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SPOTLIGHT: Kabwe on love, loss, bees and choice in CONSTELLATIONS
- Jul 4
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 7
Barbara Loots
Nick Payne’s compelling play CONSTELLATIONS had audiences captivated in Cape Town before moving to Johannesburg to entertain over the winter holidays until 11 July 2026. Produced by How Now Brown Cow with direction by Jay Pather it stars Mwenya Kabwe and Mark Elderkin. Kabwe shared her thoughts on this love story told across parallel universes in this latest Spotlight.
Kabwe shares that her love for theatre started when she was in boarding school: “I was about 11. We had a great drama teacher, and I really enjoyed the experience of being in plays with other people.”
With such a people-centered start to her theatrical career it is then no surprise that over her career she has found inspiration in many people along her performance journey, but she admits to a particular fondness for the “undercover artists” in her family.
Complex relationships are often the inspiration for the most successful plays, Payne’s CONSTELLATIONS being no exception. Kabwe acknowledges that such complexity was a big drawing card when Julie-Anne McDowell, one of the producers from How Now Brown Cow producers, approached her. That, and “the opportunity to work with Jay Pather again and Mark Elderkin for the first time, and to tell a love story”.
The story focusses on the love connection of two people you may not likely set up on a blind date: Marianne (Kabwe), a physicist, and Roland (Elderken), a beekeeper. They meet at a barbeque, go for a drink, and tempt fate across multiple realities, testing the strength of their connection (and possible relationship): Maybe they hit it off, or perhaps they don’t. They go home together, or maybe they go their separate ways. Perhaps Marianne is engaged to someone else, perhaps Roland is. Maybe she breaks his heart, maybe he breaks hers. Perhaps they will come together, and their love story can finally take root and grow, or perhaps it will be tragically cut short…
Kabwe describes Marianne as “a blazing comet of a character who does life on her own terms”. She says that the most exciting and simultaneously challenging part of becoming Marianne has been wrapping her “head around quantum physics, parallel universes”. Particularly, for this staging, that process also called on her to consider how all that resonates within African cosmologies.
One would think a beekeeper and a physicist an odd pair at first, but Kabwe regards them as the perfect match, while reflecting on the fact that attraction is both a powerful and mysterious, practically undefinable, concept.
“In the play the characters are propelled towards each other before they know much about one another. They complement each other and each care very deeply about the things that matter to them.”
In such an intimate two-hander the team is rather small, there's no room to hide: It is a necessity that there be good comradery off-stage if one is to project chemistry onstage. Luckily, that theatrical sweet spot revealed itself in the preparatory dynamic between Kabwe, Elderkin and Pather.
“It’s been a dream to work with Jay and Mark. Truly. We had a short and intense formal rehearsal period before opening in Cape Town, but Jay is a master at working technically to create trust and openness between actors. He is also exceptionally clever, utterly uncompromising and clear about what he is looking for. He is very tuned into the socio-political context we are working in and all of this creates a great deal of safety and allows us to work deeply from quite early on. And thankfully Mark and I work really well together, he’s a brilliant actor and really good company so it’s been pretty smooth sailing for an intimate two hander.”
Turning to the general lure of Payne’s writing, Kabwe describes it as smart, funny and honest.
“I think this really appeals to audiences, especially when dealing with subject matter that so many people can relate to very directly. And at a time when the tendency is to create distance between people who are seemingly different, I think the play and our production of it is a tender reminder of closeness and proximity between people winning at the end of the day.”
That universal relatability Kabwe captures beautifully in describing the production “as a story about love, loss, bees and choice.” She hopes that audiences will come and see CONSTELLATIONS “to be moved, to be reminded that love and grief often go together, to think deeply about time and to do all of this in the glorious company of friends and strangers at the theatre.”
CONSTELLATIONS contemplates how even the smallest change in our lives can dramatically alter the course we take. You can catch it at Theatre on the Square at Nelson Mandela Square in Sandton until 11 July 2026. Tickets can be booked online through Webtickets. Please note that the production carries an advisory age restriction of 14.