05.09.19

SPOTLIGHT ON
ARTISTS AND SCIENTISTS PRESENT MACH
33: THE CALTECH-PASADENA PLAYHOUSE
FESTIVAL OF NEW SCIENCE-DRIVEN PLAYS
BY BLISS BOWEN
SCIENCE
Who gets to be a scientist? What does our attitude toward science
say about us as a society? What do we do if we possess scientific
knowledge but society won’t listen?
Those are some themes addressed in the three plays receiving staged readings
this weekend during Mach 33: the Caltech-Pasadena Playhouse Festival of
New Science-Driven Plays, part of the Playhouse’s ongoing community outreach
efforts. Intended to “energize the conversations about scientific, mathematical,
and technological questions,” the readings will be followed by panel
discussions with scientists from Caltech and JPL.
Interestingly, all three plays are period pieces. James Armstrong’s “Bones of
the Sea,” helmed by London-born director/actor Satya Bhabha, concerns 19thcentury
British paleontologist Mary Anning and her landmark discoveries despite
establishment bias against her because she was not formally schooled,
wealthy, an Anglican, or a man. Susan Bernfield’s “Sizzle, Sizzle, Fly,”
directed by Rhonda Kohl (who choreographed and assistant directed
the Playhouse’s recent production of “Native Gardens”), time travels to
the 1960s, when miniskirted “computress” Frances “Poppy” Northcutt
became the first woman to join NASA’s Mission Control team.
Award-winning playwright Kristin Idaszak’s “The Surest Poison,”
directed by LA-based Randee Trabitz, applies hardboiled noir
style to a Prohibition-era mystery that imagines real-life toxicologist
Alexander Gettler and flapper reporter Lois “Lipstick”
Long teaming to solve a murder.
Taking its title from Ralph Waldo Emerson (“the surest poison
is time”), “The Surest Poison” gathers dramatic momentum from Gettler’s mandate
to “teach juries how to understand science.” The intersection of science
and law was not well traveled in the pre-“Law & Order” 1920s, and civilians and
law officers alike needed to be educated about scientific breakthroughs —
and processes required for scientific findings to be reliable. (That remains
true, as recent discoveries concerning blood spatter patterns have upended
courtroom proceedings.)
Like Armstrong and Bernfield, Idaszak, the daughter of chemical engineers,
revised her script following input from Caltech’s Dr. Jay Labinger,
who offered fruitful observations about how to stay faithful to scientific
processes while making experiments onstage “legible” to audiences.
“Because of the narratives that have entered our collective
understanding around ‘CSI’ and how sophisticated our
technology and science is, it doesn’t always tie up as neatly
or translate as perfectly as we see on these [TV] shows. In
some ways there is a continuing refining of how science and
jurisprudence go together.
“I am an expert in neither of these things; my training is
firmly as a playwright,” notes Idaszak, who is also artistic director of Chicago’s
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05.09.19 | PASADENA WEEKLY 9