What would happen if we lived parallel lives — how would the choices we make play out in our alternate universes?
Kane County Repertory opens its 2024-25 season with the two-person play “Constellations” by Nick Payne at 7:30 p.m. April 25-27 and May 2-4 and 2 p.m. April 28 and May 5 at the Hunt House Creative Arts Center in St. Charles. “Constellations” is directed by Kane County Repertory’s new artistic director Bethany Mangum-Oles of DeKalb, who took up the post in September 2023.
“I chose this one,” she said of the play. “It’s the greatest love story ever told. On paper, it really does seem like that when you give it a read-through. When you start working on it, it’s like, ‘Wow, it’s so much more.’ The writing is so interesting.”
It’s a British play that premiered in 2012 and enjoyed a presence on Broadway in 2015 with Jake Gyllenhaal in the male lead role.
“The play is constructed in fragments of two peoples’ lives that are seemingly ordinary,” she said. “We follow their journey in fragments of time through parallel universes. It kind of just stops you in your tracks and sucks you in and makes you extremely reflective of the difference between free will and destiny and it kind of makes you think about your own life in such a reflective way. It’s so much greater than a love story, although it is that as well.”
The structure of the play is very interesting and unusual, she said. Essentially, the playwright Payne posits a multiverse where another version of us exists simultaneously, she said.
“It chronicles two people throughout a lifetime together from their first meeting all the way through a fairly devastating circumstance in their lives and everything in between,” she said. “All of the possibilities that have led them to this final moment together. It examines the notion of free will versus fate or free will versus destiny. It’s one of the most transformative pieces of theater that I’ve ever witnessed.”
The play follows beekeeper Roland, played by Kane Rep managing director Avery Bowne and physicist Marianne, played by Kane Rep founding member Ellen Campbell, through the course of their romantic relationship.
“It’s beautiful and it’s simple,” Mangum-Oles said. “There are all of these major things that happen in our lives and he somehow constructed it through this little play that’s an hour and 10 minutes on this galactic scale. There’s nothing else like it. It’s really special.”
She thinks audiences will love the play and thinks it will strike a chord — after they get used to the style and structure of the play.
“We see the same scene repeated with slightly different words … multiple times so the audience gets a feel for which one of those universes are we living in now and which one of these universes led them to this final moment all throughout time,” she said. “I think they will be absolutely dazzled by this piece.”
Annie Alleman is a freelance reporter for the Courier-News.
‘Constellations’
When: 7:30 p.m. April 25-27 and May 2-4 and 2 p.m. April 28 and May 5
Where: Hunt House Creative Arts Center, 113 E. Main St., St. Charles
Tickets: $20-$35
Information: 678-296-8975; kanerepertorytheatre.com
