Bright Star

• Written by Stuart Hoar
• Directed by Paul Gittins
• Presented by Plumb Productions with Auckland Live
• Tue 4 – Sun 16 Sept
• Herald Theatre, Aotea Centre
• Auckland
• 1 Hr 30 mins

Bright Star

With Lisa Chappell, Bruce Phillips, David Aston, Matt Baker and Chelsea McEwan Millar.

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In the 1980s, Beatrice Hill Tinsley was a celebrated cosmologist, acknowledged by the American Astronomical Society for her outstanding research contribution to astrophysics, with a main-belt asteroid named in her honour.

But just ten years previously it had been a very different story.  Married, and with two adopted children, Beatrice and her husband had moved from New Zealand to Dallas, Texas. There, she attempted to balance her career aspirations as an astronomer within the confines of Dallas society, where women were expected to aspire no further than staying at home and raising a family.

In the end, her brilliant inquiring mind and a desire to prove that existing theories of the universe were wrong forced Beatrice into making the heartbreaking decision to leave her family in order to follow her brilliant destiny. The rest, as they say, is history.

In New Zealand, however, Beatrice’s story and the personal sacrifices she made for the advancement of science have remained relatively unknown.

A timely celebration of a woman who, against the odds, championed women’s rights while redefining the universe, Bright Star is the must-see show of Suffrage 125.

Presented by arrangement with Playmarket