Throughout the country events have been celebrating the life of Alan Turing including a UK wide project which saw sunflowers being grown to test Turing’s theory that sunflower heads featured Fibonacci sequences, a theory that was left untested due to his death in 1954. Many areas of science were impacted by his work and it is undeniable that he left an outstanding legacy to many scientific fields.

Audiences in Swansea are being offered a unique opportunity to see a new play,  To Kill a Machine, performed as part of a series of events celebrating Alan Turing’s birth. The play is being presented as part of a science cafe event on Wednesday 5^th December at 7.30pm in Swansea University, Fulton House, Cafe West. The event is free charge and will include a Q&A with the writer, director and cast.

Catrin Fflur Huws said of writing the play, “I went on a visit to Bletchley Park last summer and because of the way the National Codes and Cipher Centre was set out to tell the story of Alan Turing’s life, the parallels with the Easter story struck me. In that Alan Turing was the hero who was villified and then resurrected. His pioneering work during the war made him into a hero and then his conviction for gross  indecency which saw him villified followed by his suicide which at the time would have had a level of social stigma. When Gordon Brown sent the official apology with the very poignant closing line of, “Sorry, you deserved so much better” it became a sort of resurrection. Whatever your religious perspective that’s a very poignant story arc and I thought somebody should write a play about that because it’s great story.”

Sandra Bendelow from Scriptography Productions said, “I wanted to see the play produced from the moment Catrin started to talk about her idea. Catrin has achieved something quite astonishing in this play in creating a representation of his life story that would satisfy the most ardent of Alan Turing fanatics, whilst explaining some quite complex Alan Turing theories whilst also telling an amazing love story which questions the meaning of humanity and the importance of freedom. “

• Review : http://blakeson.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/to-kill-machine.html
• Images are available on request from scriptographyproductions@gmail.com or call 07854979710
• Interviews can be arranged with the writer Catrin Fflur Huws, director Angharad Lee and the cast.
• Contact scriptographyproductions@gmail.com for further information or to arrange interviews.
• The play was originally developed as part of Aberystwyth Arts Centre and Sherman Cymru’s Spread the Word project for emerging writers. The performance is developed and produced as part of Aberystwyth Arts Centre’s Open Platform scheme and Scriptgraphy Productions is an Associate company at the Arts Centre.
• Scriptography Productions was founded in 2012 to seek training, development, mentoring, commissioning and production opportunities for writers who are writing for performance. It seeks to provide support to and collaboration with, partners, projects, directors, artists and ideas in order to initiate performance placing writing and writers at the core of the collaborative process to create engaging theatre and performance.