Silent Sky is the story of Henrietta Levitt who, hearing musical rhythms in stars and their lights, attained and explained visual and scientific insights about our heavens and beyond. Author Lauren Gunderson also tells of a typical 1900-1920 family and fellow scientific professionals who influenced Henrietta Levitt’s life and work. Most positive were other women, since they shared a difficult struggle to get—as men had—not only opportunity, encouragement, and means to succeed but also recognition if they did.
Despite Henrietta’s academic achievements, her sister would love her to stay home in Wisconsin, marry like her and add children to their family. But Henrietta (Kendra Jo Brook, always strongly determined) leaves. She’s compelled to work at Harvard Observatory Laboratory, hopefully to become an astronomer. Women, though, are limited to being “computers” there.
Men, who’d actually used some of Henrietta’s early findings, were also able to use telescopes to make photograph negatives of the sky in the outside cold. Women, desk bound, could only study these on glass plates. They’d measure spacial distances between and among stars — in effect, “parsing” their light and “mapping” variables.
Two who’d made significant scientific observations and classifications doing “computer” work were Willamina Fleming (Lise Bruneau, rightly self-assured) and Annie Cannon, as assistant who followed up on and added to her classifications, eventually curating all photographs. (Suzanne Grodner makes Annie especially heartwarming.) Giving support to Henrietta, both Willamina and Annie quickly become her closest friends as well as colleagues.
Romance enters Henrietta’s story slowly via (true or fictional?) male astronomer Peter Shaw, with frequent visits to the women’s workplace. He timidly invites Henrietta to join him in travels all over Europe, where she’d be able to confer with noted astronomers.
Some have even benefitted by her work! A sweet kiss holds out possibilities but the romance won’t go on, if ever, via a voyage. (Of course, Christian Douglass has established that marrying Peter would seem to be worth a wait.)
Sadly, Henrietta’s father’s grave illness sends her back home. Although she’s unable to resume her scientific work adequately there, a bit of piano playing by her sister Margaret makes a big difference. In this fictionalizing by Gunderson, the rhythm of Margaret playing spurs Henrietta into investigating stellar pulsing. How does all add to her idea of the relationship between brightness and time of blinking stars measuring distance? And will she get to be an astronomer with a telescope when she concludes that the Universe goes beyond the Milky Way?
In addition to Gunderson’s well-written script and the exciting direction of Seema Sueka, Asolo Rep’s justly reputed technical staff shines like the many different stars in and from the sky of the Mertz stage. Asolo Rep’s season program describes Silent Sky as “Suitable for General Audiences.” I recommend it as not only suitable but greatly entertaining for such an informative show.
