To Kill a Machine by Catrin Fflur Huws and Scriptopgraphy Productions
Alan Turing had a
fascinating life and many people in the UK will know something about
him. Perhaps you'll know about his amazing code-breaking work in the
war, perhaps you'll know about the mysterious circumstances
surrounding his death, or perhaps you'll know that he is one of the
founders of computer science. But Turing was a genius, and we don't
yet know enough about all the other great things he achieved.
Breaking the Enigma code and creating the computer were just two of
his accomplishments, and this play takes us through another aspect of
his work and his life: his contributions to philosophy and Artificial
Intelligence.
We might all agree that
a rock shows no signs of intelligence, and that a human does possess
intelligence, but in between there's a large grey area. Is a sheep
intelligent? Is a city intelligent? Is a machine intelligent? And
what is a machine anyway?
Catrin Fflur Hughes has
devised a play that weaves together multiple themes in order to
explore these ideas. She begins with the difference between a man and
a women, a contrast which was more pronounced in the society of
Turing's time, where assumptions about gender roles dictated the jobs
you might aspire to, and your role in the war. From this she neatly
moves on to ask what's the difference between a man and a machine?
Are some people more like a machine than a man? And if understanding
the difference in intelligence is difficult, then what about in love?
What's the difference between loving a man and loving a woman? What
happens when we can no longer distinguish these differences and when
our lives might depend on it? As the play moves swiftly on, we feel
enlightened, and at the same time perplexed: how can we not have
considered the relationships between all of these things before?
This play has been
written by a playwright who really understood what Alan Turing
actually did, and wants to tell us all how ground-breaking that was,
and how much it matters to all of us. It will appeal to scientists,
who love to see their heroes portrayed in a way that everyone can
understand. This is not just a classic and tragic story of love and
betrayal, but
contains cleverness and computing to keep the geeks happy too. And
the acting was superb. Gwydion
Rhys
gives us a vulnerable hero that we'd like to protect.
As a computer
scientist, I feel that this is a hugely important play. It promotes a
British scientist whose work should be more widely celebrated and
understood, and it was conceived in the centennial year, 100 years
after Alan Turing's birth. Mixing the arts and science to create
works like this is something we should all be doing more to
encourage. We should make plays about science, and use the arts to
tell us about great ideas. The world shouldn't be divided into
science and arts (or men and women, or men and machines) and Turing
didn't make such divisions. The playground between the two is where
the best ideas are born.
Go and see this play,
and you'll come away feeling inspired to follow in Alan Turing's
footsteps. After seeing this, you'll want to be free to be a bit
different, think great thoughts and create new ideas.
