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Museum show transcends the norms of theater By STACY DRIKS sdriks@liherald.com
Tim Baker/Herald
Lisa Rudin, playing Dr. Osiris, tried to discover the mysterious dinosaur in the crate.
The Long Island Children’s Museum, in Uniondale, has hosted plenty of summer performances inside its 150-seat black box theater — but one of its newest productions, “Unbox a Saurus for Us!” breaks from tradition. Co-written by Austin Costello and Lisa Rudin, the show begins not on stage, but inside the museum’s “Dinosaurs: Fossils Exposed” exhibit, blurring the line between museum learning and immersive theater. “I’ve done shows in the museum before, but this is the first time we’re using the exhibit space and doing any kind of performance or show element out there,” Costello, who’s also the theater’s technical director, said. “It’s an extension of the show.” With shows running through Aug. 27, with seven shows remaining, the 30-minute interactive adventure opens in the gallery, where museum actor Yashaun COntinueD On page 3
Woman astronaut looks back on space shuttle missions By STACY DRIKS sdriks@liherald.com
Eileen Collins, the first woman to both pilot and command a NASA space shuttle, paid a visit to Uniondale last weekend as part of the Cradle of Aviation Museum’s Spacewoman Weekend. The event marked the 30th anniversary of a woman piloting a shuttle and the 26th anniversary of a woman to command a space shuttle mission. The event also recognized 20 years since Collins commanded the first shuttle to return to space after the Columbia tragedy.
“It’s really great for me to be here,” Collins said. “I love this place. I’m really fascinated by the lunar module — I need to take pictures. We all love aviation history, but we have to get the kiddos inspired, too.” When Collins entered the space gallery to pose for photos with museum visitors she stopped to admire the tail of the spacecraft from one of her missions. “Can I touch it?” she asked Catherine Gonzalez, the museum’s deputy director. Gonzalez agreed, “Yes, you can, you flew it!” The museum also screened “Spacewoman,” a new docu-
mentary by historical filmmaker Hannah Berryman. The film explores Collins’s fears, family struggles, and the historic milestones she achieved during her NASA career. The film is based on the book “Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars,” written by Collins and Jonathan Ward. The documentary was completed last November. Collins’s NASA career spanned four shuttle flights, two of which were major milestones. In 1995, she was the first woman to pilot a shuttle. She commanded her first mission four years later, aboard Columbia, overseeing the deployment
of the Chandra X-ray Observatory, a powerful space telescope still in operation today. This year she marked two decades since she commanded the Return to Flight mission, in 2005, two years after the Columbia disintegrated over Texas, killing all seven astronauts aboard. More than 50 people attend-
ed the first screening of “Spacewoman” on Friday in the museum’s planetarium theater, which was followed by a question-and-answer session with Collins. “Welcoming Col. Eileen Collins to the Cradle of Aviation is both an honor and an opportunity to connect past and presCOntinueD On page 5