Brian Brophy
Director, Theater Arts at Caltech
A 25-year veteran actor in the film/TV/theater industry, Brian joined Caltech as TACIT's director in 2008. He also serves as the Artistic Director of MACH 33: The Festival of New Science-Driven Plays.
Brian is Fulbright scholar, Scholar in Residence at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGn), and a Yale-NUS Singapore Artist in Residence. He is a multi-recipient of the California Arts Council's Artists in Communities grant, and recipient of a George Soros Foundation funding award for a theater project in Bosnia.
Hye Sung Choe
Operations Manager, Performing and Visual Arts
Hye Sung supports the faculty of the Performing and Visual Arts (PVA) department, which includes, in addition to theater, popular programs in music (chamber music, glee club, guitar, jazz bands, orchestra, wind orchestra) and the visual arts (ceramics, drawing and painting, silkscreening and silk painting).
Arden Thomas
Associate Artistic Director, MACH 33: The Festival of New Science-Driven Plays
Arden co-founded Caltech's MACH 33: The Caltech / Pasadena Playhouse Festival of New Science-Driven Plays in 2013, and currently serves as the Associate Artistic Director of that program. She is also a Theater and English teacher at the Sequoyah High School in Pasadena. She is a member of Caltech Playreaders and the Theatre 100 Collective. She received her PhD in Theater and Performance Studies at Stanford University, and MAs in Theater Arts and Literature from Villanova University.
Shirley Marneus
Founding Director
Shirley joined the staff at Caltech in 1970 as an assistant in the Public Affairs Room, now part of the campus library. She directed her first theatrical show at the Institute — Kiss Me Kate — in 1974. In the years that followed, she helped produce many more plays, ultimately creating TACIT in the mid-1980s to provide students a formal theater program.
Shirley earned a bachelor's degree from San Jose State University in 1959 and a master's degree from Iowa State University of Iowa in 1962. Before joining the staff at Caltech, she worked for the Pasadena Playhouse and NBC's Jack Benny Show.
She retired from Caltech in 2007, and passed away on January 15, 2020.