Lunacy

Jean Cross is a skilled pilot and former astronaut candidate who has retreated to the New Mexico desert to develop a personal relationship with the stars

As the play begins, she's alone in the night, calling to the sky, "Evening Andromeda, Cassiopeia. Pegasus, there you are!"

Corona Smith, an earnest reporter for the Feminist Hard Times, tracks her down to get her story

She brings Cross face to face with Martha Howland, a brash young astronaut who learns that her own achievements have roots in the women who came before her

Howland's journey into space becomes a fantastic voyage full of comic and enlightening visions of the women who have preceded her

Through her encounters with Galileo's daughter, Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, astronomer Caroline Herschel, the dancing Pleiades, a trio of cosmic courtesans, and the women pilots who participated in astronaut testing in the 1960s, Howland returns to earth with a new awareness of her own place in history

Lunacy is a tribute to some forgotten women of history and a fascinating look at the meaning of independence and achievement for women