‘Constellations’
The University of Maine’s Jordan Planetarium will be the setting for “Constellations,” a play by British playwright Nick Payne that opens Nov. 15 as part of the School of Performing Arts season.
Associate Professor of Theater Marcia Joy Douglas will direct the production that features a cast of two. UMaine’s Innovative Media Research and Commercialization Center is providing projection design and technology by Gene A. Felice II. The performances in the planetarium at the Emera Astronomy Center are at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 15 and Nov. 17–18; 10 a.m. on Nov. 16 (talkback follows); 2 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Nov. 19 and 4 p.m. Nov. 20.
Tickets are $6 for adults; $5 for UMaine students, senior citizens and U.S. military veterans; and $4 for children under the age of 12.
Tickets are available online, by calling 207.581.1341, or at the Emera Astronomy Center ticket box office.
In “Constellations,” Roland, a beekeeper played by UMaine mass communication and theatre senior John Logan, is in a romantic relationship with Marianne, a university academic portrayed by Amelia Courtney, a theatre and political science major who graduates in December.
“It’s a quantum physics love story,” says Douglas. The play moves back and forth in time, focusing on a handful of scenes between the characters. But audiences see multiple versions of those scenes, each of which sends the relationship at the heart of “Constellations” on a different path.
As Marianne says to Roland in the play, “every choice, every decision you’ve ever and never made exists in an unimaginably vast ensemble of parallel universes.”