production Caltech Theater
with Skyler Ware and Michael Gutierrez
by Jacqueline Bircher
directed by Brian Brophy
Kat and Henry, two graduate students from opposing scientific disciplines, are forced to share a lab at Columbia University in 1968. Amid interpersonal differences, a campus devolving into political chaos, and the uncertainty and turmoil of the outside world, they each discover what it’s like to be thrown into someone else’s orbit.
Skyler Ware is a 5th year graduate student studying chemistry at Caltech. Skyler has previously appeared onstage in Caltech’s winter 2023 Storytelling for Scientists showcase and in the 2022 Three Minute Thesis competition. Her lead role in The Sunrise From the Moon took the campus by storm. When not performing monologues or science experiments, she enjoys writing, dancing, and hiking up the tallest mountains she can find.
Michael Gutierrez is a freshly minted theater kid with a passion for making musical moments and pushing the bounds of human achievement. This often manifests in the form of spontaneously bursting into song at the briefest mention of any showtune lyric and performing mad science experiments in the backyard. In his free time, he studies mechanical and aerospace engineering, and dreams of one day sending his own mission from the earth to the moon.
Jacqueline Bircher is a playwright born and raised in New York City. Her work has been produced and/or developed with Gulfshore Playhouse, Primary Stages, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Centenary Stage Company, City Theatre, Playhouse on Park, Market Garden Theatre, Campfire Theatre Festival, Phoenix Theatre Company, Prologue Theatre, and the Sam French Off Off Broadway festival, among others. Full-length plays include Another Revolution, The Once and Future Casey Colman, Webster's Bitch, and The Rule of Thirds. She has been a finalist for the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, The Lark Playwrights' Week, Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, the NNPN National Showcase of New Plays, and she was the first-place winner of City Theatre's 2020 National Award for Short Playwriting. She studied literature and creative writing at Oxford University and Fordham College at Lincoln Center.
Brian Brophy is the Director of Caltech Theater, Story Coach at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for Missions Trident (Probe to Triton),Veritas (Orbiter to Venus), co-creator of Credible Messenger Training with JPL’s Story Architect Paul Propster, Fulbright Scholar to India and twenty-five-year veteran actor in the film/TV/theater industry. He also continues as a Scholar in Residence at the Indian Institute of Technology (IITGN) for his fourth tour. Other highlights include Yale-NUS Singapore Artist in Residence, a multi-recipient of the California Arts Council/Culture Affairs Department Artist in Community grants and recipient of a George Soros Foundation funding award for a theater project in Bosnia. During the Covid years of 2020-2023 Brophy facilitated online scientific storytelling workshops and digital lifestyle training with members of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech community.
