Searching for Answers in the Stars

by John Glore

Henrietta Leavitt (1868 – 1921) is one of the most important scientists most of us have never heard of. Her life and her career both ended prematurely, but not before she made a discovery that revolutionized astronomy and made possible a huge advance in our understanding of the cosmos. That she did so at a time when women weren’t considered capable of serious scientific inquiry and were denied access to the tools necessary for such inquiry makes her story all the more remarkable.

Henrietta is the protagonist of Lauren Gunderson’s Silent Sky, an SCR-commissioned work having its world premiere on the Segerstrom Stage in April. Gunderson has always had an interest in scientific subject matter (see sidebar), and wrote about an earlier woman of science in her play Emilie, which had its premiere on the Argyros Stage in 2009.

Set in the early 1900s, Silent Sky introduces Henrietta as a young, Radcliffe-educated woman excitedly preparing to leave her Puritan family to take a job at the Harvard College Observatory. She leaves behind her father, a minister, and her sister, Margaret, who has chosen to lead the traditional life of a faithful wife and mother. When Henrietta arrives at Harvard she quickly learns that her job is not the astronomical opportunity she had dreamed of. Instead, she spends her days performing the rote labor of “computing”—counting and classifying images of stars on photographic plates. She works with Peter, a young astronomer who is her immediate superior, and her fellow “computers:” Williamina, a housewife-turned-astronomer, and Annie, a stern academic who is “one of the men,” even if the men would never admit it.

Pickering's Harem. An ardent researcher, Lauren Gunderson creates an on-line research site for every play she’s working on. Her site for Silent Sky includes biographical information about Henrietta Leavitt, information about Cepheid variable stars and other astronomical subjects, background on Henrietta’s supervisor, Annie Jump Cannon, and her involvement in the women’s suffrage movement, among other topics related to the play. Gunderson’s Silent Sky research site can be accessed here.

Frustrated by her lack of opportunity to do real science, Henrietta begins working after hours, studying a particular class of pulsating stars called Cepheid variables, notable for the regular rhythm of their pulsation. Meanwhile she becomes aware of Peter’s growing interest in her, which seems to have little to do with her scientific capabilities.

But just as her astronomical investigation and her new romantic prospects come to a head, life deals Henrietta a setback that requires her to leave Harvard and attend to family matters back home. Disconsolate that she had been feeling so close to a breakthrough with her research only to have it interrupted, she sits listening to her sister play the piano while looking at the stars in the night sky—and at that moment has the epiphany that leads to her monumental discovery. That discovery turns what had been some great unknowns about the universe—its size, and our planet’s place within it, for example—into knowable quantities that finally allow us to understand where we are in the cosmos.

But Silent Sky doesn’t end there, because part of what interests Gunderson about Henrietta’s story is its human dimensions. Having reached her career breakthrough, Henrietta must come to terms with what she may have sacrificed to get there. She must solve some unknowns in her own life and figure out how to measure its meaning on a human scale.

SCR’s production of Silent Sky will be directed by Anne Justine D’Zmura, whose previous SCR work includes staging the TYA productions of The Little Prince, The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, The BFG and this season’s Sideways Stories from Wayside School. D’Zmura received her MFA from the Yale School of Drama and is now on the faculty of California State University, Long Beach. Her design team for the production includes John Iacovelli (Noises Off) for sets, David Kay Mickelsen (In the Next Room or the vibrator play) for costumes, York Kennedy (Noises Off) for lighting and Lewis Flinn, making his SCR debut as composer/sound designer.

Playwright Lauren Gunderson.

Why Science Makes for Great Plays

Playwright Lauren Gunderson, who currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, writes on theatre-related subjects for the Huffington Post. One of her early entries addressed the topic of plays about science. Here’s an excerpt:

"Scientists make for great heroes and great villains; great love stories and great mysteries. And the fact that science is fact does not intimidate those of us bound to fiction, but instead adds an earthiness (or cosmology) to our narrative. It adds reality to our stories, and adds story back into our reality.

"Science is built for the stage. The very act of scientific discovery is one of the most dramatic in the human experience. Dramatic because it changes everything, and it can be made of nothing but silence. An epic thought still fits on a stage and in a human being. That can be giant drama…

"And for curious playwrights, getting overwhelmed and excited by the science is easy to do. This stuff is fascinating. The ideas, the universal synthesis, the fundamental questions are grand, wide and deep. Good science plays support that awe but prioritize the human heart."

The entire article can be found here.

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