The Turing machine

Have you ever kept a big secret? No? Then you don’t know how difficult it is. Believe me: of all intangible things, silence is pretty much the hardest to maintain… Alan Turing

Alan Turing, a British mathematician, logician and cryptographer, was one of the most outstanding scientists of the 20th century and is regarded as the forefather of the computer and artificial intelligence. Owing to his extraordinary mathematical abilities, the British military recruited him during the Second World War to work at a top-secret research laboratory, where he worked under immense pressure to help decipher the German ENIGMA – an encryption machine used by the German Wehrmacht to encode radio messages. Turing succeeded in cracking the code, which helped the Allies to save millions of lives and win the war. Because of his homosexuality, Turing was sentenced to inhumane hormone treatment after the war. He took his own life in 1954 and was only officially rehabilitated by the British Queen in 2013. Since 2021, Turing has been featured on the English 50-pound note.

The play recounts the incredible, heroic and tragic fate of an anti-hero, a story that touches people deeply and extends far beyond the mysteries of mathematics and the drama of war. A great tribute to a genius who has been forgotten. Benoit Solès

We would like to draw your attention to the fact that the production uses strobe-like lighting effects and deals with the theme of suicide.