Upload Ada

Ada Lovelace is now considered the world's first computer programmer because of her notes on an early mechanical general-purpose calculating machine. In her calculations and ideas about the possible uses of an “analytical engine,” she understood the concept of the algorithm 100 years before the first computer was built and even foresaw artificial intelligence. But in her lifetime, the Victorian era, a woman who thought, researched, and invented was viewed with suspicion.

With the play UPLOAD ADA, which is both a realistic flashback and a fictional sequel to the life of Ada Lovelace, Theater K gives the thinking, researching, inventing Ada the freedom that was denied her during her lifetime. At the same time, an AI automaton in human form embarks on a search for the ability to humor, because without humor, nothing works—not then, not now.