Presented by Central Square Theater
The Brit d’Arbeloff Women in Science Production
A Catalyst Collaborative@MIT Production
By L M Feldman
Directed by Larissa Lury
Created by L M Feldman and Larissa Lury

January 30 – February 23, 2025
Central Square Theater
450 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139

Critique by Kitty Drexel

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — There is no way Central Square Theater could have predicted the exact sequencing of events following the presidential inauguration on January 20, but, because its art is based in the sciences, it must have had an inkling that SPACE by LM Feldman and Larissa Lury would be topical. It’s Black History Month and the White House is stripping women and minorities of equity and inclusion opportunities to favor the most bleached, tantrum-fueled presidential idiocrasy oligarchy since Reagan allowed his hate and other mucuses to trickle down and stop up our national funding pipelines. But I digress. SPACE is a good show about badass astronauts who defied the odds to kick ass up and down U.S. history.   

SPACE is told in two parts and recognizes time as an a-linear construct. The story bounces through the years like a racquetball on a closed court. Part One integrates the stories of the U.S. aviation’s best and brightest pilots yesterday and today: Bessie Coleman & Irene Leverton (Valencia Proctor), Jerri Sloan & Christina Hernandez (Monica Risi), Hazel Ying Lee, Wally Funk & Ivy Rieker (Hui Ying Wen), Jackie Cochran & Gene Nora Stumbough, Jasmin Moghbeli & Jean Hixson (Mitra Sharif), Mae Jemison & Jane Hart (Kaili Y Turner), Sally Ride & Geraldyn Cobb (MK Tuomanen), and the male scientists and male politicians who stop them because they don’t believe vaginas belong in space (all played by Barlow Adamson who utilizes a grand JFK accent à la Abbott Vaughn Meader). We watch these heroic women go from the 1940s Women’s Airforce Service Pilots to lobbying Congress to allow women in the space race. We watch them undergo physical, mental and cultural tests to prove their space-worthiness. They do everything right and still can’t touch the cosmos because of military gatekeeping.

Click it. Sally Ride wasn’t sorry. You won’t be either.

Part Two recognizes the 2020s on a different (better?) timeline. Jemison, Leverton, Hernandez, Funk, Stumbough, Moghbeli, Cochran, Hixson and Ride are finally touching the stars. Dr. Sally Ride broke the space ceiling and women are now going to space regularly because the second-rate Batman villains we call billionaires would rather race giant space phalluses instead of ending world hunger. Our astronauts endeavor to decolonize STEM and space travel by planning the ultimate space mission to Proxima Centauri. As they congratulate each other on their many scientific and Patriarchy smashing accomplishments, the astronauts contemplate a better space program that recognizes all contributions to STEM research, even the ones they don’t like.

Playwright LM Feldman skillfully adapts a common literary device to create dramatic conflict in SPACE. Cobb (Tuomanen), the assumed protagonist, rattles the sociological chains that bind her to get the attention of the Powers That Be at NASA. Cochran (Slusar), the glamorous, moneyed antagonist, soothes her powerful male colleagues to keep her secret space program alive. Traditional media archetypes tell us that Cochran must be the villain and Cobb the hero when, in this production, neither is the hero nor the villain. As Space plays out, LM Feldman and Larissa Lury show us that Cobb and Cochran are both heroes for their contributions to space exploration. Both are necessary for the advancement of women in STEM: Cobb to introduce new ideas and Cochran to use the system to eventually implement those ideas. Their conflicting views don’t negate their accomplishments. Their disagreements show us we don’t have to agree on every detail to agree the work is necessary. It’s a highly useful perspective in this time of abrupt change and vengeful executive orders. 

There are a lot of negative, white-hot B.S. things happening in politics right now. Instead of dwelling on them, let’s refocus our energies on how robustly awesome the cast is. From Proctor’s modern dancing by Lindsay Torrey to Sharif’s sleeveless coveralls by designer Charlotte Snow, this ladies’ ensemble coheres its members into one unified front. They take up physical, psychological and karmic space; they are loud; and their makeup is minimal – unless their character prefers more. This is the heterogeneous, intersectional feminist theatre liberals want. 

Costume designer Snow and prop designer Julia Wonkka put in the effort to stabilize Space in place and time where they could. Stumbough/Cochran (Slusar) wears what could be interpreted as victory red lipstick which lands the timeline in post-WWII America. Moghbeli spins a modern basketball which cements the timeline in the 2020s. It’s subtle work that grounds the play in its alternate reality. 

Speaking of reality, NASA astronauts Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore have been on the International Space Station since last summer on their own worst-case scenario, Gilligan’s Island tour from Hell. It’s been nine months of freeze-dried ice cream and expressing their bowels into a vacuum tube when it was only supposed to be eight days. While she was there, Williams set a new record for the longest spacewalk by a woman: 5-hours, 26-minute spacewalk. This beats former astronaut Peggy Whitson, who had an impressive 60 hours and 21 minutes. It just goes to show you, women (and our nonbinary cousins) will take every chance to blow up the paradigm when we’re given the chance. Stop underestimating us to control us. It won’t work anymore. 

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