SUNY Oswego’s Theatre Department will open its season with a production of “Silent Sky.” which follows astronomer Henrietta Leavitt in the 19th century and her groundbreaking discovery of calculating the size of the universe using Cepheid variable stars.

The play will open Oct. 15 in Tyler Hall’s Waterman Theatre, and will run through Oct. 19.

Chelli Lopez, playing the main role of Leavitt, has really connected with Henrietta as a character. 

“I kind of just have to find little things that we can relate on,” Lopez said.  “At the base of it all, we're both women. We  definitely had to struggle to get to where we were. Like … being a woman in a male-dominated field. Me just being a person of color in such a crazy world now, like just kind of finding anything that me and her can relate to and then just exploring that deeper and bringing it alive.”

“Silent Sky” is a period piece and the cast and crew is working hard through research to keep the story accurate, said director and theatre professor Jonel Langenfeld. 

Roni Monroe Smith, student head costume/makeup designer, noted where the inspiration came from in preserving authentic pieces. Smith took inspiration from one of the characters in the show, Annie Cannon, who was part of the suffrage movement. 

“[Annie] is a part of the Bloomer movement,” Smith said. “It's this phenomenon in the 1910s and '20s where these women just started wearing pantsuits. So we're playing around with a short coat, a skirt and then bloomers and kind of doing a Frankenstein of Dr. Mary Walker and Suffragette look.”

Walker, an internationally acclaimed 19th-century resident of nearby Oswego Town, was renowned for her revolutionary championing of pants, such as bloomers, for women.

Learning history

The cast and crew also had fun and learned a lot working on the historical aspects of “Silent Sky.” 

“I think it's always fun to work on, like, a period piece,” Ariana Palmer, who plays Cannon, said. “It's sort of like weird time traveling in a way. Once we started doing rehearsal pieces, it's so fun to be corsets and pretend it's 1905.” 

The play has only five characters. Langenfeld noted how this is impactful to the cast.

“This is a small cast, which we are trying to give our students experience with. It’s not always going to be 40 people,” Langenfeld said. “I am excited to work with a smaller cast, to really get more in depth with character development and things like that.”

The cast also said that they have become very comfortable with one another. “I think especially because this is a five-person show, I've definitely connected with everyone on a deeper level,” Lopez said. “It's become quite, for lack of a better word, intimate with each other and how we operate and run things.”

“Silent Sky” has music and an original score, Langenfeld said. Henrietta’s sister Margaret Leavitt, played by Faith Wilk, was a composer and her work is in the show. 

The musical elements “raise the stakes” and are extremely impactful to the story, Wilk said. “The lines [of the hymn] that Lauren Gunnerson, the playwright, selected are very relevant to what has just happened [in the show].”

“Silent Sky” highlights the women who pushed for women to get more recognized in society and their work in science, Lopez said. “Without these women making a risk in their lives and jobs, risking their livelihood, their money and their passions, we wouldn't have gotten to where we are today.”

Cameron Humphrey, playing Peter Shaw, said that character is a representation of men at that time, encompassing “the good, the bad and the evil, of how men did treat women who were pursuing astronomy.” 

The play also involves scientific discoveries, such as how pulsating Cepheid variable stars can serve as markers for studying the age and size of the universe.

Langenfeld mentioned how stories like Leavitt’s help tell the story of all women. “As a storyteller, it’s not just about those women who have achieved bigger things or more public or well-known things but for the everyday person,” Langenfeld said. 

“Silent Sky” will have 7:30 p.m. curtains on Oct. 15, 16 and 18; 2 p.m. matinees on Oct. 17 and 18; and a special 10 a.m. senior citizen matinee on Oct. 17.

Tickets, available via the SUNY Oswego Box Office, are free for SUNY Oswego students. General public tickets are $10, with tickets for youth (ages 3 to 12) and senior citizens costing $5.

-- Written by Natalie Glosek of the Class of 2026