2024 Mach 33 Festival
Caltech Theater presents Mach 33: The Festival of New Science-Driven Plays at Caltech!
The weekend features staged readings of the three winning plays for this year's Festival. With professional actors and directors, actors from the Caltech and JPL community, and fantastic science-driven plays, the Festival promises to be an exciting weekend of ART AND SCIENCE!
Join us after each show for post-show discussions and receptions with our science mentors, playwrights, directors, and actors. Tickets are free for students, with a suggested donation of $10 for adults.
All performances are in Frautschi Hall in the Hameetman Center above the Red Door Café on the campus of Caltech. Parking is free during our festival times at the Hollison Parking Structure at 370 S. Holliston Ave, and also in the neighborhood. From the corner of Holliston and San Pasqual (approximately 499 S. Holliston Ave), head west onto campus along the walkway for about 100 yards till you see the red umbrellas of the Red Door Café. Enter the doorway on the side and follow signs to Frautschi Hall upstairs.
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
- Friday March 1, 7pm: AXIOMS by Aubrey Clyburn, followed by an opening night party
- Saturday March 2, 3pm: FIVE DEGREES ABOVE POLARIS by Karen Howes, followed by a pizza dinner and hang-out with the creative teams
- Saturday March 2, 7pm: S P A C E by L. Feldman and co-created by Larissa Lury, followed by a closing night reception
- Location: Frautschi Hall Hameetman Center