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Breathtaking Coda

7/28/2017      ADA AND THE MEMORY ENGINE           Essential Theatre *****  ( A+ ) 01001100 01001111 01000111 01001001 01000011 01000001 01001100 00100000 01001001 01001110 01010100 01010101 01001001 01010100 01001001 01001111 01001110 01010011  (*) (Bias Alert:  I am friends with Essential Artistic Director Peter Hardy and with leading actress Ashley Anderson.  I also have not seen a Lauren Gunderson play I haven't liked -- her works topped my "favorites" lists in both 2015 and 2016.  Yeah, I went into this one with my "inclined to like" filters focused fully.) So, computers. We all use them.  Our cars use them.  (Too) Many objects in our homes use them.  We carry them in our pockets, a mere seventy years after the smallest computer filled a large room. So, when did all this madness begin?  1911's Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (Soon to become IBM)?  1946's ENIAC?   1950's Turing Test?   1981's DOS?   All of the above? Let's go the whole way back to 1833, or "When Charles Babbage met Ada Lovelace!" You see, Mr. Babbage had conceived and modeled what he called his "Difference Engine," a machine that could be "programmed" to perform simple arithmetic functions.  Ms. Lovelace, (pronounced "love-less," interestingly enough), the only "legitimate" daughter of Lord Byron, had been raised by her (bitter) mother to eschew anything artistic, becoming a bit of a mathematical genius.  She saw the potential of Babbage's machine to do more than simple addition. In 1840, Babbage gave a lecture at the University of Turin about his engine, which was transcribed in French.  Ms. Lovelace translated the paper into English, including a "Notes" section longer than the paper itself.  That appendix included what is thought to be the world's very first "program," instructions for the "engine" to calculate a series of Bournoulli Numbers. (I'd explain what they are, but I'm not a mathematician.  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernoulli_number if you must.) Okay, there is some debate over whether or not Lovelace actually conceived the program, or whether she merely transcribed Babbage's work.  Whichever is true, it is definitely factual that she was an infinitely more accomplished communicator than Babbage, and it is reasonable to assume she had input to the production of the "program." Although Babbage was never able to get funding for his admittedly expensive engine, he had the last laugh -- In 2011, researchers in England actually produced a working model from his notes, and Lovelace's program worked perfectly. All this is basic Wikipedia background to Lauren Gunderson's marvelous "Ada and the Memory Engine," another in her series of plays about "forgotten" women of science.  I loved both "Emilie:  La Marquise du Châtelet Defends her Life Tonight" and "Silent Sky," and I expected to love this one as well.  And indeed I did.  Okay, maybe it has a tad TOO much in common with "Silent Sky," including clueless men, a heroine who suffers handicap and early demise, ineluctable societal paradigms, and a finale involving projections of the universe (so to speak).   It's merely coincidental that the clueless Lord Lovelace is played by the same actor (Brandon Partrick) who played the clueless astronomer in "Silent Sky" at Theatrical Outfit. That being said, this production is driven by an incredible wide-ranging and energetic performance by Ashley Anderson, a dynamo of an actress who creates an indelible impression from moment one, a compelling portrait that continues throughout.  Much of the sadness of Ada's story, as presented here, is the drastic "snuffing out" as her "life force" decrescendos as the cancer ultimately consumes her.  It's a totally logical extension that death itself is merely another hurdle, not a roadblock, and it leads to an exquisite "coda" in which she encounters a mysterious man who turns out to be {Deleted by the spoiler police, but if you can't guess, you're not paying enough attention.  An impossibility considering Ms. Anderson's undeniable magnetism}. I also have to give props to Mark Cosby, who brings to Babbage a wistful vulnerability that makes him attractive, even when he's being a bit of a jerk (which admittedly happens fairly often).  Too old to sustain a romantic relationship with Ada, he and Ms. Anderson have a palpable chemistry that is electrical and compelling. This may be "hottest" "friend zone" relationship you're likely to see for a while. And the aforementioned Mr. Partrick is near perfect as Lord Lovelace, a bit pompous, a bit innocent, a bit more open-minded than probably ANY of his contemporaries, and as besotted with Ada as Charles.  You almost feel sorry for him as he wallows in the gender-based paradigms of his era.  Holly Stephenson also shines (as expected) as Ada's bitter mother, the former Lady Byron, Anabella.  Perhaps painted a bit more "helicopter" than her historical analog (who, according to Wikipedia, left Ada with her own mother and referred to her as "it," except when it came to that whole custody thing with her wayward ex).  Ms. Stephenson is equal parts society Grande Dame,  and loving caretaker, at least as Ada lies dying.  And she wears the best dresses! Which reminds me -- the remarkable Jane Kroessig outdoes her usual excellent work with a mid-19th century costume plot that is gorgeous to look at, character-specific, and as elegant as a perfect algorithm.  The set stays simple, a schematic of Babbage's engine on the floor, projections setting the scenes;  props remain period specific, though it was easy to see that all the "papers" and pages were blank pages.  But that only matters to picky picky people without an ounce of logic or intuition. And, of course, director Ellen McQueen has gathered a perfect cast, put them in a perfect "space," and guided them to do what may prove to be their very best work. So, Lauren Gunderson shows WHY she's the most-produced living playwright in America.  "Ada and the Memory Engine" is a sparkling look at another forgotten "Woman of Science," a well-researched, well-executed look at a specific period of history, complete with its own ethos and shortcomings, and she has peopled it with characters that dominate the stage.  And Ashley Anderson glows, and sparks, and creates this woman I really wish I could one day meet.  Perhaps in that same place where she meets {Don't Make me get out The Spoiler Stick}  in the breathtaking coda.  Ms. Gunderson writes like no other playwright, and the theatre is richer for her efforts.            --  Brad Rudy  (BKRudy@aol.com  @bk_rudy   #EssentialFestival #Ada&TheMemoryEngine ) (*)   Translation:  LOGICAL INTUITIONS ​

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Theater review: Essential’s ‘Ada and the Memory Engine’ excels

Theater review: Essential’s ��Ada and the Memory Engine’ excels

By Bert Osborne - For the AJC

The cast of Essential Theatre’s “Ada and the Memory Engine,” by Decatur native Lauren Gunderson, includes Kathleen McManus (from left), Ashley Anderson and Mark Cosby. CONTRIBUTED BY ELISABETH COOPER

Posted: 5:00 p.m. Monday, July 31, 2017

Dichotomies abound in “Ada and the Memory Engine,” which is probably as it should be for a play about a woman to whom math and music share the same “magic.” In keeping with the alternately literate and lyrical story of Ada Byron Lovelace (1815-1852), a self-professed “poetical scientist,” Decatur native Lauren Gunderson’s fact-based drama is decidedly high-minded, even though Essential Theatre’s regional premiere of it is moderately low-budget.

RELATED: Playwright Lauren Gunderson is enjoying a wave of interest

Born into British nobility and privilege, Ada is the only legitimate child of the scandalous Victorian-era poet Lord Byron, who promptly abandoned his wife and daughter (and died eight years later). She’s groomed by her imperious mother, Lady Annabella, to find a proper husband who might “diminish her temper,” her passionate curiosity about the arts, and her idealized image of the mythical father she never knew. When she catches Ada reading from a book of his poetry, Annabella rips out the pages, as if tearing him from the girl’s “fiber” altogether.

When Ada meets the noted mathematician, inventor and mechanical engineer Charles Babbage at a party, he effectively sweeps her off her feet with his talk of an analytical processing machine that would come to be considered a precursor to the 20th-century computer. Thus begins a 20-year (platonic) kinship between the two, who collaborate on perfecting his concept. That he was eventually dubbed the “father of computers” essentially makes her the (sadly unheralded) mother of computer programmers.

Ada effectively sweeps Babbage off his feet, too — with her “intellectual vibrancy” and “leaps of mental acuity,” as he puts it, as an “effervescence for the mind” who’s prone to “fits of the fantastic and demonstrative.” To be sure, such superlatives also apply to Gunderson’s own writing skills, which continue to amaze. Among her other work produced here are similar plays involving historical pre-feminists: 2013’s “Emilie” at Aurora, 2015’s “Silent Sky” at Theatrical Outfit and 2016’s “The Revolutionists” at 7 Stages.

The show is keenly directed by the actress Ellen McQueen, who has previously helmed some of Essential’s finer efforts, including 2006’s “Charm School” and 2010’s “Sally and Glen at the Palace.” She makes the most of little in the way of costly production values — setting the various scenes using projections (designed by Matthew Mammola) in lieu of elaborate scenery, for example, although Jane Kroessig’s period costumes are top-notch.

McQueen also engenders a rather remarkable turn by newcomer Ashley Anderson as Ada, an unfamiliar performer to me whose playbill bio mentions nary one earlier stage appearance. She may not convey the passage of time quite convincingly, but she captures the character’s “explicit giddiness” with determined gusto.

Moreover, Anderson holds her own admirably alongside an experienced supporting cast that features Mark Cosby as Babbage, an especially superb Holly Stevenson as Lady Byron, Brandon Partrick as Ada’s stiff-upper-lipped stuffed shirt of a husband, Kathleen McManus in a glorified cameo as her tutor, and Evan Alex Cole as a father figure in the play’s climactic dream sequence.

In that beautifully realized ending, math and music finally and literally coalesce — rendering Essential’s “Ada and the Memory Engine” an endeavor well worth remembering, indeed.

THEATER REVIEW

“Ada and the Memory Engine”

Grade: A-

Through Aug. 27 (in rotating repertory with “Another Mother”). 8 p.m. Aug. 5, 10, 15, 19, 22 and 25; 2 p.m. Aug. 6 and 13; 7 p.m. Aug. 20. $10-$25. West End Performing Arts Center, 945 Ralph David Abernathy Blvd. SW, Atlanta. www.essentialtheatre.com.

Bottom line: Yet another impressive work by Decatur native Lauren Gunderson.

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The soaring, syncopated, heart breaking rock ballad at the end of Ada and the Engine, composed and written by The Kilbanes and sung by the original cast of Kat Zdan, Josh Schell and Kevin Clarke.

The song brings together Ada Lovelace her father Lord Byron and her soulmate Charles Babbage in a dreamscape of math, music, love and wonder.

More from The Kilbanes at Kilbanes.com

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All the good words about ADA

“Gunderson’s wit and the actors made the story pretty irresistible. Kathryn Zdan inhabits the title role with an infectious intellectual zeal” – SF Chronicle

“This one is definitely worth seeing. A very smart and skillful Victorian parlor drama." -SF Weekly

“Ada and the Memory Engine is a rare and special artistic achievement: an intelligent play about intelligent historical people that has been crafted by intelligent theatre artists for an intelligent audience.” -My Cultural Landscape

“Go see Ada and the Memory Engine Now!” -For Words

"[The script is] succinct and pithy, moving story and emotions along at the clip of an electronically infused calculation. The cast does an equally terrific job." Piedmont Post

KQED Fall Arts Guide calls Ada one of 5 glorious upcoming plays

Ada make critics choice in the October East Bay Monthly

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In a true convergence of real tech and real art, ADA was performed at Intel headquarters by Intel employees for Womens History Month. Ada would have loved it!

L to R: Viera (Director), Melissa (Narrator), Sadhana (Mary), Rebecca (Ada), Steve (Charles), Yulia (Ana), Teresa (Producer).  

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A thorough and riveting investigation of our dear, awesome Ada and her buddy Babbage.

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Happy 200th birthday, Ada Lovelace! From all your fans. Including Charles Babbage.

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Gripping pictures of ADA AND THE MEMORY ENGINE’s premiere at Central Works in Berkeley, CA, October 2015.

Starring Kathryn Zdan*, Kevin Clarke*, Jan Zvaifler, and Joshua Schell. (*AEA)

Photos by Jim Norrena. 

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A video on the making of ADA AND THE MEMORY ENGINE and it’s history. 

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Charles Babbage: Feminist Ally

(Graphic by Sydney Padua from sydneypadua.com/2dgoggles/)

One of the most amazing elements of the story of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace is the fact that he took her seriously. 

Here was Charles Babbage, the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics (the chair held recently by Stephen Hawking), one of the most notable and celebrated thinkers in England, keeping the company of Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday and more. 

Ada was 18 when they met, a socialite and daughter of the infamous Lord Byron. Though she was under the mentorship of the highly regarded Mary Sommerville (a science writer and mathematician), to most people Ada was simply someone’s future wife. 

But Babbage not only humored her, he befriended and collaborated with her. He sent her the designs for his Difference Engine, he invited her to private dinners to discuss it’s inner workings, he corresponded with her for decades, he encouraged her to write her own paper on his Analytical Engine, and on and on. She called herself his “fairy forever” and said that, 

“No mutual knowledge of any two human beings in this life can give such stable and fixed ground for faith and confidence as ours.”

At one of her estates there is a path called “The Philosopher’s Walk” because of the long strolls and deep conversations taken by Ada and Charles on its turns. 

Even after a torrential fight between them where both thought they would never speak to each other again, they remained friends. Actually they became better friends, even closer and more honest. It was after this titanic fight that Babbage wrote Ada’s now famous moniker calling her “the Enchantress of Numbers.”

I consider Charles Babbage one of our true feminist allies. Women were not encouraged in mathematics of sciences, and this important gentleman needed no favor from Ada nor her family. He simply saw a like mind and did not discount it’s brainpower because of the body it was in. He was a powerful man that recognized ability and acuity even in the form of a pretty debutante. He also gave her the credit she deserved writing in his memoir:

I then suggested that she add some notes to Menabrea’s memoir, an idea which was immediately adopted. We discussed together the various illustrations that might be introduced: I suggested several but the selection was entirely her own. So also was the algebraic working out of the different problems, except, indeed, that relating to the numbers of Bernoulli, which I had offered to do to save Lady Lovelace the trouble. This she sent back to me for an amendment, having detected a grave mistake which I had made in the process.

Though it’s slightly ridiculous to praise a man for simply giving credit where it’s deserved, Babbage didn’t have to do it (as so many men in the past have denied women’s contributions). He bragged on her to his friends, even to the likes of Michael Faraday writing: 

“that Enchantress who has thrown her magical spell around the most abstract of Sciences and has grasped it with a force which few masculine intellects could have exerted over it.”

He believed in her from the beginning and, I think, respected her for not taking any of his cranky crap. 

So here’s to a true gentleman, scholar, and feminist: Charles Babbage! 

(Ada Lovelace (Kathryn Zdan*)and Charles Babbage (Kevin Clarke*)  in Ada and the Memory Engine. *Member of Actor’s Equity)

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New UK passport features our friends Charles and Ada :)

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Backwards and Forwards

My favorite book on theatre is David Ball’s Backwards and Forwards. It’s written for directors but I use it when I teach playwriting because of the clear and compelling case it makes for knowing the climax of your play as soon as you can. The sooner you know where you’re going, the better you can write your way there. 

Ball’s main point is in order to understand a great play you must explore it in minute detail from end to beginning to end. The seed of the play’s climax is planted it’s first scene. The dominoes start to fall from moment one. I’ve interpreted his advice to playwrights as “you can’t really write the play you want until you have a  sense of it’s ending.” 

That is certainly how this new play about Ada Lovelace, Ada and the Memory Engine, came into being. The first thing I knew about the play was its ending. The first scene written and shared with the cast was it’s last. Almost a year ago  we started work on the play with a reading of that ending scene - a sketch, an experiment, a trial of the climax but definitely a sense of it. The next scene I brought in was the very first scene. Ada’s fate was sealed by knowing the ending. It let me sew the images, details, turns of phrase, and themes that culminate the story from it’s beginning. The whole team knew where we were headed. the work was earning where we were going. 

A brilliant song by The Kilbanes certainly helped :)

(Kat Zdan* and Josh Schell in the final scene of Ada and the Memory Engine at CentralWorks Theatre in Berkeley, CA. *Actors Equity Member.)

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Very Interesting

Among Charles Babbage’s papers found when he died was a simple calling card that, reads “Countess of Lovelace” on one side, and in the tall swift handwriting of Countess Augusta Ada Byron Lovelace, reads the tantalizingly vague words, “Very Interesting”.

Which of their hundred conversations or correspondences does this reference? Which new idea? Which secret? Of course we can’t know. And in the space between what we do know and what we can’t, lives the play Ada and the Memory Engine.

Ada wrote the following line in her visionary “Note G” describing the potential power of Babbage’s Analytic Engine, his prototypical computing machine:

“The engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music.”

She envisioned a machine that could not just make music, but write it…in 1843. I knew I had to write a play about her.

As you watch, know that most of the letters being exchanged are real. Babbage did call her “the Enchantress of Numbers” and she called herself his “fairy forever” writing:

“No mutual knowledge of any two human beings in this life can give such stable and fixed ground for faith and confidence as ours.”

I see great mutual respect in their story, real and dramatized. Partnership, understanding, deep friendship an, in whatever what all of those things bubble up in people, love. Who knows what kind of love, but love indeed. The one thing numbers cannot describe.

(This note is included in the program for the premiere production of Ada and the Memory Engine at CentralWorks Theatre in Berkeley, CA Oct 2015)

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An article about Ada's incredible achievements and history ramping up to the upcoming Bicentennial of her birth. I particularly love the idea of her excelling as an abstract thinker. When Babbage was so technical, she was his theoretical experimentalist. We start rehearsals for ADA AND THE MEMORY ENGINE in just a few weeks! http://centralworks.org/ada-and-the-memory-engine/