Theatre Pro Rata is partnering with The Bell Museum, Minnesota's official natural history museum, to prestent Silent Sky inside the Whitney and Elizabeth MacMillan Planetarium. Written by Lauren Gunderson, whose scripts typically center around women in history, science and literature, Silent Sky is a play based on the life of early 1900s Harvard College Observatory astronomical researcher Henrietta Leavitt.
The city lights of Washington may typically obscure the night sky, but a portal to the cosmos has opened in downtown DC. Playwright Lauren Gunderson has gifted us a corner of the galaxy through the telescopic lens of astronomer Henrietta Leavitt's life and scientific discoveries. Leavitt's work may have been rooted in facts and figures, but SILENT SKY is bursting with imagination.
Nominations were announced for the WATCH Awards on January 19.
Ford's Theatre Society announced full casting and the design team for Silent Sky by Lauren Gunderson, a captivating play based on the life of trail-blazing astronomer Henrietta Leavitt. The Ford's Theatre production is directed by Seema Sueko and features Laura C. Harris (Arena Stage's The Heiress, Signature Theatre's The Flick) as Henrietta Leavitt, Nora Achrati as Annie Jump Cannon, Emily Kester as Margaret Leavitt, Jonathan David Martin as Peter Shaw and Holly Twyford as Williamina Fleming. Performances are January 24 to February 23, 2020. A media performance is scheduled for January 29, 2020 at 7:00 p.m.
An old fashioned hearing aid and a strong willed woman at its helm with dreams as big as the universe she wishes to discover is one of many centralized themes presented in this brilliant staging of Lauren Gunderson's Silent Sky at American Stage Theatre. At the center of the stage two desk faced by numerous books on shelves in a workspace for women at Harvard University, where women are paid a mere .25 cents on the hour to a?oecomputea?? and manually log the patterns of stars in the galaxy given on glass plates by their male counterparts. At this point in Harvard's history women were not allowed to work alongside the men no matter their prior education or status. Men had their place, and women had theirs and men liked to make sure the women knew their place in the hierarchy. It was one women's dream to be credited amongst the likes of men in the Astrology department, and through sheer will power she set out to prove just that.
In Arizona Theatre Company's current production of Lauren Gunderson's SILENT SKY, director Casey Stangl elevates and transforms the work into a visually magnificent and magical experience. With an eye on the layers of the play that delve beyond the biographic account and celebration of this woman's spirited and inquisitive journey to unravel the secrets of the universe, Stangl invites the audience to wonderment and reflection on the seminal question of the play: What is our place in the vast arena of the universe?
During the holiday season, Lauren Gunderson's Silent Sky opens at American Stage. Sometimes described as the Hidden Figures of astronomy, like Katherine Johnson in the 2017 movie, Henrietta Leavitt received little credit for her discovery.
When Henrietta Leavitt begins work at the Harvard Observatory in the early 1900s, she isn't allowed to touch a telescope or express an original idea, and instead must chart the stars for a renowned astronomer. In her free time, while she attempts to measure the light and distance of stars, she must also take measure of her life on Earth and balance her dedication to science with with family obligations and the possibility of love.
Raise your hand if you have ever discovered something new, Googled it, found the Wikipedia page, which then made you go off on a flurry of related topics and suddenly time has just passed by? I'll raise both hands because I'm not ashamed to say that this happens to me often. Sunday was one of those days, all thanks to the fantastic production of Silent Sky at Detroit Mercy Theatre Company who educated me on Henrietta Leavitt. The Lauren Gunderson play is the fascinating true story about the 19th century astronomer who was hired to join a group of women a?oecomputersa?? and living in an age when women could neither vote nor express an original idea. Despite not being allowed to touch a telescope, Leavitt and her female colleagues at the Harvard Observatory made ground-breaking discoveries about the universe that remain vital more than a century later. The simplicity and elegance of this production of Silent Sky made the importance of Gunderson's words stand out to the audience and the cast of five worked seamlessly together to bring this impactful and moving production to life. It is a brilliant piece of Michigan theatre.
The next selection of the Off the Page Series of monthly staged readings will be Silent Sky.
Arizona Theatre Company (Sean Daniels, Artistic Director; Billy Russo, Managing Director) announces that Silent Sky, written by the nation's most-produced playwright two of the last three years, Lauren Gunderson,is coming to stages in Tucson and Phoenix.
The University of Southern Maine Department of Theatre launches their season dedicated to celebrating women with a Maine premiere by Boston-based playwright, Joyce Van Dyke.
Want to start fall on a high note? Whether you're after family fun or a date night to remember, Edmonton's 2019 fall theatre season has a little something for everyone!
Single tickets for the first two shows of Arizona Theatre Company's 2019/2020 season a?" The Royale and Silent Sky a?" will go on sale on Aug. 5
Pocahontas will breathe new life into the story of America's first heroine. In this original telling, we meet Pocahontas just before she is set to leave her beloved home in Virginia to begin a new chapter with husband, John Rolfe, in England.
Growing up, I was fascinated with space. I loved looking up and learning about the stars. I still find myself occasionally looking up at the beauty of the stars. Watching Lauren Gunderson's 'Silent Sky' at the Des Moines Playhouse, reminded me of that fascination I had as a kid. The show did that by telling an amazing story, and accenting it with beautiful music and images.
The Des Moines Community Playhouse presents the new drama Silent Sky, May 31-June 16, 2019. Tickets may be purchased online at dmplayhouse.com, by phone at 515-277-6261, or at the Playhouse ticket office, 831 42nd St.
Theatre Pro Rata's 2019-20 season will include two world premieres by local playwrights and a production in collaboration with the Bell Museum that will be presented in the Whitney and Elizabeth MacMillan Planetarium.
Silent Sky is a marvelous one act play by Lauren Gunderson which tells the story of Henrietta Leavitt, a brilliant woman who worked as a "computer" - not unlike the women in Hidden Figures - at the Harvard Astronomy Lab in the early 1900s.
Lauren Gunderson's play, Silent Sky, is based on the true story of astronomer Henrietta Leavitt. Nearly 20 years before American women could vote, Henrietta Leavitt graduated from Radcliff College, took a job in Harvard's Observatory and, working from slides because women weren't allowed to touch the telescopes, she discovered the amount by which the star's brightness is dimmed by distance allows the star's distance from the earth to be calculated. Leavitt turned a two-dimensional picture of the sky into a three-dimensional one.
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