Silent Sky by Lauren Gunderson

09/08/2025

When I read the script of Silent Sky for the first time, I was magically swept off my feet. I floated back to 1900 and flew through the 20 years this play travels through before I was gently, softly, led back to earth in my tiny New York apartment. I related to these women’s passion for their work and calling. Like Henrietta, I left a small town in pursuit of bigger opportunities and to learn more about the world and myself. I’ve gotten to travel for my work and constantly meet new and accomplished people, but I’ve also missed out on many birthdays, funerals, and family gatherings, and often lose track of which friends and family members I need to message back. I also grew up playing classical piano, and have yearned to get back to just sitting alone with my piano ever since I left home. And so I jumped at the opportunity to direct this piece and create a world where we could all rekindle our passions, our sense of possibility, our laughter and dreams.

While we are surrounded by so much powerlessness, erasure, and pain through what we can see on the news or experience in our day-to-day, I recall from my mentors and the artists and activists I admire that we must keep strong in our relentless determination, radical imagination, mutual aid, and community support in order to survive. Despite not being taken seriously as true astronomers, let alone not even allowed to touch a telescope, Willamina Fleming, Annie Jump Cannon, and Henrietta Leavitt tuned out the noise and leaned on each other. Their focused pursuit of knowledge, truth, and meaning in the stars ultimately unraveled everything thought to be factual about the universe at that time. With our fabulous team of artists, I sought to honor their legacy and embrace it as ours to continue here and today, especially as we perform this play only just a few blocks from where so much of the work actually happened.

It was also so astounding to realize just how many stars they mapped during their time, which brought me back to how I as a freelance theatre artist, am always figuring out work-life balance. Annie says in our play, “Time is persistent.” But what happens when we run out of time? How much time do we have left? What should we do with the time we have left?

Also like Henrietta, I ask myself these questions every day. I know many of us feel this way, balancing our personal goals with our obligations and duties to others. I don’t have any concrete answers, yet. But I’ve realized we should enjoy our time on earth as much as possible. We should sing and play music, eat with our loved ones, and, of course, take as many moments as possible to look up at the sky