Photo Flash: First Look at SILENT SKY at Know Theatre

In the late 19th Century, a group of brilliant women were hired by the Harvard Observatory to catalog the stars.

Called "computers" by their employer (and sometimes, infuriatingly, "Pickering's Harem," in reference to the director of the Observatory),Henrietta Leavitt and her pioneering colleagues performed calculations for the male astronomers, but were discouraged from pursuing their own research and forbidden from using Harvard's famed Great Refractor Telescope.

Yet Henrietta's probing mind showed her a pattern in the data: a crucial relationship between the varying brightness of stars and their distances from us in the universe.

Her discovery, the period-luminosity relationship of Cepheid variable stars, became the standard by which previously unmeasurable distances in the universe could now be measured-a standard we use to this day. Henrietta's discovery quite literally changed our understanding of the universe, and our place in it.

SILENT SKY, opening April 15 and running through May 14 on the Know Theatre MainStage, follows Henrietta's story from the moment she embarks on her journey to Harvard. As it unfolds, we discover the spirit and fire that drove her to pursue the truth, despite every challenge.

SILENT SKY comes to us from playwright Lauren Gunderson (author of two hit shows in Cincinnati -- Know's Toil and Trouble and Cincinnati Playhouse's The Revolutionists) and reveals how a group of extraordinary women found a way to measure the universe, providing a glimpse of the light within us all.

Directed by Know Theatre Associate Artistic Director Tamara Winters, SILENT SKY features a cast full of celebrated local performers. Maggie Lou Rader stars as Henrietta Leavitt, joined byAnnie Fitzpatrick as Annie Jump Cannon and Regina Pugh as Williamina Fleming, Henrietta's tough-as-nails colleagues at the Harvard Observatory. Miranda McGee returns to the MainStage as Margaret, Henrietta's sister whose fierce sisterly love is Henrietta's bedrock. Justin McCombsjoins this A-list group of ladies as Peter Shaw, Henrietta's sometimes rival, sometimes love interest who propels and challenges Henrietta's pursuit of the truth.

SILENT SKY marks Know Theatre Associate Artistic Director Tamara WInters' fourth foray onto the MainStage, having previously directed 2014's Bureau of Missing Persons, and 2015's Hearts Like Fists and All Childish Things.

Photos by Daniel R. Winters Photography