ANCRAM – British playwright Nick Payne’s award-winning play “Constellations” (Best Play, Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2012) is about the romantic relationship between Roland, a beekeeper, and Marianne, a physicist.
This love story winds its way through a quantum universe where any outcome is equally possible. The New Yorker called “Constellations” “a singular wonder.”
Stars and real-life spouses Andrus Nichols and Drew Ledbetter shine as the only two characters in this nonlinear drama, which runs August 16-25 at the Ancram Center for the Arts. Tickets are available at ancramcenter.org.
“Drew and I have never acted together, which is unusual for a couple who are both actors,” Nichols said.
Furthermore, their lives strangely run parallel to the plot of the play.
“When we finally met, we realized that there were so many moments in our lives where our paths almost crossed but didn’t,” Nichols said. “When I lived in San Francisco, I played Hamlet and Drew’s best friend was Horatio, but Drew, who also lived there, didn’t see our production because he was in another play. When I moved to New York, Drew and I had the same manager – who had a tiny list of clients. Yet we never met.”
After a series of near misses, the couple finally got together in 2016 at Theater Row in Manhattan.
Both have long been involved in off-Broadway, television and film, but when COVID-19 struck, they moved full-time to Sharon, Connecticut, where they are “busier than ever.”
They co-directed “Our Town” at the Sharon Playhouse in 2023. To prepare for their roles in “Constellations,” Nichols is studying string theory online and Ledbetter is spending time in a bee house.
The Ancram Center for the Arts is an award-winning theater in New York’s Hudson Valley.
Housed in a historic grange hall, the Ancram Center has presented groundbreaking theater and music performances by nationally recognized theater artists since 2016. The Ancram Center for the Arts receives significant annual support from the New York State Council on the Arts and received a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2023. For tickets and information, visit www.ancramcenter.org.
