Murray got input from the Women and Gender Studies Department, along with consultation from the Physics Department about the astronomical aspect of the play. “We need to be inspired by the passion of these women to keep going, even though they had to struggle,” Murray said. Murray also said the lives that the main three “computers” led (Leavitt, Anna Cannon and Williamina Fleming) fits into contemporary women’s struggle to be equal. I wanted it to have some kind of message about history and what we can learn from these women.” “It has a really nice background that people can learn from it. “I saw it as a play with strong women characters,” Murray said. The Stage And Screen Arts Department chair was a costume designer and professor for over 20 years and has now directed her sixth play at UWRF in addition to her teaching duties. The characters are one of the biggest reasons that director Robin Murray chose the play to be performed this semester. The play by Lauren Gunderson details Leavitt’s journey from living with her family in Wisconsin to taking on a job as a volunteer at Harvard to study photo images of stars to determine their magnitude, or brightness. The play opened in the Blanche Davis Theatre this past weekend at UWRF and it continues this Thursday through Saturday. This male-dominated society is where the production of “Silent Sky” begins. Korenic is a professor of astronomy, and she said how it wasn’t until these female “computers” tracked the data that it became clear to most astronomers that there may be other galaxies beyond their own. They had to say, ‘This is my hearts desire and I will stay with it.” “But they just didn’t give up, and eventually they could prove themselves. “Science was not very kind to letting women in,” UWRF Physics professor Eileen Korenic said. However, she quickly finds out that she is stuck working as a human “computer,” with limited opportunities to give her theories or thoughts on the work she’s charting. In the play that portrays her life titled “Silent Sky,” Leavitt expects to be able to do more theoretical work and get involved charting the stars right away. She had moved with her family back to Beloit, Wisconsin after her loss of hearing but knew her calling was back at Harvard in one of the top observatories in the world. She attended college in Massachusetts but had a serious illness that left her severely deaf. 'Silent Sky shows how female astronomers found their voiceĭuring the first two decades of the 20th century, when American women were making their voices heard, Henrietta Leavitt was going deaf and becoming an unlikely trailblazer in discovering how expansive the universe truly is.
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