Playwright shoots for the ‘Moon’ with Theatreworks show
The headline for Jerrie Cobb’s obituary in the New York Times said that the pilot “found a glass ceiling in space.” Cobb, who died in March 2019 at age 88, was well on her way to becoming the first female astronaut in the U.S. in 1961 when NASA abruptly pulled the plug on the Mercury 13 training program she and 12 other women were undergoing.
Playwright Laurel Ollstein said her discovery that the Mercury 13 program had even existed compelled her to write “They Promised Her the Moon.” based on Cobb’s life.
“I was fascinated and appalled that NASA had cancelled the program,” Ollstein recalled. “It was a story I hadn’t heard.”
The play, which had an off-broadway run in 2017, is currently being staged by Theatreworks Silicon Valley.
It begins in the isolation tank that was part of the astronaut training program. Ollstein said she chose the site in part because Cobb outlasted the men in the program on three separate occasions in the tank. Also, being in isolation gives Cobb the opportunity to reflect on her life.
“You can go anywhere from there,” Ollstein said.
The isolation tank wasn’t the only testing ground where Cobb excelled. She finished in the top 2% of everyone — men and women — she trained with. Despite her fitness for the job, a 1962 Congressional hearing to consider whether women should be astronauts found in favor of those such as John Glenn, who testified, “The fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order.”
“The Mercury 7 guys were heroes at the time,” Ollstein said. “Women didn’t have opportunities. To follow their dreams, they had to do a lot more a lot better than men.”
Since its off-broadway run, Ollstein has developed her play in workshop productions at Theatreworks’ New Works Festival and the Powers New Voices Festival at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre. She said the play’s staged reading at Theatreworks’ 2018 festival was “invaluable.”
“You get to rewrite, workshop and hear how the audience reacts,” she said. “It’s great to have two readings; you learn from the audience in the first reading what plays and what doesn’t.”
Ollstein was making these determinations even prior to the staged readings.
“We had a week of rehearsals, and I was rewriting every day,” she said. “I love rewriting in the room. As a writer, you have to love collaboration if you work in the theater.”
The playwright collaborated with Giovanna Sardelli, Theatreworks’ director of new works, on both workshop productions of “They Promised Her the Moon.” Ollstein said she’s happy to have Sardelli directing the full production for Theatreworks.
“Giovanna really responded to the script, and I really responded to her,” she said.
Ollstein said she’s also happy when she sees audiences walking out of the play with smart phones in hand to Google Cobb and Jackie Cochran, the other female pilot depicted in her script. Cochran was the first woman to break the sound barrier.
“Jackie Cochran was another unbelievable woman I’d never heard of,” the playwright said. “She was a contemporary of Amelia Earhart — and a better pilot — but we still don’t know her.
“I had to write (about these two women) because it’s a story we should know,” she said. “Hopefully, it will get audiences interested in finding out about other women they don’t know about.”
“They Promised Her the Moon” runs through March 29 at Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto. Tickets are $25-$98 at theatreworks.org or 650-463-1960.
Contact Anne Gelhaus at 408-200-1051.