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SILENT SKY

The number of stars is often used in reviews to rank shows.  Silent Sky at Fords Theatre is worth a sky full. 
Like the stars in the sky,  this wonderful show is truly filled with wonder.
Wonder  -  for the history of Henrietta Leavitt and the Harvard “computers” who mapped the universe using glass plates taken of the night sky.
Wonder -  for this star filled production.  Laura C. Harris is Henrietta, brilliant and dedicated as an astronomer, who made her star shattering discoveries when women were not allowed to peer through nighttime telescopes.  Nora Achrati is Annie Cannon and Holly Twyford is Willama Fleming, both who set records in their observations on which  later astronomical discoveries have been based.  
Henrietta is determined to follow her passion despite the pleadings of  her sister Margaret Leavitt, played by Emily Kester.  Jonathan David Marin is Peter Shaw, a  composite character of  male attitudes about women at the time.  He falls in love with Henrietta, he admires her, but he also subscribes to traditional roles for men and women.  
Wonder  -  Ah!   Playwright Lauren Gunderson connects the study of far off stars with what is deep inside the human heart in finding our place in the universe.   
Special note:  Andre J. Pluess’ beautiful original music, romantic when Harriet and Peter dance away under the stars, is an inspiration when Harriet connects the concerto her sister Margaret is composing with  her own mathimatical research.
Side note:  Long before their were woman astronauts, there were women astronomers.  If it be not enought that the women did all the data processing, need it be mentioned that a woman, Mary Anna Palmer Draper, herself an astronomer, using her own inheritance, in 1886  donated money to the Harvard  College Observatory in order for her and her husband’s work  to photograph the spectra of stars to continue— that led to Leavitt’s discovery, which led to Hubble’s, which led to all of us to know there are universes beyond our own.  Silent Sky leads us to know more about how those discoveries came to be .

Ford’s Theatre, Washington DC to Feb. 23, 2020.

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