Science-Driven Plays Put Reason and Emotion on Display

Last week, Caltech's Feynman Lecture Hall was transformed into a modern-day Greek theatre. Actors moved all around the space with fervor, portraying the life story of Chien-Shiung Wu, an American experimental physicist who, in the 1950s, famously proved that parity, a type of symmetry in particle physics, is not conserved—a finding that opened the door to a better understanding of why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe.

The production was one of six staged play readings making up this year's "MACH 33: The Caltech Festival of New Science-Driven Plays," presented by Theater Arts at Caltech (TACIT). Now in its 13th year, the festival solicits submissions by playwrights from the Los Angeles community and pairs the writers with scientists from Caltech and JPL (which Caltech manages for NASA).

"We bring together dedicated writers who are passionate about exploring complex scientific ideas," says Brian Brophy, director of TACIT. "By pairing playwrights with scientists, the festival dynamizes conversations about science and art in an authentic way."

The festival kicked off on May 13 with Act I of Parity, which tells the story of Wu's struggles to do great science in an era when females were often relegated to be assistants or teachers. Wu, also known as the "First Lady of Physics," joined the Columbia University faculty in the 1940s and later became the first woman to become a tenured physics professor at Columbia.

Written by playwright Howard Ho and directed by Caltech alumnus Sandra Tsing Loh (BS '83), Parity touches on Wu's romantic life—she was married to physicist Luke Chia-Liu Yuan (PhD '40), at the Pasadena home of Caltech's founding president Robert Millikan—while also illustrating her drive to learn about the universe and inspire future female scientists.

In one scene, the actor playing Wu, Olivia Xing, stepped up on a platform in the first row of seats and declared that Marie Curie was her character's idol and "let her dream big."

"But imagine if I had a Chinese woman to look up to," she exclaimed. "If I can achieve something like Curie and get my spot in the temple, then those girls at home will see me and know they can do the same."

Several LA-based professional actors, such as Xing, performed in the play along with two members of the Caltech community: Hirosi Ooguri, the Fred Kavli Professor of Theoretical Physics and Mathematics at Caltech and the Kent and Joyce Kresa Leadership Chair of the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy, played Wu's father and a waiter at a Chinese restaurant; and historian David Zierler, the Caltech Heritage Project's director and senior strategist, played J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Afterward, the audience heard from David Hitlin, professor of physics at Caltech, who shared memories and photos of Wu—his thesis advisor in the 1960s at Columbia University. Reflecting on scenes in the play that took place in a Chinese restaurant, Hitlin said that Wu was a celebrity in the Chinese community in New York, and when she entered a Chinese restaurant, it was like "Elvis had entered the building."

Clifford Cheung, a Caltech professor of theoretical physics and director of the Institute's Leinweber Forum for Theoretical Physics, served as the play's science advisor. He says that he and Ho had some great conversations about the science of parity violation and even meandered into other topics, including the lives of scientists and the Asian American experience.

"Something I'd mentioned to Howard is how some artistic portrayals of great scientists would inadvertently bleach away their 'humanness,'" Cheung says. "In fact, scientists have inner lives, loves, sickness, failures, and triumphs that have nothing whatsoever to do with the equations on the board! We are just humans who really happen to like log–log plots. All of this came through in Howard's script."

Two other plays in the festival, River of Night and Redshift, touched on the life of astronomer Edwin Hubble, who famously used Mount Wilson Observatory above Pasadena to discover that our Milky Way galaxy swims in a sea of many other galaxies and that our universe is expanding.

The playwright of River of Night, Randal R. K. Jackson, a published suspense novel writer, said he was first inspired to write the play many years ago after moving to Pasadena for a communications job at JPL. "From the backyard of our house, we could see Mount Wilson, and I learned all about the incredible discoveries that were made there. I came to realize that not everybody was aware of this. I would go to Trader Joe's and think, 'So few people know this!'"

Jackson received advice on the science in his play from John Preskill, the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics and the Allen V. C. Davis and Lenabelle Davis Leadership Chair of the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter (IQIM) at Caltech. "They gave me a top shelf advisor!" Jackson says.

Alan Weinstein, a professor of physics at Caltech, served as the advisor for Redshift, written by playwright Simon Bowler and directed by Kevin Delin. Weinstein says he initially helped in correcting the science but ultimately came to enjoy learning about the writing process.

"I learned the goal is mostly about getting the play to be entertaining and engaging," he says. "There needs to be conflict and tension that makes the characters' presence more dramatic. I ended up spending a lot of time thinking about the characters because it was more of a challenge to me. The science is easy. Simon called me a dramaturg [a literary advisor in theatre], and I had to look the word up!"

"The fact is that science is done by people and art is done by people and both aspire to reach something bigger beyond their own personal hopes and dreams," he says.

Caltech's Cole Remmen, who directed River of Night, says that both Hubble plays established that a scientist is "somebody we can have faith in for the objective truth while also understanding there are nuances and messiness to their lives."

To read about the other three plays in this year's festival visit the MACH 33 website. MACH 33 is led by Brophy; associate artistic director Arden Thomas; and Remmen, who is the program director for Launchpad, a new early development play lab operating within MACH 33. Parity, River of Night, and Redshift were developed via Launchpad. The MACH 33 festival is made possible by generous donations to TACIT.