How are you thinking like an artist (actor, designer, director) in new ways after seeing Silent Sky and talking with the producers? In what ways does this production assist your thinking about your own project? In what ways does this performance change your views about scientific discovery?
The Silent Sky production assisted the thinking for my own project by reinforcing the idea that connections can be found in two aspects of life that at first seem separated and incomparable. The analogies that helped the audience process the science behind the play were comforting and even relevant to my own project, from comparisons of the distance of stars to the keys on a piano to Henrietta’s own love life. My goal is to introduce party polarization with various senses that viewers can interact with in a multitude of ways. One of the goals of the theatre production, I found, was to bridge the gap between the dynamic and uncertain romantic lives humans have and the guaranteed, cold, and predictable facts of life such as physics and essentially everything that surrounds us. Henrietta’s profession covers the latter; her job revolved around the discovery and interpretation of objects that are very distant, just as Peter Shaw was distant during his cruise trip. These two people are both “afar but not apart”, in the same way Henrietta was distanced from the stars she was studying, but she had such a close connection to them that they were never “apart” or outside her mind.
I was taught many things about scientific discovery as well. As this play contained events that transpired over 100 years ago, I was exposed to the methods popular at the time for uncovering scientific data and noticed how rudimentary, novice-like, and arduous they were compared to the methods of today. No machines or computers existed that could make the process any easier, so human Computers were used instead in the painstaking process of categorization of cepheid stars and other astronomical objects. Still, despite this seemingly boring manual labor, Henrietta continues with a passion that is hard to find in people today’s world. It was her deep interest in finding out “where we are” that caused her years of effort and work at Harvard. Eventually, though, her work paid off with the discovery of cepheid stars as ideal objects to use for the purpose of distancing and therefore approaching a consensus for humanity’s exact location. This shows that it is often the case one (a scientist) wont achieve their dream for decades, if ever, and it is usually through the work that you feel your intellect deserves more than that you will be able to make connections that go into a realm of awareness beyond simple facts and numbers. I also learned that sciences like physics and astronomy, as mysterious as they were a century ago, represented much of the scientific initiative of thinkers in the early 20th century and are similar in a lot of ways to the initiatives of today’s time that one could argue are more biology-based. Seeing the very strong amounts of curiosity and wonder on the stage solidified the idea in my head that every century has specific areas of science that the people are most concerned with learning more about. The 1900’s are long gone, but it was fascinating to revisit some of its ideas that lead to the way we currently approach science. The underpinning of the 2oth century created a strong foundation for today’s rhetoric and scientific professionalism because the endeavors of scientists at the time were successful in uncovering the basic knowledge of an entire science (astronomy) and projecting their findings to the public when hardly anything was known beforehand. The efforts of people like Henrietta were monumental in creating a professional environment, and to make it more meaningful, Henrietta was a woman, breaking all stereotypes about what females were thought to be capable of. As it was common for them to wear corsets, work apart from men at places like Harvard, and be primarily concerned with searching for a good husband, Henrietta’s achievements set a precedent that would reverberate for decades to come.
One small observation I made is that Henrietta’s scientific milestones and contributions to the progression of scientific knowledge may have been examples of achievements by women that were so powerful, they aided greatly in the ability of women to finally vote not many years later after the 19th amendment was ratified. It was the burgeoning trend of females bringing meaningful work to society that could have partly explained the success of the ratification. Another observation I made, particularly while Henrietta was back home mourning the passing of her father, was that the problems almost everyone has to face in life are so insignificant compared to the majesty and scope of the universe. That is not to say these problems don’t matter, but getting a sense for the extreme contrast in size and seriousness was a prime attractive feature, and one of the more artistic aspects of the play for me. Henrietta was concerned about the meaning of her job, not being able to cruise with Shaw, and her sisters pregnancy, but all of these ills pale when put next to the immensity of the cosmos. It caused me to reflect on the fact that each and every problem I’ve encountered in the last 19 years is really only something I will keep in my memory and use for my benefit at a later time. There are rarely problems in life that plague us for the entirety of it; instead, they are often learning experiences and barriers to our enjoyment of a short life.
