A play of parallel universes
On the 24th - 26th of November, my school did a play called ‘Constellations’. The play is about parallel universes and different outcomes in life. It is a challenging, repetitive production based around the two person play written by Nick Payne. My school had a cast of 21 whom all played one of the two characters either Roland or Marianne.
We rehearsed for hours almost every day. It was a very stressful time running up to the production and the week of the performances was very busy. The costumes and lighting looked great and all actors involved performed amazingly. Rehearsals started on 14th of September giving us over 2 months to rehearse. The end result turned out great with many positive comments from the audiences on all three nights.
I interviewed a couple of people who were involved in the play and asked their views on it. First I interviewed Melody, one of the Mariannes in the production and, then a lighting, set an prop designer called Mrs Starmer.
Interviewer: How did it feel being in the play? Was it a fun experience?
Melody: Yeah it was a really fun experience it was nice to connect with friends and it was enjoyable. I’ve done plays before but I’ve never done one quite like constellations with all of the parallel universes as it meant that we weren’t all needed at once and you could come in and do your part, go away, vanish and it was so clever how it was all put together by Mr Crohill.
I: Did you know anything about string theory prior to this play?
M: I’m afraid I didn’t because I’m not that science-y of a person myself but it was interesting learning about string theory in the play and seeing how different universes work.
I: Why is it good to be in a production and performing to a large audience?
I think if you’re really into drama, it’s good to improve your confidence even more and if you’re not, it’s an opportunity to try something new and it’s very exciting, you get your adrenaline going, and yeah it’s fun being part of it.
Next I interviewed the light, prop and set designer at my school who designed all other behind the scene work excluding costumes.
Interviewer: Why did lighting have such a big role in the play?
Mrs Starmer: So, for Constellations, because we decided to perform it in the round, and there was no set around, lighting was very key to be able to set the atmosphere and the tone of the performance. So we made a decision that during the actual scenes, if they were a normal scene then they’d have normal bright lighting, and then the scenes that were the flash forwards, to the moments where they were talking about the more serious issues, we would change the mood of those, by changing the lighting into the blue colours. The lighting also helps to show the change between the scenes and the scene changes, so the flashing lights in the ceiling took the audiences attention away from the actors moving around and changing position on stage.
I: Was it a challenging play to coordinate sound cues and lighting?
MS: Not as complicated as some shows are, because of the nature of this show, where you had a scene starts, it continues, a scene ends, lighting and sound could actually be called together so ‘lighting and sound go’, so everything was in sequence, in other shows where there are lots of sound effects, and lots of other lighting queues happening within scenes that’s where you might have a more complicated queuing sequence.
I: How do you think that set helped create the atmosphere?
MS: So the set for Constellations was limited due to the nature of staging it in the round, which is having the stage in the middle and having the audience all the way around the outside, when you’re doing something like that, you can’t put a big piece of set on the middle of the stage because if your actors are on one side of it, half your audience aren’t going to see the actors, so we chose to keep a very clear stage which meant that the scene elements that we did want we had to out above the actors. We wanted to highlight the science nature of this play looking at the string theory and atoms and parallel universes, so the set design was done to reflect that theme of the show. The set created the atmosphere in that when you think of space and you think of things like that, space is above you, so the set was above you. We kept the atmosphere we wanted to create in some of the scenes was quite intense, so changing the intensity of the lighting on the set and using the white balloons, the white lanterns helped reflect the light and pick up the colours of the lighting we were using a lot more.
Hearing about actors and designers experiences is very interesting as it gives us an understanding of the play as a whole and it acts as a behind the scenes of their amazing performance. I also asked a member of the audience to described the play in 3 words she said that it was outstanding, dramatic and an experience.
