Quantum Configurations in Nick Payne’s Constellations

• Main Author: Liliane Campos
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée 2013-10-01
• Series: Études Britanniques Contemporaines
• Subjects: Benjamin; constellations; death; dramatic form; multiverse theory; non-linearity
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/ebc/901

In recent years, science has become a popular topic in British drama. Biology and physics are a source of new themes and metaphors, but also stimulate formal experimentation: this paper analyses Nick Payne’s Constellations (2012) as an attempt to derive new dramatic form from the hypotheses of quantum physics. Constellations draws on the Many Worlds Interpretation, in which an infinite amount of divergent universes are superposed but do not communicate: rather than a linear plot, the plays presents us with a series of variations on encounters between two lovers, corresponding to coexisting possibilities in the divergent universes. With an emphasis on paradigmatic superposition, the resulting dramatic syntax allows Payne to examine the themes of mortality and euthanasia from a fresh perspective, as the play enacts alternative conceptions of time and questions their consequences for the viewer.