And yet another new opening for Essential Theatre playwright Lauren Gunderson: SILENT SKY at South Coast Repertory in California:

“She stared at the heavens, and what she saw there changed the course of astronomy. But when Henrietta Leavitt arrives at the Harvard Observatory in the early 1900s, she isn’t allowed to touch a telescope or even express an idea. Instead, she joins a group of women “computers,” charting the stars for an astronomer who calculates projects in “girl hours” and has no time for Henrietta’s probing theories. But as she measures the light of distant stars, she must also take the measure of her life on Earth, answer questions of love, family and the hope of heaven in this exquisite new play—an homage to the beauty of the Earth and the glory of the skies.”