Time for a play. Why? Because I went to a play today, a nice Sunday afternoon matinee. A play about a woman. An amazing woman who did amazing things that changed astronomy and laid the groundwork for much of the knowledge of the stars. Her name? Henrietta Swann Leavitt. She was one of the Harvard computers, a group of underpaid women who catalogued the stars. She worked with Annie Jump Cannon who developed the star classification system we still use. These were amazing women, doing amazing things, and the play inspired me to write a play.. Why? Because the playwright found it necessary to change Leavitt’s life, to give her a love interest. To write a man into this story about an amazing woman. This isn’t the first incidence I’ve seen where a playwright decides an amazing woman needs a man to make her interesting. So here, some incredible women from history discuss the way their lives are treated onstage. I imagine there are more, but these are the ones I’ve found so far.

 REWRITING HISTORY

A play in one act

 CAST:

HENRIETTA LEAVITT                   Early 20th century Harvard computer
ÉMILIE DU CHâTELET                 18 century philosopher and mathematician
HYPATIA                                          5th century philosopher, astronomer, mathematician
EMMA DARWIN                              19th century; wife of Charles Darwin

PLACE:                      Wherever we go when we die – if anywhere
TIME:                         Early 21st century

SCENE:          Comfortable lounge, drinks, snacks. LEAVITT and du CHâTELET are    having drinks and chatting. Leavitt is reading.

LEAVITT:  So, she told me someone wrote a play about me. I thought, no, I wasn’t that important. But she was right.

du CHâTELET: can I see? (Flips through book) I had two plays written about me. I didn’t like either one particularly.

LEAVITT: Did they give you a love interest you didn’t have in life?

du CHâTELET: No, just Voltaire. Almost everyone who writes about me is more interested in Voltaire.

LEAVITT: Look at this. The author gave me Annie Cannon’s deafness, and a love interest. Ridiculous. My only love interest was Cepheid variables and the small Magellanic cloud.

du CHâTELET: One of the plays about me concluded that the most important thing I did was have my daughter, the one who married a Frenchman and history doesn’t even remember. She made up a whole life…and a line of descent…for my daughter, then had her descendent act as a surrogate for a couple of rich folks who couldn’t have a baby, so my most important accomplishment…was having the daughter who supposedly had a child who had a child who…well, you get the picture.

(HYPATIA of Alexandria enters, accepts a drink, and sits.)

HYPATIA: So what’s our topic today? Philosophy? Math? Astronomy?

du CHâTELET: Drama. Plays.

HYPATIA: Oh, good. Shakespeare? Or maybe Caryl Churchill? I think I like her the best.

LEAVITT: Plays about us. Has anyone written a play about you?

HYPATIA: Oh, I don’t like to talk about it. I made the mistake of reading a play someone wrote about me. It’s considered clever.

LEAVITT: Aren’t they always? Sounds like you didn’t like it.

HYPATIA: The playwright gives little time to my awful death, or my actual life, and has me living into the far future from when I did live. And…he gave me a… (shudders) …boyfriend.

LEAVITT: See? That’s what we’re talking about! The play about me gave me a boyfriend, and an insufferable ass at that.

du CHâTELET: In real life?

LEAVITT: I didn’t know him in real life; I guess she made him up.

HYPATIA: When I was alive, I avoided suitors. They came around a lot; some people said I was beautiful. I didn’t care. I was married to mathematics, and didn’t need a man.

du CHâTELET: You were lucky, both of you. I always lived in the shadow of Voltaire, and he wasn’t even my husband. He was just a man I lived with while my husband was away.

LEAVITT: Seriously?

du CHâTELET: Don’t be so priggish! I’m French, you know.

HYPATIA: Why did I need to have a boyfriend in the play? What did it add? An encumbrance. Dead wood. I kept suitors away when I was alive by showing them my menstrual rag…only to be burdened with a lover after I died.

LEAVITT: You were pretty bold…both of you. But you’re right, men do tend to drag us down, and stand in our light…my life was about light. I discovered how to measure light and heat of objects far away from Earth…and all my work was given to men to use. I wasn’t allowed to follow up at all. They knew we were capable, that’s why they hired us…that, and they could get away with paying us almost nothing. We do the work, and they take the credit.

du CHâTELET: It’s almost like women are nothing without men. If a man doesn’t choose us, we are spinsters, old maids, miserable and useless. I married someone who was chosen for me; I was luckier than many. He was kind.

HYPATIA: Do they do that to men?

du CHâTELET: Not usually. Of course, most of the men in history had wives. That’s how they became great…they had someone to cook and clean for them and take care of them so they could devote their lives to work. So they don’t have to invent women for them.

LEAVITT: I haven’t seen anyone invent a wife…or girlfriend…for Isaac Newton. He was single, just like me, and that was fine.

(EMMA DARWIN enters.)

DARWIN: Oh, am I late? I do so hate it when I’m late. And I really don’t have any excuse. I just…forgot.

HYPATIA: That’s okay, Emma. We’re just talking about men…and women…who write plays about us and add men to our stories.

DARWIN: Yeah, I hate when that happens.

LEAVITT: It happened to you? But…you had a man, right? Charles Darwin?

DARWIN: Of course. Any plays written about me are actually about him…I’m just scenery. But even scenery has to be sexual if female. So one play where I appeared depicted me having an affair immediately after Charles died. As if I would do that! He was my world.

du CHâTELET: An affair?

DARWIN: While Charles was still on stage…he was a ghost, but he talked to me, and I talked to him. Also ludicrous, but an affair?

LEAVITT: Was it someone you knew? It might be actionable.

HYPATIA: I imagine the statute of limitations has passed. Charles Darwin died more than a century ago.

DARWIN: It was…someone I knew…but not in that way. Never! Me or Him…it was Jesus.

du CHâTELET: Jesus? You’re fucking kidding, right?

DARWIN: I wish I was…

HYPATIA: We need to do something…something…spectacular. Show how unhappy we are about rewriting our lives to add men…or…gods…

LEAVITT: What can we do? We’re dead.

DARWIN: That puts us in the perfect position.

du CHâTELET: How? Now I’m interested.

DARWIN: Since we’re dead, there is nothing they can do to us.

LEAVITT: I’m not sure they could do anything worse than they’ve already done…s

DARWIN: Exactly. They might vandalize our graves, but so what? That doesn’t hurt us. We won’t even feel it.

du CHâTELET: So what’s your idea?

DARWIN: It’s so easy, I’m surprised none of you thought of it. You’re all brilliant, mathematics, philosophy, astronomy…I spent my life taking care of Charles and raising our children.

HYPATIA (impatient): Yes, yes. Let’s hear the idea.

DARWIN: We’re dead, right? We can do this the old fashioned way. We haunt them!

du CHâTELET: I like it. Hand me a sheet.

HYPATIA: Seems a little…mild.

DARWIN: Living humans are terrified of the dead. It’ll scare them honest.

LEAVITT: I say we do it. Starting tonight. By the way, does anyone know what year it is?

du CHâTELET: Somewhere in the 21st century, I think. What if they’re too sophisticated for ghosts?

DARWIN: They’re not. Here, look at this. (thumbs a smart phone) These are some of the most popular websites. Movies, books…even music.

HYPATIA: Then I’m in. Share that sheet, Émilie.

du CHâTELET: Find your own. This is mine.

DARWIN: No bickering. Time for action. Ladies! Time for a haunting!

END OF PLAY