Dramatic Action and Idea

Near and far. Human and Celestial. 

Perspective. Relativity.

Moving forward while looking back.

The play is about how we wrestle with things close to us and things far away---the science of the distant stars and the mysteries of the human heart.

Henrietta spends the first half of the play denying herself a human experience as the world keeps trying to insinuate itself into her life. While Henrietta obsesses on the faraway stars, the real human world keeps tempting her to come back to it---to participate with people, life, romance, and things close to her. Henrietta rebuffs each attempt. She even removes her hearing aid when examining the stars so that she can give herself over to the heavens and isolate herself from the human world. Henrietta sees romantic love, traditional values, etc. as restrictive and possibly frightening--- and she instinctively pulls away. She is not like her sister, Margaret, who is happily in touch with a traditional role: mother, church pianist, homemaker. Henrietta wants more out of life than the times currently offer women.  Ironically, it is her time at home and her sister’s music which provides Henrietta with the means to make her most important scientific discovery. This relationship between music and science and between sisters, one a pianist and one an astronomer, plants the seed for the direction of act 2. 

The second half of the play shows Henrietta trying to integrate the “near” and the “far”.  Although her romance with Peter never goes anywhere, the immediacy of Henrietta’s feelings for Peter have changed her forever. That, and the sudden realization of her life’s work leaves her rattled and on the verge of a change at the top of the act. On page 82 she wonders aloud “I may have forgotten to live” and this realization propels her into the next section of the play determined to experience the life she has denied herself in act 1. Months later, alone at sea under a blanket of stars, Henrietta writes to Margaret and confesses that “I used to think that to be truly alive I needed answers. I needed to know. But all this [the stars] does not in fact need to be known. We do.” Henrietta has finally come to the conclusion that understanding the mysteries close to her is just as important as understanding the faraway. 

The last section and the very end of the play is about the human need to leave something behind. Henrietta returns from her trip abroad with a cancer diagnosis and a fierce determination to complete her life’s work before time runs out. It is her only hope of leaving a legacy. Despite her accomplishments and acclaim she is still held at arms length by the male dominated scientific community and burdened by her failing body. In the last moments of the play Henrietta’s is taken to the great refractor telescope and the two worlds she has wrestled with throughout the play are brought together. The distant stars are presented to her failing body and time rightly bends. In the play, as in science, time becomes relative, elastic, and in the last few moments we are offered a glimpse of the far future where all of Henrietta’s efforts are affirmed and her legacy fulfilled.