Caltech Playreaders 70th Season: Dava Sobel's "And the Sun Stood Still"

You are cordially invited to attend the one-time-only YouTube Premiere showing of the Caltech Playreaders' virtual performance of And the Sun Stood Still, with a recorded Q&A afterward with playwright Dava Sobel.

We have a brilliant cast of performers: Peter D. Jones, Valinda Richardson, Dave Seal, Rob Stirbl and Shona Stirbl and we can't wait for you to see them in action under the direction of Joanne Doyle.

In the spring of 1539, George Joachim Rheticus, a young German mathematician travels to Poland to convince the legendary, elderly Catholic cleric and reluctant astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus, to publish his rumored manuscript. Copernicus speculates that the Sun, not the Earth, is the stationary center of the Universe, a theory that is both revolutionary and heretical. The play brings alive the months they spent together and is also an immersion into 16th-century Europe, its moments, its conflicts, and its humanity. This play dramatizes the struggle of mathematician George Rheticus to shepherd Copernicus' revolutionary manuscript into print, against the wishes of the Catholic Church and over the objections of Copernicus himself. In 1543, just before Copernicus's death, the manuscript, On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, is published. In a script that conveys the sheer beauty of astronomy, Sobel illuminates this astonishing idea which transformed the course of human understanding.

The play will have the one-time-only-link available on the day of the play (November 10 at 7:30 p.m.) here:
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~plays/2020-2021/november.html

While tickets are not necessary for this reading, we politely request (as is customary at our live play readings) a small donation to help support our all-volunteer organization:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/and-the-sun-stood-still-by-dava-sobel-tickets-128300868351

P.S. You will have to supply your own glass of sherry and cookies until we meet again in person.