TheatreWorks S I L I C O N
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FOR SCHOOLS
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INDIVIDUAL Anonymous (2) Toni Bassett Matty Bloom Joan Bowersock Stephen Carney Rebecca Carter Cheri Chapman Evelyn Comstock Frances Escherich Daniel Fourrier Alice Frayne Seth Leslie Bruce Lonie Russ Louthian Barbara McArthur Lewis Miller Guido Neels Sharon Perl Audrey Perlman Valerie Pierce Nancy Ruskin Judith Schwartz Frank Shifrin Debra Summers Lisa Walker Patricia Workman
"Because wonder will always get us there… those of us who insist that there is much more to come. And I do. I do." Henrietta, Act II, Scene III of Silent Sky
FRONT COVER: ELENA WRIGHT AS HENRIETTA LEAVITT IN SILENT SKY / PHOTO TRACY MARTIN ABOVE: HARVARD’S GREAT REFRACTOR TELESCOPE, CIRCA 1860
Table of Contents For Teachers and Students • For Teachers: Using this Study Guide 4 • For Students: The Role of the Audience 5
Exploring the Play • • • • • • • • • •
Silent Sky Plot Summary 6–8 Understanding Plot: Sequencing Events 9 Interview with Playwright Lauren Gunderson 10 The Real Henrietta Leavitt 11 When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer (by Walt Whitman) 12 For the Beauty of the Earth 13 Designing Silent Sky: An Interview with Set Designer Annie Smart 14 Henrietta and Her Cepheid Stars (video) 15 Word Detectives 16 Henrietta and Women’s Suffrage 17
Resources • STUDENT/Student Matinee Evaluation • TEACHER/Student Matinee Evaluation
ASTRONOMER EDWARD CHARLES PICKERING’S HARVARD “COMPUTERS”
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For Teachers The student matinee performance of Silent Sky will be held on February 6, 2014 at 11:00 am, at the Mountain View Center for Performing Arts. The production is approximately 2 hours, with one 15 minute intermission. The performance will be followed by a discussion with actors from the show. Student audiences are often the most rewarding and demanding audiences that an acting ensemble can face. Since we hope every show at TheatreWorks will be a positive experience for both audience and cast, we ask you to familiarize your students with the theatre etiquette described on the “For Students” pages.
How to use this Study Guide This guide is arranged in worksheets. Each worksheet or reading may be used independently or in conjunction with others to serve your educational goals. Together, the worksheets prepare students for the workshops, as well as seeing the student matinee of Silent Sky produced by TheatreWorks, and for discussing the performance afterwards. Throughout the guide you will see several symbols:
Means “Photocopy Me!” Pages with this symbol are meant to be photocopied and handed directly to students.
Means “English Language Arts.” Pages with this symbol feature lessons that are catered to California State English Language Arts standards.
Means “Theatre Arts.” Pages with this symbol feature lessons that are catered to California State Theatre Arts standards.
Means “Social Studies.” Pages with this symbol feature lessons that are catered to California State Social Studies standards.
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The Role of the Audience All the work that goes into a production would mean nothing if there wasn’t an audience for whom to perform. As the audience, you are also a part of the production, helping the actors onstage tell the story. When the performance is about to begin, the lights will dim. This is a signal for the actors and the audience to put aside concerns and conversation and settle into the world of the play. The performers expect the audience’s full attention and focus. Performance is a time to think inwardly, not a time to share your thoughts aloud. Talking to neighbors (even in whispers) carries easily to others in the audience and to the actors on stage. It is disruptive and distracting. Food is not allowed in the theatre. Soda, candy, and other snacks are noisy and, therefore, distracting. Please keep these items on the bus or throw them away before you enter the audience area. Backpacks are also not allowed in the theatre. Walking through the aisles during the performance is extremely disruptive. Actors occasionally use aisles and stairways as exits and entrances. The actors will notice any movement in the performance space. Please use the restroom and take care of all other concerns outside before the show. Cell phones and other electronic devices must be turned off before the performance begins. Do not text during the performance, as it is distracting to the audience members around you.
What to bring with you: Introspection Curiosity Questions Respect An open mind What to leave behind: Judgments Cell phones, etc. Backpacks Food Attitude
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It is around the year 1900 in the late evening. We find ourselves outside of a rural church on a cold day in Lancaster, Massachusetts. Henrietta Leavitt is looking at the emerging stars, pondering a job offer from the famous Harvard Observatory. Her sister, Margaret, pelts her with a snowball and tries to convince her to come inside to church where their father is leading the service. Henrietta breaks the news about her job offer, and this makes Margaret sad. “It’s a changing world,” she tells Henrietta, “And some things should be sacred. And I’m not saying you shouldn’t go—you should go—you must —but you are so much. To me. And I worry. It’s far away that place, and it’s crowded, and you’re still here in my sight and I worry.” It’s clear that the sisters adore each other and that this separation will be hard on them. Henrietta asks Margaret to help her break the news to their father and also to ask him for her dowry. Because Henrietta doesn’t want to get married and wants more than anything to study the stars, she hopes to use her dowry to help her get to Harvard. Margaret agrees to help her. When Henrietta tries to convince Margaret to come with her and to study music at Radcliffe College (Harvard’s all-female sister college), Margaret reveals that her beau Samuel has asked her to marry him and that she intends to accept. The Harvard Observatory! Henrietta is eager to get started and to meet her boss, Dr. Pickering. She meets her supervisor, a young Peter Shaw, who insists on giving her an orientation. It turns out that Henrietta won’t be allowed near the gorgeous telescope, and that women in the department are limited in their job duties. The astronomers (all men) take pictures of the sky and give the photographic plates to the “girls” who count the stars on the plates. Henrietta is disappointed, and outsmarts Peter on several occasions with her wry sense of humor. When she asks Peter why the department consists of only women, he tells her, “Pickering got fed up with the boys he was sent and said—really said this—that his housekeeper could do better, so he hired her. And she did better. Now it’s quite a women’s… world… up here.” Lastly, Peter tells Henrietta that she will make 25 cents an hour, which Henrietta considers
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ELENA WRIGHT / PHOTO TRACY MARTIN
Silent Sky Plot Summary
“volunteering.” She makes a last plea to be able to study the stars and contribute to the research in a more meaningful way, but Peter tells her that her work counting the stars is meaningful and important in its own way. Next we meet Henrietta’s colleagues, Annie Cannon and Williamina Fleming. Williamina, a boisterous Scottish woman, instantly likes Henrietta. Annie Cannon, the head of the department, isn’t sure about Henrietta and her eagerness to conduct research. Annie tells Henrietta, “We are mapping the entire sky. If doing what has never been done before sounds unimportant to you, uninspired? I’d leave before you are asked to. Otherwise, show some respect.” We learn that Williamina used to be Annie’s boss until Annie discovered a new way of coding the stars by temperature, and that she created an acronym for this labeling process, “OBAFGKM” which can be remembered using the phrase, “Oh be a fine girl, kiss me.” Henrietta is quite star-struck. She learns that her official title in the Girls Department is “Computer”—the women compute the stars: “notate the plates, transfer the data, process, record, next star.” As time passes (approximately a year), we see Henrietta, Annie, and Williamina hard at work in their department, cataloguing the stars out loud. Interspersed with these work scenes are letters from Margaret to Henrietta. Margaret updates Henrietta on all the family news in Lancaster, including fact& that pregnant and Hayden Tee, Maureen the McVerry, Mindyshe Lym /is Photo by Tracy Martin
Plot Summary, continued eventually has a son. It seems that Henrietta is missing out on a lot of family news because of her work. Margaret
She leaves, and Peter arrives. What follows is a romantic and awkward conversation in which it becomes clear
asks her if she received a book that their father sent and asks her if she intends to come home for Christmas.
that Peter likes Henrietta, and Henrietta likes Peter. He asks her to leave with him on an ocean liner the next
Henrietta is distracted by an exciting discovery that she is making. She tells Annie and Williamina, “I put together
day. He’s about to embark on a trip to Europe where he will meet some of the greatest minds in science. Henri-
a simple comparative that lets me analyze the plates quickly. The same starfield at different times—and you can see that some of the stars are much brighter. And I’m seeing them in most of the plates. Now if these are true Cepheids, and if there are as many of them as I’m starting to see, it could be a big clue.” Annie agrees to let Henrietta continue her research in the department at night.
etta resists at first because she doesn’t want to leave her research and her work at Harvard. Her stars are so important to her. Peter argues that the stars will always be there. The Harvard Observatory fades into a beautiful ocean liner on the sea—gorgeous stars above. They dance. However, Margaret shatters the dream with a telegram telling Henrietta that their father has had a stroke and pleaing for her to come home. Henrietta tells Peter she can’t run away from him and encourages him to go to Europe without her. They agree to find each other again when Peter returns from his voyage.
It is morning around the year 1905. Henrietta is asleep at her desk—it seems she's been up all night working on her research. Peter and Williamina enter. Peter is very curious about what she’s been working on. Henrietta tells him about her research tracking the Cepheid stars and that she’s observed a huge number of these stars— last night alone she counted two hundred of them. She leaves to take a nap in the file room while Williamina, Annie, and Peter discuss a new paper that’s rattling the scientific community. Albert Einstein has written a paper about the theory of relativity, and his ideas indicate that the universe is far larger than anyone ever believed. Peter is both anxious and thrilled by the ideas in this paper, “The idea that there could be galaxies as big as ours? Outside of ours? That the universe is that large? No!” The potential vastness of the universe is mind-boggling. Later, Annie and Williamina have fun teasing Henrietta about the fact that Peter has a crush on her. Henrietta doesn’t know what to make of this—she didn’t realize that Peter had been flirting with her for months now. Henrietta is working alone at night, crying at her desk. Without the assistance of her hearing aid, she doesn’t hear Annie sneak into the office until Annie bumps into a table. They chat briefly, and Henrietta confides in Annie that she feels close to making a discovery but that she still has so much work to do. Annie encourages her to keep going, to keep searching, and that her “chance” to make a mark in this man’s world is close.
Henrietta returns to the Leavitt home where an overwhelmed Margaret greets her. Their father can’t move or do anything for himself, and her husband, Sam, has hurt his leg. Margaret is exhausted and upset with all the work that needs to be done and by the prospect of losing her father. Henrietta attempts to do some star work, and that infuriates Margaret. Things are tense. We learn that Margaret has written letters to their father pretending to be Henrietta, because Henrietta has been too busy to write him herself. Henrietta realizes she has neglected her family and writes to Annie, Williamina, and Dr. Pickering to let them know that she won’t be able to return to the Observatory as soon as she had hoped. She asks them to send her work to do from home. Next, we hear letters exchanged between Henrietta and Peter (who is travelling the world). The letters are affectionate at first, but Peter gradually grows more and more distant. We learn that Henrietta’s father has passed away, and that she’s remained at home with her sister to help take care of things. We then see Henrietta surrounded by her star plates while Margaret plays the piano. Margaret teases Henrietta about romance and gets her to talk about her romance with Peter; a romance that Henrietta realizes has ended. Margaret tells Henrietta that she should return to the Observatory, and a delighted Henrietta asks her to play
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something on the piano. It seems Margaret has been composing a symphony, and begins to play. As she plays, Henrietta has a breakthrough—the music helps
ing letters to scientists who are using her great discoveries but who do not credit her: “I write and write and no one answers. These men, colleagues, all using my
her see a pattern, that the blinking of the Cepheid stars is tonal, like notes in a song. She immediately writes to Annie and Williamina with her discovery.
work, but they won’t let me near it. Useless. Helpless.” Annie and Williamina arrive with news that Henrietta has been promoted to Head of Stella Photometry— everyone has been promoted. Peter arrives having run from the university—he followed Annie and Williamina to Henrietta's house, because he didn't know where Henrietta had moved. He tells her that a Danish scientist has used her findings to prove that "there are things outside our galaxy.” It appears that the stars that Henrietta has been studying are thousands and thousands of light years away and that there could be many other galaxies out there. He gives her the book that her father sent her but that she never opened out of guilt—it's a book of poetry by Walt Whitman. One poem, "When I Heard The Learn'd Astronomer," is marked. Henrietta is shocked that her father would send her poetry and realizes that he loved her and was deeply proud of her. Margaret, Annie, Williamina, and Peter decide that they need to celebrate all of this
An ocean liner on a gorgeous night. We watch a romantic moment between Henrietta and Peter who are very much in love. The ocean liner dissolves into the reality of the Harvard Obersvatory where Henrietta is working. She and Peter talk, and it becomes clear that Peter is being cold and distant with her. After a tense conversation in which we learn that Henrietta’s paper on the Cepheid stars has been published and in which Peter dismisses her contributions to the Observatory, we learn that Peter is married. Williamina tries to cheer Henrietta up and Annie returns from a Suffragette protest—she’s been working hard to fight for women’s right to vote, something that Peter calls “trouble.” It is clear Henrietta is heartbroken by the news of Peter’s marriage. She attends a lecture he is giving and realizes that he is preaching something he doesn’t believe in: “It is my judgment, that the universe is exactly the same thing as our galaxy. There is nothing greater and nowhere else. How could there be? To even consider that would mean that these stars are thousands of light years away.” Henrietta corners Peter later, and it becomes clear that Peter is heartbroken and deeply loves her. He tells her that his father forced him to marry someone when he returned from Europe. Henrietta tells him she’s leaving on an ocean liner to see the world and to please, “Send more sky.” Henrietta on an ocean liner -- for real this time. She writes to Margaret telling her about the incredible sky and the incredible trip she’s having. She tells her she’s coming home. A week later, an excited Margaret, Annie, and Williamina greet her at the dock. However, Henrietta is very sick with stomach pains. Margaret insists on taking care of her. Years later, around 1918, Henrietta wrapped in a blanket, sits with Margaret. We learn that Henrietta is sick with ovarian cancer and that Margaret is taking care of her in an apartment near the university. She keeps writ-
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great news—they break into the observatory to gaze into the huge telescope at night. Henrietta gazes into her heaven. Boom. Henrietta is on an ocean liner. She tells us that the next year Annie wins the vote and the famous scientist Hubble uses her research on Cepheid stars to prove that our galaxy is one of billions. A man from Sweden calls to offer Henrietta the Nobel Prize, unaware that she has passed away. Henrietta tells us that a few years later Williamina dies. World War I begins, and Annie dies soon after. Annie and Williamina join Henrietta on the ocean liner. Then Peter and Margaret die, and they join her on the ocean liner too. The stars begin to take over the whole world, as Henrietta becomes a star herself.
Understanding Plot: Sequencing Events Silent Sky is a story that jumps in and out of reality at times. Read the plot summary and underline the six most important events in the story. Then number them 1-6 and assign them to a box. Draw a small picture of the event in the box and write a description in the lines below the boxes. Bonus exercise: Highlight in yellow moments in the play when there is a shift in reality. Then illustrate each of these moments in the order in which they happen.
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Interview with Playwright Lauren Gunderson TheatreWorks: How did you first hear about Henrietta Leavitt? What was it about her that spoke to you? Lauren Gunderson: I've always been drawn to tell stories of science. My earliest plays were about Isaac Newton and Leonardo Da Vinci as young men. But then I saw the inherent drama of women in science, who have it twice as hard (which means twice the drama). I found Henrietta's story by chance while perusing the stalls of used books in New York. There isn't that much known of her, but what is known is that in 1912 this unassuming but meticulous and curious woman gave the flagging field of astronomy the ingredient it needed to leap into the future. Without her finding a pattern in Cepheid stars, great astronomers like Shapley and Hubble wouldn't have shown us how huge and fast-moving our universe is. I went to Cambridge to visit Henrietta before the premiere of the play in 2011 and got to see her handwritten notes, the glass photographic plates she used, and her grave. This is going to sound crazy but I stood there at her grave and said, "Thank you for letting me borrow your story. I promise I'll take care of it." TW: The music for Silent Sky is composed for the show by Jenny Giering. Why did you choose to make all the music hymnal? LG: This play invites a conversation about science and faith which is dually represented by the astronomer Henrietta and her devout sister Margaret. I wanted the music to help bridge the two perspectives, and this hymn, "For The Beauty Of The Earth," does that for me. Its sound is very liturgical but its lyrics are sprinkled with naturalism. I grew up going to church in Decatur,
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Georgia, and singing this hymn. My grandmother loved it, and we even sang it at her funeral. It's a beautiful song no matter what you believe about god. The rest of the music invites another synergy, one that is found between math and music. Henrietta's key discovery takes a musical form at some point and finding that synchronicity fell to our brilliant composer Jenny Giering. Jenny and I met at TheatreWorks actually! [Silent Sky Director] Meredith McDonough brought us together for a project here and we just caught on like fire. Not only is Jenny a sublime talent whose songs have a grace and emotional taproot that has always impressed me, but also she's a nerd like me. Jenny, who went to Harvard and grew up in Boston, was the only person who knew who Henrietta was before I had to explain. She was a perfect choice to help capture the romance of this story as well as the physics. TW: Do you feel that you, like Henrietta, are "a woman in a man's world"? LG: I would not compare myself to Henrietta and her colleagues. Theirs was a real struggle. The truth is that I, like Henrietta, am surrounded by incredible women (and men) who make me better at what I do (Meredith McDonough, our director, is an example). In American Theatre as a whole I am most concerned with women's stories being told as much as men's stories, which is more lacking than you'd expect. Roles for women are often fewer than for men, which means that complex female stories are fewer too. (Although this year the number of roles for women at TheatreWorks topped men's!) And a story that focuses on women is often characterized as a "woman's play" while one that is male-focused is just called a play. But a woman's life is a human one, and her story is just as profound, visceral, and compelling as a man's. And in the end we're trying to tell universal stories. Watch and listen to Lauren Gunderson talk about the real Henrietta Leavitt here: http://vimeo.com/21620013
The Real Henrietta Leavitt Henrietta Swan Leavitt was a real astronomer born on the Fourth of July in 1868 and who lived to be 53 years old. Many of the details about Henrietta in Silent Sky are based on real biographical facts. She attended Radcliffe College, Harvard's sister school at the time, and went to work at the Harvard College Observatory in 1893. There, she worked as a "computer," counting images on photographic plates. Through her work as a computer, Henrietta made some huge discoveries about Cepheid stars. These discoveries formed the basis for the pivotal work of astronomer Edwin Hubble. Henrietta Leavitt discovered over 2,400 stars during her time at Harvard—almost half of the known total of stars at that time. She was promoted to head of stellar photometry in 1921, but she sadly died of ovarian cancer later that year. Swedish mathematician Gösta Mittag-Leffler, not knowing that she had passed, considered nominating her for the 1926 Nobel Prize in Physics. Unfortunately, the Nobel Prize cannot be awarded posthumanously, so Henrietta Leavitt would not be awarded the prize.
Annie Jump Cannon (1863–1941) was an astronomer who was instrumental in developing a way to classify the stars. She invented a system of classification which she called O.B.A.F.G.K.M., or "Oh Be a Fine Girl, Kiss Me."
Williamina Fleming (1857–1911) was a Scottish astronomer who worked at the Harvard Observatory identifying and cataloguing thousands of stars. She is known for her discovery of the Horsehead Nebula in 1888.
CONNECTION: Henrietta, like other women of her time, was in the midst of an uphill battle fighting for womens’ rights. Her role as an astronomer was rather unusual at the time. Break into groups and discuss the following: Henrietta attended college. How many women or what percentage of women do you think were studying in college between 1870 and 1900? How do you think Henrietta and her colleagues dealt with being thought of as “computers” and simply counting stars? Do you think they were okay with that concept? What do you think the general society thought of women in the “workforce” in the 1890s to early 1900s?
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When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer By Walt Whitman
When I heard the learn'd astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.
CONNECTION:
WALT WHITMAN IN 1887
• Who do you think is the speaker in this poem? How would you describe him or her? • What effect does the "learn'd astronomer" have on the speaker? • What kinds of imagery do we see in this poem? • Why do you think Henrietta's father sent her a book of poetry by Walt Whitman with this poem marked? Why do you think he wanted Henrietta to read this poem in particular? • Who was Walt Whitman? • What are "the proofs, the figures" that the speaker mentions? • Why do you think the speaker becomes tired and sick?
ACTIVITY: Choose one of the following: • Draw, paint, or sketch a version of this poem. What does the speaker look like? What moment would you capture? • If you were to create a short film based on this poem, what would you show? What would your film consist of? • What piece of music do you think best captures the spirit of this poem? Identify or create a piece of music that you feel best reflects the world of this poem.
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For the Beauty of the Earth WALT WHITMAN IN 1887
"For the Beauty of the Earth" is a Christian hymn written in 1864 by Folliott S. Pierpoint. Throughout Silent Sky we hear Margaret sing and play this song as she practices for her father's church service. In fact, it weaves its way throughout the play, as scenes transition from one to another. Read the lyrics of the hymn and answer the questions about it.
For the beauty of the earth, For the beauty of the skies, For the love which from our birth Over and around us lies, Lord of all, to thee we raise This our grateful hymn of praise. For the beauty of each hour Of the day and of the night, Hill and vale, and tree and flower, Sun and moon and stars of light, Lord of all, to thee we raise This our grateful hymn of praise. For the joy of human love, Brother, sister, parent, child, Friends on earth, and friends above, Pleasures pure and undefiled, Lord of all, to thee we raise This our grateful hymn of praise. For each perfect gift of thine, To our race so freely given, Graces human and divine, Flowers of earth and buds of heaven, Lord of all, to thee we raise This our grateful hymn of praise. For thy Church which evermore Lifteth holy hands above, Offering up on every shore Her pure sacrifice of love, Lord of all, to thee we raise This our grateful hymn of praise.
OCEAN LINER AT NIGHT
CONNECTION: • What is this hymn about? • Why do you think Margaret loves this hymn so much? • What is the relationship between faith and science in this play?
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Designing Silent Sky An Interview with Set Designer Annie Smart TheatreWorks: What was the process of designing the set of Silent Sky like?
TW: What was the biggest challenge of making the Silent Sky set come to life?
Annie Smart: Conceptually the design came together fairly easily as the play is not naturalistic. Time and place move around as needed and inferred by Henrietta's thoughts and life events, so that allows for a more poetic design response. The stage is never the best place for kitchen-sink realism (our audience is sat there, in close proximity to the structures, with a couple of hours to spend on seeing the joins, the short-cuts and the fakery) so being able to make broader, reverberative visual statements is always going to be more successful. At the same time this play is rooted in some very real and fascinating historical events, so the research was very important, and photographs of the day and the people and places concerned gave me a great deal of wonderful material to draw on.
AS: The math. I'm a scenographer and not an engineer so figuring out how the dome structure would hold itself together correctly was a big headache for me! Also the lighting. Paul Toben, who designed the lighting, has to be able to point lights at the actors from several different directions, including up from the floor. Finding ways to give him those essential opportunities with a wraparound set took the most time.
TW: What is your favorite part of the Silent Sky set? AS: The whole thing. It is an office, a parlor, an astronomical observatory and an old cruise-ship's deck all interwoven together.
TW: The play offers some very specific notes about what the set should look like, but there is a lot left up to the designer's imagination too. How did you go about combining Ms. Gunderson's direction with your own imagination? AS: I always ignore all stage directions on my first reading of any play. It was how I was taught. The words the actors speak are the main priority. One should read a play seeing how much and of what those spoken words paint a picture and then develop your design from that knowledge. It's not the designer's job to illustrate but to support. The trick lies in figuring out how best to support the actor for every show.
SET MODEL BY ANNIE SMART
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Henrietta and Her Cepheid Stars Watch this video about Henrietta and her research of Cepheid variables, and answer the following questions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9gvk_OkrPw#t=205
CONNECTION: • What are Cepheid stars? • What are Cepheid variables? • What did 19th century sailors in the southern hemisphere report seeing in the night sky? • What happened when a star was brighter on a photographic plate? What happened when a star looked faded on a photographic plate? • What pattern did Henrietta begin to notice?
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Word Detectives As you watch the performance of Silent Sky, you may come across vocabulary words or terms that you aren't familiar with. Jot down these words as you watch, and complete this Word Detective worksheet after the performance is over.
Sentence where I found the word
Part of speech
Context clue
Context clue
WORD
My own sentence
My own definition
A picture that will remind me of what this word means to me
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Henrietta and Women’s Suffrage 1890: American Woman Suffrage Association and National Woman Suffrage Association merge into the National American Woman Suffrage Association January 25, 1887: The United States Senate voted on woman suffrage for the first time—and also the last time in 25 years 1893: Henrietta began work at Harvard College Observatory 1908: Henrietta first published her data, noting a pattern in variable stars May 4, 1912: Women marched up Fifth Avenue in New York City, demanding the vote 1912: Henrietta published a full paper documenting her Period-Luminosity relationship 1913: Ejnar Hertzsprung used Henrietta’s fining to measure distance to cepheids within the Milky Way April 1917: The United States government declared war against Germany—WWI June 1917: Arrests began of Suffrage pickets at the White House January 10, 1918: House of Representatives passed the Anthony Amendment but the Senate failed to pass it Nov 1918: WWI ended May 21, 1919: United States House of Representatives passed the Anthony Amendment again June 4, 1919: United States Senate approved the Anthony Amendment 1920: Henrietta made head of Stellar Photometry August 26, 1920: United States Secretary of State signed the Anthony (19th) Amendment into law. Dec 12, 1921: Henrietta died of ovarian cancer 1923–24: Edwin Hubble measured Cepheids in the Andromeda Galaxy proving that the universe is far bigger than the Milky Way 1926: Unaware of her death four years prior, the Swedish mathematician Gösta Mittag-Leffler considered nominating Henrietta for the 1926 Nobel Prize in Physics.
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Student Matinees/STUDENT Feedback Name____________________________________Grade_____________School_________________________________________ Performance Tasks based CA State theatre arts standards Select and complete one of the following activities:
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Rewrite the ending of the play. How would you like to see it end? Why?
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Pick a moment in the play that affected you. Describe the stage elements that created that moment for you (the script, acting, lighting, music, costumes, set design, sound design and/or direction).
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Write a review of the play or an actor.
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Describe something you would change in the production. Describe what benefit that change would create in the production and why.
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Identify and describe how this production might affect the values and behavior of the audience members who have seen it.
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Write about any careers you learned about in attending this production (example: stage hands, set designers, actors, etc.).
Assessment Survey No
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STUDENT evaluation (cont)
Finish the following statements: The most important thing I learned from this play was: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Besides getting out of school, the best thing about attending this student matinee is: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Learning through the theatre is different from my regular class because: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ If I could change something about attending a student matinee, I would: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I'm going to use what I learned, saw, or experienced by: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Student Matinee/TEACHER Evaluation Name_____________________________________________________________________School___________________________
Please rate your Student Matinee experience below:
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Planning I received sufficient and timely information from TheatreWorks before the matinee
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Matinee Workshops Supported other curriculum areas/subjects
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Engaged students' interest and attention
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I would like to learn how to lead more of these kinds of activities on my own in the classroom
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The experience was valuable to my students' education
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The "Performance Tasks" were useful in helping my students understand their experience
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I would be interested in bringing more drama related activities into my classroom
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TEACHER Evaluation (cont) For your classrooms please list the strengths of watching a student matinee. _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ In terms of your teaching, did this particular Student Matinee give you any arts integration ideas for your curriculum? _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ We are very interested in your feedback. What worked for you about this experience? _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ What did not work for you? _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ Additional Comments: _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ TheatreWorks student matinees tend to fill up quickly. Information about next season will be available in February—keep us updated with your current contact information to receive show announcements and booking information. Also, let us know if you have friends who would like to be added to our mailing lists!