Jennifer Maisel’s play “Out of Orbit” has made its way onto the Bloomington Playwrights Project stage. The story follows the lives of a daughter and mother, one navigating her way through the life of a teenager, and the other navigating rover projects for Mars.
The play tackles the conflict between parent and child — mother and daughter — and the difficulty of letting each other be who they are. The mother, Sara, is a scientist on the Mars rover mission in the early 2000s. Fueled by a love of science since she was young, Sara is lost in a world that’s not her own, a planet she doesn’t inhabit.
Her daughter, Lis, on the other hand, is in a different world full of school struggles, friends and online chat rooms, true to the early 2000s. Her passion is running, and she has broken records at her high school.
The distance between mother and daughter is nearly as drastic as the distance between Earth and Mars. This separation shows both in dialogue and in setting. A TV monitor on the left side of the stage ticks away at Earth days, while a monitor on the right side marks the passing of each Mars sol, approximately the equivalent of a day on Earth. The world of Earth and the world of Mars are separated by shades of contrasting colored lights on stage. Sara works on the Mars mission in yellow, while Lis lives her teenage life in purple.
When the two come together, conversation is often comprised of disagreements and hurt feelings. The individual aspirations and trials of the two characters converge — or rather, collide — when they meet.
Sara is trying to balance the love of her work with the love for her daughter. Often, this doesn’t work out as planned. In one moment, Lis declares the Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, her mom’s other kids.
Moments of tenderness come in unconventional ways. In one instance, Lis is learning to drive, and swerves to avoid hitting someone. Sara goes off and yells at the person, defending her daughter in doing so.
The everyday fights between the pair are escalated by Sara’s dedication to the Mars mission, one that keeps her on a separate time zone from her daughter and, in turn, a world apart. Their schedules don’t link up, something that hurts Lis, but something Sara can’t avoid.
The two lead separate lives, but are still mother and daughter through all of it. They experience what it’s like to break down their walls and let others in.
