[photo credit: Theater Arts Caltech]
Theater Arts at Caltech, known as TACIT, opens a co-created adaptation of Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” on Wednesday at Ramo Auditorium, transplanting the 1901 Russian drama from provincial Russia to mid-1950s California. The production’s cast is drawn from Caltech’s own community — graduate students, faculty, staff, alumni, and JPL personnel, all performing together on a Pasadena stage.
According to a TACIT production description, the adaptation serves as an exploration of the gap between aspirations and reality, and what the company calls “the comic-tragic cost of inaction.” Chekhov’s original follows three sisters stuck in a small town, dreaming of Moscow, each grappling with stagnant careers and the slow erosion of their hopes. They never quite manage to act on the changes they say they want. TACIT’s version asks what that paralysis looks like when it lands in sunny, mid-century California — a place where possibility is supposed to be the whole point.
Director Brian Brophy, a Fulbright Scholar who has led TACIT since 2008, brings an unusual résumé to the work. Before Caltech, he was an actor in film and television, with credits that include “The Shawshank Redemption” and an episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” He has directed more than 50 plays around the world and also serves as artistic director of MACH 33, Caltech’s annual festival of new science-driven plays.
“In TACIT, science merges with culture, and our performers end up engaging both sides of the brain,” Brophy said, according to the TACIT website. “In the process, students gain self-confidence and develop the skills to be leaders.”
Theater on the Caltech campus is not new. According to TACIT’s published history, dramatic activities there trace back to the Gnome Club in 1897 — seven years before Pasadena’s Tournament of Roses began featuring motorized floats. The program was formally established as TACIT in the mid-1980s under director Shirley Marneus, who led it for more than two decades before Brophy’s appointment. TACIT operates within Caltech’s department of Performing and Visual Arts, and recent productions have included “Earth Data: The Musical,” an original work developed with JPL climate scientists as part of the Getty’s PST ART festival, as well as stagings of “Rent,” “Avenue Q,” and “Little Shop of Horrors.”
Performances are April 23, 24, and 25 at 7:30 p.m. and April 26 at 2:30 p.m. at Ramo Auditorium, on the Caltech campus at 1200 E. California Blvd. in Pasadena. Tickets are available at tacit.caltech.edu. For more information, email tacit@caltech.edu.
In Chekhov’s play, the sisters never make it to Moscow. On a Pasadena stage this week, scientists and engineers will try to show why.
THREE SISTERS — TACIT (THEATER ARTS AT CALTECH) Date & Time: Thursday, April 23, 2026, 7:30 PM | Venue: Caltech’s Ramo Auditorium, 1200 E. California Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91125 | Phone Number: (626) 395-4652 | Website: https://tacit.caltech.edu/shows/#mainstage | Cost: $5.00 – $25.00 (April 24) / Call for ticket cost (April 19 VIP)
