Breaking the Code, a play by Hugh Whitemore tells the story of computer genius Alan Turing. The play is being staged by Performing Arts of Woodstock for a three-week run beginning November 3rd.
It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the British mathematician Alan Turing saved the Allies from the Nazis and invented the computer and artificial intelligence - all before his suicide at age forty-one. Breaking The Code tells how Turing's revolutionary ideas laid the foundation for the modern computer, and how he took a leading role in breaking the German Enigma ciphers during WW II, a scientific triumph that was critical to Allied victory.
This is also the tragic account of a man who, despite his wartime service, was arrested and forced to undergo cruel and humiliating chemical castration -- all for trying to live honestly in a society that defined homosexuality as a criminal office -- gross indecency.
The play is directed by Bette Siler and Wallace Norman and they join us.
