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EXPLiCIT: History

Summer Showcase (2024)

Location: Hameetman MPR
Dates: August 18

A collection of scenes from King Lear, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, The Inspector General, A Doll's House, and Witch.

Poster for the Summer Show

The Real Inspector Hound (2024)

A Play by Tom Stoppard
Director: Miranda Stewart
Location: Dabney Hall
Dates: February 23-25

The Real Inspector Hound is a comic play-within-a-play; the inner layer is classic mystery-thriller (complete with isolated manor house and passionate love triangle), while the outer layer shows the rivalry of two self-absorbed theater critics whose obsessions draw them further and further into the bizarre world of the play.

Poster for The Real Inspector Hound

Humble Boy (2021)

A Play by Charlotte Jones
Director: Barbie Insua
Location: Dabney Gardens
Dates: August 8, 12-14

Humble Boy is an expressionist dramatic comedy set in a country garden about dysfunctional relationships, theoretical physics, bee-keeping, and retreating from academia to heal.

Poster for Humble Boy
The actors gather around the table.
Humble boy actors

Arsenic & Old Lace (2019)

A Play by Joseph Kesselring
Director: Penelope Chan
Location: Caltech Alumni House
Dates: August 9-11, 15-17

This classic dark comedy written and set in the 40s explores the various facets of insanity. Many character archetypes are explored and subverted while tensions build but never quite boil over.

Poster for Arsenic and Old Lace
Aunties
Lovers

You Can't Take it With You (2018)

A Play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart
Directors: Dave Seal and Barbie Insua
Location: Caltech Alumni House
Dates: August 10-12, 16-18

Written by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart at the height of the Great Depression, the Pulitzer-prize winning YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU suited the era, with its portrait of a family getting by and having fun without needing to spend money to do so. But the play turns out to also fit delightfully well in 2018, with its celebration of tolerance and inclusion in a family where half the members are related by blood, and all the members are related by choice.

Poster for You Can't Take it With You auditions
Actors
Actors

Ash Girl (2017)

A Play by Timberlake Wertenbaker
Director: Miranda Stewart
Location: Caltech Alumni House
Dates: August 11-13, 17-19

A modern feminist retelling of the Cinderella fable that explores relationships, social pressure, and the importance of finding self-confidence, featuring a re-imagined step-mother and step-sisters, a prince from a distant land, and animal avatars of the Seven Deadly Sins.

The Ash Girl Poster
Actors
Actors

Much Ado About Nothing (2016)

A Play by William Shakespeare
Director: Mark Kozlowski
Location: Caltech Alumni House
Dates: August 5-7, 11-13

In this exuberant revival of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, EXPLiCIT transports you to Italy in July, 1944. Rome has just been liberated by the Allies and, for Sicily at least, the war is over and the populace begins rebuilding their lives. This setting allows for a delightful romp in the park, as the players present a riotous, fun-filled evening punctuated by swing dancing and 1940s Big Band dance music.

We find ourselves in Leonora's villa awaiting the marriage of her daughter Hero to the soldier Claudio. To amuse themselves, Don Pedro and his men play Cupid (to hilarious results) between Beatrice, Hero's witty and sharp-tongued cousin and Bendedick, confirmed bachelor-for-life.

But all is not fun and games. As director Mark Kozlowski notes, "In the midst of the laughter and dancing, there is an unexpected, dark turn as plots of revenge, deception, and dishonor take hold. It is the grimness of the subplots which allows the jubilant matchmaking and infectious comedy to feel even more joyful and spontaneous."

The cast includes Caltech students, staff, a visiting professor from USC, community members, and one of the stars of the film The PhD Movie. In this production, "Leonato" becomes "Leonora," while Dogberry, Conrade, the Friar, the Sexton, and Balthasar are also played by women. All will be having a grand time in this ever-popular comedy that is awash in spying, matchmaking, gender politics, deception, and revenge. Grab a sweater and go!

Much Ado About Nothing Poster
Much Ado About Nothing Poster
Much Ado About Nothing Poster

Merry Wives of Windsor (2015)

A Play by William Shakespeare
Director: Todd Brun
Location: Caltech Alumni House
Dates: August 7-9, August 13-15

What's Sir John Falstaff to do? He has an unquenchable thirst for wine, a riotous sense of humor, and an appetite as massive as his ego, but now he's run out of money. Never fear; surely the local ladies are hungry for his love, and will pay him handsomely for it! Luckily, Windsor wives are smarter than he thinks, and have a host of merry tricks up their sleeves to revenge themselves on the roguish Falstaff.

With a cast and crew of students, staff, JPLers, alumni, and local talent, the Caltech Players re-create the music, dance, and warmth of Renaissance England in the gardens of Caltech's historic Alumni House. Incorporating madrigals, ballads, and folk dances of the period, director Todd Brun and music director Wendell Webster have turned Shakespeare's funniest comedy into a joyous celebration of the beauty and spirit of Elizabethan England.


Major Barbara (2014)

A Play by George Bernard Shaw
Director: Todd Brun
Location: Dabney Lounge
Dates: August 8-10, 16, 17

Join us in the historic Dabney Lounge, where we journey from aristocratic London to a factory for war machines, and meet fools, con-men, saints, and a great many sinners along the way. Most of all, we meet Major Barbara, Shaw's ground-breaking feminist creation, who leaves her wealthy world to become a leader and evangelist in the quasi-militaristic Salvation Army.

But what happens when a woman whose motto is "Blood and Fire!" meets her bomb-making father?

Actors
Major Barbara Poster

The Tempest (2013)

A Play by William Shakespeare
Director: Kathryn Bikle
Location: Caltech Alumni House
Dates: August 2-4, 8-10

The Tempest Poster

A Midsummer Night's Dream (2012)

A Play by William Shakespeare
Director: Kathryn Bikle
Location: Ricketts-Fleming Courtyard
Dates: August 2, 3, 5, 10, 11

Midsummer Poster

Metamorphoses (2011)

A Play by Mary Zimmerman
Director: Miranda Stewart

Location: Lloyd Courtyard

Metamorphoses poster

The Comedie of Errors (2010)

A Play by William Shakespeare

Coached by Jonathan Wolfe
Location: Braun Ampitheatre
Dates: July 23-25, July 30 - August 1

Comedie of Errors
Comedie of Errors Poster