Scenes that skip between universes, 100 eyeballs emerging from the floorboards, whole plays set on a slope … The scripts for Constellations, Wonder Boy and other hits have provided instructions to unleash the imagination
Michael Longhurst isn’t short on experience when tackling wildly imaginative stage directions – after all, he staged a play perched predominantly atop a mountain (Force Majeure). But perhaps the most challenging, he says, was this humdinger at the beginning of Nick Payne’s Constellations: “An indented rule indicates a change in universe.”
Did it prompt endless profound conversations? Sure. But Longhurst also found himself having intense discussions about furniture: “One of the biggest decisions in the rehearsal room was: would there be a chair? Can a chair jump a universe?” For Longhurst, it was the chairs – or subsequent lack of chairs – that determined the overall aesthetic of one of his most successful productions. “That was the main reason we stripped away everything on stage. It led to all the creative decisions.”
