SHELLEY AND LOVELACE NEVER MET to Play Theater for the New City Beginning in January

Theater for the New City will present a new show in conjunction with Ottawa playwrights Becky McKercher and Sarah Thuswaldner: "Shelley and Lovelace Never Met," the conversation that never happened. Directed by Alex Sisk, and performed by Robin Zerbe (Shelley) and Allison Fletcher (Lovelace), it is a reckoning with the legacies of two geniuses who deserved more than what life gave them.

Mary Shelley was a disreputable prodigy and the inventor of science fiction. You've heard of her because she wrote Frankenstein. Ada Lovelace was a mathematical genius and the inventor of computer science.

Two tumultuous, parallel lives careened across Victorian London, disrupting marriages, academia, and everyone they encountered. And they never met.

"They lived at the same time and they had people in common," Sisk said of this fantasia about two world-changing women. "They would have known of each other. But they never met."

In this witty, Gothic tribute to forgotten women, we meet Ada Lovelace, daughter to Lord Byron (yes, that Lord Byron), the mathematician who devised the first "computer program" for Charles Babbage's proposed Analytical Engine.

She was the first to recognize that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation - to that of math, art, and science - thus laying the groundwork for what would become a computer rather than a pure calculator.

We also meet Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the English novelist who, with a challenge of her own from her friend Lord Byron (yes, that Lord Byron) wrote "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus", inventing science fiction with a few brilliant strokes of her pen.

At the start of the play, Mary Shelley and Ada Lovelace run into each other at Lord Byron's grave. Someone pulls out a bottle of wine. Words and thoughts flow: they have a lot to get off their chests.

"They were two geniuses who were held back because of the status of women in their society," Sisk said. "There are secrets revealed, pasts explored and flashbacks."

Through private thoughts, scandalous secrets, and tipsy grievances about poets, Shelley and Lovelace come to life (so to speak). One, a novelist devising science fiction, and the other, a mathematician devising computer science, they seem to be worlds apart - and yet, in this compelling new play, these kindred spirits discover how alike they truly are, and what really matters to them both.

"Mary Shelley had to publish under pseudonyms. Even if women were technically allowed to be published, they generally weren't," Sisk added. "When people found out she was a woman, she was paid less. When her husband died, she lost everything."

Lovelace, on the other hand, married a count and had a great deal of money, but very little agency. "Her writing about mathematics wasn't credited to her," Sisk said. "Men were allowed into academic institutions, which no woman was. Women couldn't go to university."

While "Frankenstein" gave Shelley an enduring legacy, Lovelace, among so many historical women of science, is only now becoming better known.

"It wasn't until more recently that her contributions to well-known male mathematicians such as Charles Babbage became known," Sisk added. "She had thought through whether computers could really think, whether they could ever match a human brain. In this and so many other ways, she was centuries ahead of her time."

"Shelley and Lovelace Never Met" will run at Theater For The New City, 155 First Ave., near 10th Street, Jan. 30 - Feb. 16 (Thurs.-Sat. 8 p.m./Sun 3 p.m.).

Dangerous Dames Theatre is a small, lady-led theater troupe hailing from the wilds of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Theater For The New City is a Pulitzer Prize-winning community cultural center known for its high artistic standards and widespread community service. Since it was founded in 1971 by Crystal Field, George Bartenieff, Larry Kornfeld, and Theo Barnes, TNC has earned a nationwide reputation for its dedication to nurturing established and emerging playwrights and bringing life to unique, special projects like 'Shelley and Lovelace Never Met' to the stage.

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