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our THE WICKHAMS: CHRISTMAS AT CABARET THE WOLVES PEMBERLEY stage: JULY 18-AUGUST 25 SEPT. 19-OCT. 20 NOV. 14-DEC. 15 HIGHLIGHTS

A companion guide to “Silent Sky” by Lauren Gunderson directed by Mark Anderson Phillips May 16-June 16, 2019 supported by Visionary Producers Nancy B. Coleman & Paul M. Resch Synopsis

For Henrietta Leavitt, heaven is the night sky. When she’s hired by the Harvard Observatory, doors seem to be opening for her. But it’s 1900, and women aren’t even allowed to look through the telescope. They must chart the from photographs and keep their ideas to themselves.

Undaunted, Henrietta quietly pursues her own revolutionary theories as family ties, societal pressure and love pull her in other directions. This lyrical drama is based on the true story of a pioneering whose discoveries have helped us measure the vast reaches of space.

Characters

Listed here in order of appearance, here are the Silent Sky characters as described by playwright Lauren Gunderson.

Henrietta Leavitt (Maria Giere Marquis): 30s, brilliant, meticulous, excited. Almost always wearing a period hearing aid.

Margaret Leavitt (Jessica Whittemore): Henrietta’s sister, she is in her 30s and a homebody, creative, sweet. From front, Henrietta Leavitt (Maria Giere Marquis), Margaret Leavitt Peter Shaw (George Psarras*): 30s, the head astronomer’s (Jessica Whittemore), (Karen DeHart), Annie apprentice … and the man. *Member, Actors’ Equity Association Cannon (April Green) and Peter Shaw (George Psarras). Show photos by Taylor Sanders, taken at the historic Fallon House in downtown Annie Cannon (April Green): 40s, the leader, terse and sure, San Jose. Thank you to History San Jose for hosting the photo shoot! grows into a firebrand.

Williamina Fleming (Karen DeHart): 50s, smart as a whip and fun, Scottish.

About the playwright and play

Anyone who’s been at City Lights in the last few years should know that we really, really love playwright Lauren Gunderson. This is the fourth play of hers we’ve produced in as many years: Exit, Pursued by a Bear; I and You; and Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley (written with Margot Melcon) came first. Oh, and we’re also doing the Miss Bennet companion piece The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley this fall.

Lauren writes scripts that are smart, witty, insightful and empathetic. She also excels at telling the stories of women who have not been given their historic due, many of them working in . Frequently, she speaks on the intersection of science, theater and arts activism.

Originally from Atlanta, Lauren is now a San Franciscan whose local work includes serving as playwright in residence at the Marin Theatre Company. Across the country, she is consistently recognized as one of the most-produced living playwrights in America. Her work has been commissioned, produced and developed at numerous U.S. companies, including TheatreWorks, San Francisco Playhouse, Berkeley Rep, South Coast Repertory, The Kennedy Center, The O’Neill, and Denver Center. Her other plays include The Taming, Emilie: La Marquise Du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight, Ada and the Engine, The Book of Will, The Revolutionists and the musical The Amazing Adventures of Dr. Wonderful and Her Dog!

The 2014 winner of the Steinberg/ATCA New Play award, she was also a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for I and You. Other honors include the 2016 Lanford Wilson Award from the Dramatists Guild. Lauren studied Southern Literature and Drama at Emory University, and Dramatic Writing at NYU’s Tisch School, where she was a Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship.

Commissioned by South Coast Rep, Silent Sky premiered in 2011 and has since become a popular offering at theaters across the country and beyond (including Lauren Gunderson as a guest on “Big Albania!). The Atlanta Journal-Constitution called it “an intellectual epic told on an Picture Science,” a radio show and intimate scale. Bottom line: Heavenly.” podcast produced by the SETI Institute. Photo from Lauren’s Twitter page.

The real-life heroines of “Silent Sky”: Women “computers” at Harvard College Observatory

If you’ve read Margot Lee Shetterly’s book or seen the movie Hidden Figures, about African American female mathematicians working at NASA, you've heard the phrase "human computers." Though it sounds curious to us today, it was commonly used for centuries to describe people doing mathematical calculations.

In Silent Sky, we explore Harvard College Observatory's women “computers” hired in the late 1800s and early 20th century. Several became famous , despite not being permitted to use the telescope. Instead, director Edward Charles enlisted them to care for and analyze the observatory's photograph collection. They studied the stars -- and in many cases made key discoveries -- working simply from glass plates.

Thanks to the funding of Anna Palmer Draper and others, the Catalogue (named for Anna's late husband) continued to grow. Notable women astronomers working on this collection included not only Silent Sky’s , Annie Jump Henrietta Leavitt working at her desk. Cannon and Williamina Fleming but also Florence Cushing, and many others.

Want to learn more? Read Dava Sobel’s The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars. Henrietta Swan Leavitt

Working for 30 cents an hour, with scant recognition or intellectual freedom, Henrietta Leavitt became a pioneer astronomer whose discoveries still help us measure and understand the vast reaches of space.

Born in in 1868, Henrietta attended Oberlin and Radcliffe colleges and grew fascinated with . Then an illness took much of her hearing and kept her home for several years. Nevertheless, she returned to her passion and was appointed to the permanent staff at Harvard College Observatory at the turn of the 20th century.

Studying photos of the stars on glass plates — and forbidden from using the telescope — Henrietta was assigned to study variable stars (those that change brightness periodically). She discovered more than 2,400 variable stars, about half known at the time. Through this work, she developed what the Harvard Gazette recently called "a powerful new and durable tool for estimating the distances of stars and , a crucial advance for understanding the size and evolution of the universe that astronomers of the day were struggling to accomplish.”

Later scientists stood on the shoulders of Henrietta's work. used her discoveries to look at fuzzy clouds that astronomers had long thought were nebulae. He then realized that they were both farther away than previously thought, and that they were in truth galaxies. He continued to build upon her work to determine that the universe was expanding. This circa-1890 photo shows several of the women “computers” at work at the Sadly, Henrietta was not nominated for the Nobel Prize Harvard Observatory. They include: Henrietta Leavitt, seated, third from left; until after her 1921 death from cancer. But science , front; and Williamina Fleming, standing. continued to advance, and in 2011 the Nobel was awarded for the discovery that the universe's expansion is indeed accelerating.

Adam Riess, one of the Nobel laureates, said that he had used Henrietta's tool as an integral part of his studies. “By discovering a relationship for some stars between how bright they appear and how fast they blink, Henrietta Leavitt gave us a tool to gauge the size and expansion rate of the universe," he said. "That tool remains to this day one of our very best for studying the universe.”

Though little of Henrietta's own writing survives, an obituary paints an evocative picture of Henrietta's personality: "She took life seriously. Her sense of duty, justice and loyalty was strong. ... She had the happy faculty of appreciating all that was worthy and lovable in others, and was possessed of a so full of sunshine that to her all of life became beautiful and full of meaning.” Annie Jump Cannon

There are few things that impress Silent Sky's main character, Henrietta Leavitt, as much as the night sky. But she is completely -struck by Annie Jump Cannon.

Little wonder. When Henrietta began her work at the Harvard Observatory, Annie was already a veteran of several years, and had already developed the system that astronomers today still use to classify stars. (The system would not be officially adopted by the International Astronomical Union until 1922. Woman astronomers in those days had to be good at waiting.)

In the play, when Henrietta meets Annie, she’s delighted to learn her new co-worker has not only invented this influential system but created the mnemonic for remembering the seven classes of stars into which hundreds of thousands of stars are divided: O,B,A,F,G,K,M -- or, as the abbreviations were irreverently known, "Oh, Be A Fine Girl: Kiss Me.”

Annie’s system was but one of numerous highlights in her illustrious career. Valedictorian of her class at in 1884, she surprisingly took her degree in physics to first pursue a career in photography, traveling in Spain and publishing a Annie Jump Cannon. collection of her images. Then, in 1893, she contracted a case of scarlet fever that took most of her hearing. She returned to physics, teaching and earning her master’s degree at Wellesley, and then in 1896 began working as a female “computer” in the Harvard Observatory.

Annie’s pace was astonishing. Focusing on stars in the southern sky, she classified 5,000 a month between 1911 and 1915 -- a total of 225,300 stellar spectra by 1915. She also published numerous catalogues of variable stars, continuing to work at the observatory until shortly before her death in 1941 at age 77.

Her accolades included being the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate from Oxford, and lending her name to the Annie Jump Cannon Award. Today, the American Association of Astronomy still presents this award annually to women making outstanding contributions in the field. Williamina Paton Stevens Fleming

It would have been impossible to imagine the 21-year-old Williamina Annie Cannon and Henrietta Leavitt in 1913.. Fleming as destined for fame as an astronomer. Pregnant, newly arrived in from Scotland, and very much alone after her husband abandoned her, she cannot have thought the heavens were looking upon her with favor.

But clearly the universe had a plan. Williamina went to work as a maid for , director of the Harvard Observatory. Legend has it that one day, frustrated with the poor quality of work done by his male "computers" in the observatory, Pickering shouted that his maid could do better. ("More likely," the New England Historical Society notes, "Mrs. Pickering recognized her maid's abilities and told her husband.”)

Regardless of how it happened, in 1879 the observatory director hired Williamina as a part-time administrator. Before long, she was examining the glass plates that star photographs were printed on, studying spectra (the breakdown of light from stars) and measuring countless stars. It is estimated that by her death she had studied more than 200,000 plates.

Her discoveries throughout her career were remarkable, including the Horsehead , 310 variable stars, and 10 novae. She also developed a system for classifying stars based on the relative amounts of astronomers observed in their spectra. It came to be known as the Pickering-Fleming system. Williamina Fleming. Williamina received some recognition during her 54 years on the planet, including acclaim for a speech she gave at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago about women working in astronomy. She was also made an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society of London in 1906. Friends and colleagues described her as bright of face, cheerful of manner, and an enthusiastic regular at Harvard football games.

Still, life was not easy. “She worked 60 hours a week for $1,500 a year, much less than the newest male assistant at the observatory earned,” the New England Historical Society noted. “Her 1900 journals, discovered much later, show her frustration with The , photographed from Harvard trying to make ends meet and put her son through MIT.” Observatory in 1888. Meet our Henrietta: Maria Giere Marquis

“History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.” Maria Giere Marquis finds herself thinking this phrase frequently as she plays Henrietta Leavitt. True, woman astronomers today fly much higher before they hit a glass ceiling. The thought of a 21st-century woman scientist being forbidden from using the telescope is, as Maria’s 9-year-old niece puts it, “dumb.”

Still, much of Henrietta’s story continues to resonate and rhyme in 2019.

“For me, the core of this play is the sacrifices you make from a personal perspective if you are also completely driven by a purpose,” Maria said. “She cannot be fully at home and fully at work. She is not given that option. … That part of the story is something that everyone can relate to. How do you balance yourself and your needs with the people you care about?”

For Maria, a story that is both relevant and revelatory — shedding light on remarkable women many of us have never heard of — was irresistible. She was thrilled to be cast in this role, and to return to City Lights for her fifth show here.

“In the past few years, I’ve been heartbroken but also inspired by the erasure of women from history: being able to lift those stories up,” she said. “I don’t want to do a play just to do a play. I feel responsible for the story I tell.”

Maria made her City Lights debut in 2013, playing Mrs. Abramovitz in the nostalgic holiday comedy Coney Island Christmas. (Trivia: She is one year younger than Roneet Aliza Rahamim, who played her young daughter.) Maria also joined us for another holiday show, last season’s Making God Laugh. This time she was the daughter.

In addition to acting in these warm ensemble plays, Maria also appeared in two CLTC shows with strong social-justice consciences. She played Portia in The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare’s unflinching look at anti-Semitism and how society treats the “other”; and portrayed Lily, who must face the racism in her Southern past in Alabama Story.

Though she acts with other companies, most recently playing Lady M in Macbeth at Dragon Productions, Maria feels an especially strong connection to City Lights. When she first moved to the area and looked at CLTC’s shows, she thought: “These people are doing good work. There’s Past City Lights roles: Maria Giere Marquis as Lily Whitfield, top, in clearly a mission.” “Alabama Story” (2017), and as Maddie (with Keenan Flagg as her brother Tom) in “Making God Laugh” (2018). Photos by Taylor Sanders. Maria originally hails from the Midwest, where she started acting as a child and earned a bachelor’s degree in theater arts and anthropology from Lawrence University in Wisconsin. She met her husband there, and the pair moved to the Bay Area. Today she balances acting with her work in corporate training and instructional design, and has launched her own company (coachingbymaria.com).

She also has a blast recording audio books (ask her about the romance novels!), but the stage is truly a special place. Ever curious, she loves dives into a role: researching, studying, wondering, analyzing. Then “you just throw yourself on stage and see what happens,” she said with a laugh. “First marinate, and then act.” For Silent Sky, most of the actors have the pleasure of researching characters who actually existed. (Margaret and Peter are fictional.) Maria found that Henrietta didn’t keep a journal, and any personal writing has been tough to come by. Still, there’s her published work, and colleague Annie Jump Cannon left voluminous writings behind that describe Henrietta’s personality.

Maria also has examined the script closely to see what her character reveals about herself through her lines, and what others say about her. Even punctuation can be a clue to Henrietta: “She chooses words very carefully. Often there’s an ellipsis and then a word.”

Through it all, Maria has developed a fondness for her character and a strong desire to do Henrietta justice. “I feel an obligation to this quiet, brilliant, lovely person,” Maria said. “I hope that she knows how much she mattered.”

Margaret Leavitt (Jessica Whittemore, front) represents part of what her sister Henrietta (Maria Giere Marquis) must give up to pursue a career in astronomy. While Margaret remains at home and pursues her own dreams of family, motherhood and composing music, Henrietta is able to see her less and less as her own work at the observatory consumes her. “She cannot be fully at home and fully at work,” Maria says of her character.

Also at the theater: don’t miss all the special “Silent Sky” goodness

Lately, you may have noticed we’re adding special touches to enhance the lobby experience in City Lights. As we like to say, we want to help you live in the world of the play longer. That starts before you even take your seats.

During Eurydice, for example, we provided pens and beautifully printed paper for audience members to write letters to lost loved ones, just as the play’s characters did. Then we arranged the letters in a graceful display. And we all ate better after In the Heights, when cast and community members provided delicious family recipes from their different traditions.

When Silent Sky is on our stage, you’ll see a variety of special things around the theater. You’ll find informative, inspirational displays from our two nonprofit partners: the Audacity Performing Arts Project, which brings after-school theater workshops and productions to underfunded Silicon Valley schools; and Girls Who Code, which is on a mission to close the gender gap in technology. We’re also preparing a fascinating timeline of the Harvard College Observatory, along with the astronomer bios you’ve just read in Highlights.

In addition, Silent Sky director Mark Anderson Phillips loves doing deep dives into history to prepare for period shows. Don’t miss his gorgeous video slideshow: a collection of historical photographs from Harvard College Observatory, important women in astronomy, and images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Silent Sky by Lauren Gunderson directed by Mark Anderson Phillips supported by Visionary Producers Nancy B. Coleman & Paul M. Resch

City Lights Theater Company presents Silent Sky from May 16 through June 16, 2019. Shows are Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m. (no show May 19). The theater is at 529 S. Second St. in San Jose. Details: cltc.org, 408-295-4200.

Director: Mark Anderson Phillips

Stage Manager: Michelle Singh

Assistant Stage Manager: Chiarra Sorci

Production Manager/Technical Director/Scenic Designer: Ron Gasparinetti

Lighting Designer: Joseph Hidde

Costume Designer: Anna Chase

Properties Designer: Miranda Whipple

Sound Designer: George Psarras

Sound Engineer: Rodrigo Serna Lopez

Projections/Video Designer & Projections/Video Operator: Garland Thompson Jr.

Master Electrician: Joseph Hidde

Scenic Artist: Paulino Deleal

Featuring: Karen DeHart, April Green, Maria Giere Marquis, George Psarras* and Jessica Whittemore. *Member, Actors’ Equity Association

Special thanks to History San Jose and Peninsula Youth Theatre.

This issue of Highlights was researched & written by City Lights dramaturg Rebecca Wallace. Read past issues, and a digital version of this issue, at cltc.org/highlights.