MACH 33: The Festival of New Science-Driven Plays
Caltech Theater announces the three winning plays for this year's Festival! Please join us on March 1 and 2 to watch and discuss three exciting new science-driven plays. All plays will be performed as staged readings in the Frautschi & Mie Rehearsal Hall in Hameetman Center on the campus of Caltech, above the Red Door Cafe.
March 1, 7pm: AXIOMS by Aubrey Clyburn, directed by Kevin Delin
March 2, 3pm: FIVE DEGREES ABOVE POLARIS by Karen Howes, directed by Adam Lustick and Maggie Marion
March 2, 7pm: S P A C E by L. Feldman, directed and co-created by Larissa Lury
AXIOMS
Eliza, a lonely, hyper-logical mathematician, has had a fight with her best (and only) friend. So she retreats to her mind palace to find a solution using the only tools she has: memory, axiomatic set theory, and stuffed animals. She keeps trying to apply mathematical principles to situations from her life, but the math keeps getting more complex until she finally has to ask whether there's a solution to be found there at all.
Playwright Aubrey Clyburn is an autistic actor, writer, and amateur mathematician. Originally from North Carolina, she earned her BFA in Acting from Texas State University and is a recent transplant from NYC to LA. In addition to MACH 33, her play Axioms has been chosen for staged readings at Matthew Corozine Studio Theatre, Murmuration Theatre Company, and the Neurodivergent New Play Series in NYC. This is her first full-length play. www.aubreyclyburn.com
FIVE DEGREES ABOVE POLARIS
When a female astronomer from Nantucket attempts to get credit for a discovery that is rightfully hers, she is forced to oppose the dogma of the Catholic Church, confront the arrogance of Harvard's elite professors, and stave off the romantic advances of Italy's most charismatic revolutionary. Five Degrees Above Polaris is a comedy set in 1848 and is based on the true story of Maria Mitchell, an American astronomer who was the first woman elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the first female to be a professor of Astronomy at Vassar College.
Playwright Karen Howes' work has been produced across the country and published in several anthologies, including a dramatic writing textbook published by Macmillan Learning. As both a novelist and playwright, Karen's writing is recognized for blurring genres and creating heightened realities. She is best known for the award-winning plays Roadkill, The Gentleman's Pact, The 5564 to Toronto, and Day is a Dancer, for which she was a Susan Smith Blackburn nominee. Karen is also a two-time winner of MACH 33: The Festival of New Science-Driven Plays at Caltech, and a winner of the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Prize. Other awards and accolades include The Women's Playwright Initiative, Humanitas, Henley Rose, NJ Playwrights, Ashland, Women in Arts, and Playground LA. Her most gratifying work has come from playwriting projects that help at-risk communities, including for the William Inge Center under a Kennedy Center grant, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Virginia Avenue Project. For the screen, Karen had two films produced, and she was commissioned to write the book and lyrics for three musicals which all went on to full productions. Formerly, Karen has worn the hats of professor and investigative journalist. She has an MFA in writing and an undergraduate degree in Philosophy from The College of William and Mary. She feels incredibly fortunate to have 4 children, 3 cats, a supportive husband, healthy parents, and an Australian Shepherd puppy.
S P A C E
Drawing on history (aviators, Congress, Civil Rights, & the Space Race), S P A C E written by L Feldman, directed by Larissa Lury, created by both -- unearths the forces at work in our time – and imagines a radical re-start. Before any human traveled to space, thirteen female pilots excelled at the medical testing to become astronauts. Their story collides with pilots, astronauts, and aerospace engineers across time—like Bessie Coleman, Hazel Ying Lee, Jasmin Moghbeli, and Christina Hernández—who burst their own path in, out, and up. Through transcript, fiction, feats of endurance, and the ridiculous, S P A C E takes us into moments of expansive missions, invisible forces, and the personal costs that lie in between.
L M Feldman is a queer, feminist, GNC playwright who writes theatrically audacious, physically kinetic, ensemble-driven plays that are both epic & intimate. So far, her plays include S P A C E ; Thrive, Or What You Will [An Epic]; Another Kind Of Silence; Scribe, or The Sisters Milton, or Elegy for the Unwritten; The Egg-Layers; Grace, or The Art Of Climbing; A People [A Mosaic Play]; Tropical Secrets, or All the Flutes in the Sea; and 7 full-length devised works. L's work has been nominated for the Venturous Award, Herb Alpert Award, Wendy Wasserstein Prize, Barrie & Bernice Stavis Playwright Award, New York Innovative Theatre Award, Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award, and twice for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her work was also a finalist for the Jane Chambers Award, Terrence McNally Award, FEWW Prize, and the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Drama. She couldn't be more grateful for the validation each of these has offered. L is also ongoingly thankful to have been a Shakespeare's New Contemporaries winner; an Orbiter 3 playwright; a fellow at MacDowell, the Playwrights Realm, New Georges, and the Dramatists Guild; an alum of the Yale School of Drama and the New England Center for Circus Arts; and a core writer with InterAct Theatre and The Playwrights' Center. As a circus artist, L performed duo trapeze at festivals around the world. She continues to teach & dramaturg for circus artists around the country. She's passionate about theater that MOVES, and circus that DELVES. L has lived in seven cities and is currently based in Philadelphia, where she writes, teaches, advocates, and handstands.
Larissa Lury is a freelance director, associate professor at New Mexico State University, deviser, and former acrobat. She loves artwork and experiences that open her to new ways of looking at the world around her, and strives to create those experiences for others. She's directed and workshopped plays for companies including: Nashville Rep, American Shakespeare Center, San Diego Rep, The Assembly, Cherry Lane (Mentor Project), The Playwrights' Center, Urbanite, Dorset Theatre Festival, Portland Center Stage, Southern Rep, San Diego Rep, InterAct, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, Ma-Yi, New Jersey Rep, Keen Company's Keen Teens, McCarter Theatre's Youth Ink!, Curious Theatre Company, American Southwest Theatre Company, Lake Dillon, Passage Theatre, Abingdon/Small Pond, Leviathan Lab, and Prospect Theatre. Larissa and L first began developing work together through an Audrey Residency with New Georges. Larissa was a member of the inaugural group of National Directing Fellows, received a Next Stage Residency through The Drama League, was an LMCC Process Space Resident, a Resident Director at Ensemble Studio Theatre, and a chashama AREA Award recipient. She was a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, and is a New Georges Affiliate Artist. She received a BS from Northwestern University and an MFA from UC San Diego. She works to cultivate practices, processes and structures for our field that are as innovative, equitable, inspiring, productively malleable, supportive and humane as an industry built on creativity warrants. larissalury.com
MACH 33 energizes the conversations about scientific, mathematical, and technological questions by staging readings of new, unpublished, unproduced plays. Festival playwrights have the unique opportunity to work with science advisors from Caltech and JPL – so we focus on plays that could benefit from this science mentorship. The readings are open to the public and present a discussion with Caltech/JPL scientific panelists after the show. Our casts and crews feature professional actors and directors as well as students and members of the Caltech/JPL community.
Since 2013, MACH 33 has helped develop exciting new plays such as The New Galileos by Amy Berryman, Socially Unacceptable by Matt Steinberg, The Sunrise From the Moon by Hannah Manikowski, Another Revolution by Jacqueline Bircher, Two Degrees by Tira Palmquist, Theory of Nothing by Lolly Ward, The Chisera by Paula Cizmar, Out of Orbit by Jennifer Maisel, Out There Right Here by Anna Nicholas, Planet Between the Stars by Hillary Bhaskaran, The Last Flight of the Mercenary by Karen Howes, and Tesla by Dan Duling.
In addition to science-based plays, since 2007 Caltech Theater has helped develop plays such as God Particle Complex by Chris Bell and Josh Zeller, Mate by Lolly Ward, The Washing of the Water by Marcus Renner, and the trilogy of plays by George Morgan: Rocket Girl, Pasadena Babalon, and Capture the Sun.
Read here about Caltech Theater's 2023 production of Another Revolution in Italy.
Brian Brophy, director of Theater Arts at Caltech, is the Artistic Director of MACH 33. Arden Thomas serves as the Associate Artistic Director.