UPDATE: This production has been cancelled due to recent advances with the COVID-19 Outbreak. Please see “Important Update About Ada and the Engine” for more information.

Join us Saturday, April 11 at 7pm for a  pre-show Playreading Event with the Catalyze Playwriting Group.

A reading of three new short plays about the potential for artificial intelligence to grant or misinterpret our wishes will be performed by the Catalyze Playwright Group. They were inspired by Ada Lovelace for CST’s run of Ada and the Engine. Featuring: 

• The Orphidy Smorlack Variety Hour by Nathan Comstock
• Cow 2.0 by Gillian Daniels
• The Canteen by Carl Danielson

About The Catalyze Playwriting 

Catalyze is a group of science, speculative, and slipstream playwrights based out of Central Square Theater.  The Catalyze Playwriting Group is an offshoot of Catalyst Collaborative@MIT (CC@MIT), a collaboration between Central Square Theater and MIT. The Catalyze Playwriting Group writes, workshops, and performs new works of science theatre.

UPDATE: This production has been cancelled due to recent advances with the COVID-19 Outbreak. Please see “Important Update About Ada and the Engine” for more information.

Join us Saturday, April 11 for a post-show conversation with Tod Machover.

Musical visionary Tod Machover discusses the play and how music innovation has grown since Ada first imagined machines that could create music. 

Tod Machover has been called “America’s most wired composer” by the Los Angeles Times. He is widely recognized as one of the most significant and innovative composers of his generation. He is also celebrated for inventing new technologies for music performance and creation, such as Hyperinstruments, “smart” performance systems that extend expression for virtuosi, from Yo-Yo Ma to Prince, as well as for the general public. The popular videogames Guitar Hero and Rock Band grew out of Machover’s group at the MIT Media Lab, where he has been Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music and Media since it was founded in 1985. His Hyperscore software—which allows anyone to compose original music using lines and colors—has enabled children around the world to have their music performed by major orchestras, chamber music ensembles, and rock bands. Machover is also deeply involved in developing musical technologies and concepts for medical and wellbeing contexts, helping to diagnose conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease, or allowing people with cerebral palsy to communicate through music.  At the MIT Media Lab, Machover is also Academic Head as well as Director of the Opera of the Future Group. In addition, he is Visiting Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music (London) and the Curtis Institute of Music (Philadelphia). At Central Square Theater, he composed the music for Remembering H.M., an original play by Wesley Savick about Henry Molaison, who lived for 60 years with virtually no short term memory.

UPDATE: This production has been cancelled due to recent advances with the COVID-19 Outbreak. Please see “Important Update About Ada and the Engine” for more information.

Join us Friday, April 10 for a post-show conversation with Historian of Science, Alex Csiszar.

Join Harvard Associate Professor Dr. Alex Csiszar as he responds to Ada and the Engine. Listen to Dr. Csiszar discuss the production through his unique lens of historical science and scientific publishing!

Alex Csiszar teaches and researches the history of scientific communication and public science in nineteenth-century Europe. He writes about how scientists and others come to learn about and trust claims about the natural world. He has written a book about the history of scientific journals which tells the story of how that genre came to dominate scientific communication by the end of the nineteenth century, why that same genre has begun to fall apart, and what the future of scientific communication might look like. He is currently finishing a new book about the long history of search engines in science.

Join us on Thursday, March 5 for a post-show conversation with Gwendolyn VanSant.

Gwendolyn VanSant is a trainer & facilitator in diversity leadership, cultural competence and coalition building for justice and equity. She is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founding Director of Multicultural BRIDGE and contributes to several teams across the region to promote safety, equity and trust in communities and workplaces. Gwendolyn has worked with corporations, schools, colleges and universities, law enforcement, hospitals, teaching and leadership institutes, and more. In addition to designing cultural competence trainings, Gwendolyn is a frequent speaker and long-time activist deeply rooted in gender equity and positive psychology. Since 2012 Gwendolyn has served as an appointed official on the Berkshire County Commission on the Status of Women. Most recently her work in honoring Dr. W.E. B. Du Bois has taken centerfold as co-curator and co-designer of the Du Bois 150th birthday festival commissioned by the Town of Great Barrington. In spring 2017, Gwendolyn spearheaded the county-wide campaign and coalition “Not in the Berkshires” and, in partnership, stewarded the crafting and passing of her town’s Trust Policy, a step towards a statewide Safe Community Act. In 2016, Gwendolyn served as the Founding Director of Equity and Inclusion at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, her alma mater. In 2015/2016 she was recognized as a “Berkshire Trendsetter” finalist and was named one of her county’s most dedicated and creative social entrepreneurs by Berkshire Magazine. In 2018 she is recognized as an Unsung Heroine by the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women. Gwendolyn is on the board of UU Mass Action Network and is a reactivation and annual member of the Berkshire County Bank of the NAACP.

Join us Monday, March 9 at Vialé for the official press opening of Pipeline.