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Payne, Nick

Entry updated 26 October 2021. Tagged: Author, Theatre.

(1984-    ) UK screenwriter and playwright, most of whose dramas pithily compress sometimes transgressive content into stageable form, several of them applying speculative neuroscience to questions of Identity. In some of his work, worlds of discourse hover on the indeterminate boundaries of Fantastika, as in If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet (performed 22 October 2009 Bush Theatre, London; 2013 chap), which is about personal relationships but also about Climate Change. Others are of literal sf interest. In Constellations (performed 13 January 2012 Royal Court Theatre, London; 2012 chap), a physicist (see Physics) and a young woman are seen in several simultaneous worlds (explicitly described as iterations of the Multiverse), in each of which their relationship pans out differently. Elegy (performed 21 April 2016 Donmar Warehouse, London: 2016 chap), which is set in a Near Future UK a few decades after same-sex marriages have been legally recognized, dramatizes the effects of a full-brain mapping, decoding, and prosthetic replacement: these consequences include Amnesia as well as an intense intuition of irretrievable loss. [JC]

Nick Payne

born UK: 1984

works (highly selected)

  • If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet (London: Faber and Faber, 2013) [play: chap: first performed 22 October 2009 Bush Theatre, London: pb/photo of production]
  • Constellations (London: Faber and Faber, 2012) [play: chap: first performed 13 January 2012 Royal Court Theatre, London: pb/photo of production]
  • Elegy (London: Faber and Faber, 2016) [play: chap: first performed 21 April 2016 Donmar Warehouse, London: pb/photo of production]

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