Ada and the Engine

During its 2025 Studio Collaborative Season, the Long Beach Playhouse offers outside, local theatre companies and performing arts organizations the opportunity to produce their own shows in LBP's Studio Theater.

ADA AND THE ENGINE
Playing in the Long Beach Playhouse’s Studio Theater

By Lauren Gunderson
Directed by Kelsey Weinstein

The Industrial Revolution dawns as young Ada Byron Lovelace (daughter of the flamboyant and notorious romantic poet, Lord Byron) sees the boundless creative potential in the “analytic engines” of the genius of the age, Charles Babbage. A precocious intellect herself, Ada and Charles form a romance of the mind as she envisions a whole new world where art and information converge. Their ideas lead to the first mechanical computer in Lauren Gunderson’s music-laced story of love, friendship, and the edgiest dreams of the future as Jane Austen meets Steve Jobs in this poignant pre-tech romance heralding the computer age.