About

Fri 9 November 2012 - Sat 5 January 2013

Royal Court Theatre Productions and Ambassador Theatre Group announce the third play in the Royal Court West End season at the Duke of York's Theatre.

Constellations

By Nick Payne
Directed by Michael Longhurst

'Easily the best West End show of the year' - Time Out

'Michael Longhurst’s production is playful and pitch-perfect' - The Guardian

'Constellations feels heaven sent' - Evening Standard

The intimate Jerwood Theatre Upstairs at the Royal Court will be transported into the heart of the West End this autumn with the third in the set of razor sharp sell-out plays, the magical Constellations.

Starring two of the most exciting stars in current British theatre, Sally Hawkins (Jane Eyre, Made in Dagenham and Golden Globe winner for Best Actress in Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky) and Rafe Spall (One Day, Channel 4's Pete Versus Life and Ridley Scott's Prometheus) in an explosive new play about free will and friendship.

One relationship. Infinite possibilities. A story of love, honey, and a quantum multiverse. Moment by moment, can everything you've ever and never done exist in the same vortex of reality? Elegant and playful yet profoundly moving, Constellations blends the everyday and the ethereal, the actual and the imaginable, revealing that every outcome may only be the first link in a chain of cosmic consequences.

Following the recent success of Jerusalem and Clybourne Park, the Royal Court returns to the West End with these shrewdly perceptive and razor sharp new plays by some of the UK's finest writers with Posh by Laura Wade, Jumpy by April de Angelis, and Constellations by Nick Payne – three of the biggest sold out hits in its history.

Writer Nick Payne's play for the Bush Theatre If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet will be produced by New York's Roundabout Theatre Company in Autumn 2012 starring Jake Gyllenhaal, directed by Michael Longhurst.

Constellations was first produced in January 2012 at the Royal Court as part of the Royal Court's Jerwood New Playwrights programme, supported by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation.

The Making of Constellations

30 November 2012 - 8:50pm

Post show discussion

30th November 2012 – aprox 8:50pm for 45mins

Join us after the show on Friday 30th November for 'The Making of Constellations' an exclusive and rare insight into how this Evening Standard award nominated play was put together by Nick Payne. Nick will be joined by Steve Benbow London's most prolific bee keeper who played a huge part in assembling this production and Professor A C Grayling, internationally renowned philosopher and author.

Panel

AC Grayling

Anthony Grayling MA, DPhil (Oxon) FRSL, FRSA is Master of the New College of the Humanities, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. Until 2011 he was Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy and other subjects; among his most recent are "The Good Book", "Ideas That Matter", "Liberty in the Age of Terror" and "To Set Prometheus Free".

For several years he wrote the "Last Word" column for the Guardian newspaper and a column for the Times. He is a frequent contributor to the Literary Review, Observer, Independent on Sunday, Times Literary Supplement, Index on Censorship and New Statesman, and is an equally frequent broadcaster on BBC Radios 4, 3 and the World Service. He writes the "Thinking Read" column for the Barnes and Noble Review in New York, is the Editor of Online Review London, and a Contributing Editor of Prospect magazine.

In addition he sits on the editorial boards of several academic journals, and for nearly ten years was the Honorary Secretary of the principal British philosophical association, the Aristotelian Society. He is a past chairman of June Fourth, a human rights group concerned with China, and is a representative to the UN Human Rights Council for the International Humanist and Ethical Union. He is a Vice President of the British Humanist Association, the Patron of the United Kingdom Armed Forces Humanist Association, a patron of Dignity in Dying, and an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society.

Anthony Grayling was a Fellow of the World Economic Forum for several years, and a member of its C-100 group on relations between the West and the Islamic world. He has served as a Trustee of the London Library and a board member of the Society of Authors. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 2003 he was a Booker Prize judge, in 2010 was a judge of the Art Fund prize, and in 2011 the Welcome Book Prize.

He supports a number of educational charities and is a sponsor of Rogbonko School in Sierra Leone. Anthony Grayling's new book, "The God Argument" will be published in March 2013.

Steve Benbow

Steve Benbow is known as ‘The Urban Bee Keeper’. He is the founding director of the London Honey Company, a business that produces honey for Harrods, Harvey Nichols and The Savoy, as well as several small delicatessens across London. He also provides training in beekeeping and manages beehives for third-party clients across England.

As a successful entrepreneur with green credentials, Steve can help corporations to become more ethically focused. He is an excellent speaker on sustainability and the environment.

Fifteen years ago Steve decided he wanted to keep bees in Central London. There was only one a problem: he lived on the sixth story of an ex-council block near Tower Bridge with no garden. The only outside space was the building's flat roof, accessible via a fire escape. Having located his first hive behind the lift shaft, the bees prospered and produced award-winning honey.

Inspired by other urban beekeepers in Paris, Tokyo, Rio and New York, Steve set about expanding his own operation in London. And by tapping into the network of businesses scattered across the capital that had huge secure rooftops, his business began to thrive.

In 2005, he became Beemaster to Fortnum and Mason - managing four ornate hives on the roof of their store in Piccadilly - and he now services hives for The National Portrait Gallery, Tate Modern and Tate Britain, as well as a variety of commercial clients, many of whom sell their honey within their stores.

When Steve started his business back in 1996, the notion of urban beekeeping was a curiosity. Today, with the well-documented crises in the bee population, Steve's mission to install beehives across the city has acquired a pertinence that is universally recognized. He is applauded as both a visionary and an entrepreneur.

Nick Payne

Nick Payne won the prestigious George Devine Award in 2009 with his play If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet. This was produced at the Bush Theatre in October 2009, directed by Josie Rourke and will be produced by the Roundabout Theatre Company in New York in Autumn 2012 starring Jake Gyllenhaal.

Nick was a member of the Young Writers Programme at the Royal Court and made his debut at the Court in September 2010 with Wanderlust. He is currently under commission at the Donmar Warehouse, the Royal Court and Manhattan Theatre Club.

Constellations

Rafe Spall talking Constellations on BBC Breakfast

Sally Hawkins & Rafe Spall

Sally Hawkins

Rafe Spall

Laura Cairns (Understudy)

Simon Darwen (Understudy)

Writer - Nick Payne

Director - Michael Longhurst

Designer - Tom Scutt

Lighting Designer - Lee Curran

Composer - Simon Slater

Sound Designer - David McSeveney

Movement Director - Lucy Cullingford

Casting Director - Amy Ball

BSLBT Consultant - Daryl Jackson

Fight Director - Kate Waters

Assistant Director - Sam Caird

Book Tickets Online

Post show discussion

Panel