A newly formed theater company is bringing a critically acclaimed two-person drama to the University of South Alabama this month, marking the first Mobile production for a troupe founded by a pair of professional stage actors who met at an acting workshop out west.
Now Theatre Co., started by actors and educators Paul Hurley and Christie Maturo, will stage Nick Payne’s play “Constellations” Aug. 18-20 at USA’s Laidlaw Performing Arts Center. The show explores love, loss and free will through the lens of a beekeeper and a theoretical physicist whose relationship replays again and again across a multiverse of possible outcomes.
“Constellations” was among the ten most-produced plays in the country in a recent season, a popularity Hurley attributes partly to its spare staging. The 75-minute one-act calls for just two actors and no set, relying instead on lighting and sound to carry the audience through dozens of alternate versions of the same relationship.
The play opens with its central couple, Roland and Marianne, meeting at a backyard barbecue. The scene resets again and again with slightly different outcomes — sometimes he’s already involved with someone else, sometimes the two hit it off immediately — before settling into the central device: the idea that every possible version of a moment exists somewhere in an infinite set of parallel universes. From there, the story follows the couple through the full arc of a relationship, including its hardest chapters, compressed and repeated with variations.
“All that aside, the relationship of the two characters is so lovely and charming and full of ups and downs and turns that it drew me to want to do it,” Maturo said of the script.
Both actors bring substantial professional credentials to the minimalist production. Hurley and Maturo are members of Actors’ Equity Association with roughly a decade of repertory experience apiece, and both hold graduate degrees in theater. Maturo has appeared in regional and national television commercials, trained at Second City’s conservatory program, spent years performing in the Las Vegas company of the immersive show “Tony and Tina’s Wedding,” and co-wrote and starred in the web series “Hey You, It’s Me.” She joined the theater faculty at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas, two years ago.
Hurley has an extensive background with Shakespearean and classical repertory companies in Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Milwaukee and other cities before joining the University of South Alabama’s theater faculty in 2015.
The two met at a Meisner technique workshop in Oregon and discovered they had more in common than acting technique: both taught at universities roughly two hours from the nearest professional theater scene, Hurley in Mobile and Maturo in Wichita Falls. That shared gap sparked the idea for a company that could mount productions in both college towns, and after securing grant funding, Now Theatre Co. was formed.
Directing the Mobile production is Sally Story, a new addition to the Midwestern State University theater faculty. Rehearsals began in Texas and are set to continue in Mobile as the cast and crew move into technical rehearsals ahead of opening night.
“There’s about 50 universes in the play. A couple go on for four or five pages but some last for two lines then flip on to the next. Lights and sound will transition from one universe to the next,” Hurley said, describing the technical demands of staging so many rapid shifts in tone and setting.
Maturo said she initially dug into the real physics behind Marianne’s dialogue before realizing the science mattered less than the character’s enthusiasm for it. “The science is all over my head and honestly, it wasn’t going to help me play this character. It’s more about her passion for the subject and what life could be,” she said.
Each actor pointed to a different challenge in bringing the play to life. For Maturo, it’s portraying Marianne’s illness late in the story with honesty rather than theatrics, as the character struggles to communicate in a straight line of thought. For Hurley, it’s the whiplash pacing that swings between a relationship’s highest and lowest points without warning. “Getting engaged. Breaking up. Getting back together. Seeing terminal illness. Everything is high stakes, and in one second you erase all of it and start in a completely different place,” he said. “You end one scene crying and the very next scene you start with a joke and there’s no transition. It’s a one-second change.”
Performances run Friday and Saturday, Aug. 18-19, at 7:30 p.m., with a Sunday matinee on Aug. 20 at 2 p.m. at the Laidlaw Performing Arts Center on the USA campus. Tickets are $16 general admission, $14 for seniors, military members and USA faculty and staff, and $12 for students. Tickets can be reserved by calling 251-460-6306.
The Mobile run marks the public debut of Now Theatre Co., which its founders hope will become a recurring presence in both of its home cities, bringing contemporary, actor-driven theater to college communities that don’t otherwise have easy access to professional stage productions.
Asked how they expected to come out the other side of a play built on emotional whiplash, the two actors kept it light. “So how long do y’all anticipate being in therapy after this is over?” came the question, to which Maturo didn’t miss a beat: “Well, we’re actors, so forever,” she quipped.