Explore the ‘Constellations’
‘Can you have more than one fated ending,’ asks this new play to be mounted at The Junction
Stand in the middle of two mirrors placed opposite each other and you will feel the power of quantum — each image a little removed from the previous, each shadow a tad skewed from the next; each look a possibility of what could be.
That’s the constantly-in-flux image that Nick Payne’s Constellations investigates. A view of multiverses where anything that can happen does. The play that is being performed this weekend at The Junction is essentially a love story within a scientific stretch of space and time.
Beekeeper Roland (Ahmad Syed) meets Marianne (Maha Husain), the physicist. And so their tale begins. Do they date, do they not? Do they meet again, do they go their separate ways? Do they fall in love, or hate, or indifference? What happens next? In Payne’s world, reality is a brittle reflection of shards of feasibility pasted together. Scenes repeat often with varied outcomes; a route not taken, a promise not kept.
Roli Agarwal, who directs the venture this time around, says the appeal of the play is the nibble at choices it offers. “The fact that every decision leads us to a different path is refreshing; having the power to make that decision of embarking on a new direction is empowering and that at the smallest level really appeals to us,” she explains.
“This play is set to make you wonder how the smallest decision you make every moment can completely alter the course of your life,” she says.
Syed, whose character the beekeeper was the fulcrum of Payne’s storytelling, concurs.
“I find it very exciting to think about how my life would’ve been different if I had done certain things differently and I’d love to believe there’s a version of me who made those decisions. This feeling I’d say is the best thing that this project has given me,” he says.
But ‘what if’ scenarios, while making for great daydreams can also mean a slippery slide into regret — at least for most. For Syed, however, options — and with them the freedom to pick — are constants. After all, he says, “even in this one life we have, there are ways, finite though they maybe, but ways we can still change our decisions”.
“This play is set to make you wonder how the smallest decision you make every moment can completely alter the course of your life”
ROLI AGARWAL | Director
Agarwal hopes the audience leaves the hall with a few questions tugging at their consciousness.
“I aim to make the audience feel what the actors are feeling when they fall in love or when they miss the chance of falling in love because of their choices.
At the end of the play I hope that the next few decisions are always [taken] with the thought ‘what if’,” she says.
For Husain, the fun part was the storyline and how it would be visualised. “I was very curious to know how this would be played out on stage. That thought was very exciting. And that’s pretty much what I like best about it — the layered yet simple yet touching and relatable plot.”
Oscar-winner Jake Gyllenhaal in 2014 played the intense lead alongside Ruth Wilson in his Broadway debut — so the comparative bar is high. But these homegrown talents feel up to the task. And anyway, whichever way the play goes, somehow somewhere it’s still a grand show.