Opening Tonight: ‘The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage’


by Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts | Michigan Tech Music

Get your tickets to the outrageously fun five-show run of “The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage,” performed by Guerilla Opera. This event is part of the yearlong celebration of 50 years of computer science at Michigan Tech. The show opens tonight at 7:30 p.m.!

Based on the New York Times bestselling steampunk graphic novel by Sydney Padua, this is the first staging of the comedic new work. It centers on scientists Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, the real-life unsung inventors of the first computer, fighting crime in alternate universes with their new invention.

Lovelace was a mathematician, gambler and proto-programmer whose writings contained the first-ever appearance of general computing theory. She was the first great genius to develop a programming language, and she is still not generally known. Babbage was the eccentric inventor of the Difference Engine, an enormous clockwork calculating machine that would have been the first computer, if he had ever finished it.

Stay after tonight’s performance for a panel discussion with Alaina de la Guardia (“Ava Lovelace” and artistic director of Guerilla Opera), Elena Ruehr (the Houghton-raised composer of the opera), Libby Meyer (director of the music composition program at Michigan Tech), Linda Ott (professor of computer science), Jennifer Nish (associate professor of rhetoric and composition) and Richard Canevez (assistant professor of communication, culture, and media, and humanities).

Show Details:

  • What: “The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage”
  • When: Five performances —
    • Thursday, Oct. 12, at 7:30 p.m.
    • Friday, Oct. 13, at 7:30 p.m.
    • Saturday, Oct. 14, at 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
    • Sunday, Oct. 15, at 3 p.m.
  • Where: McArdle Theatre
  • Tickets: Pay As You’re Able ($30 full ticket fee). Student Rush included with Experience Tech fee.

Attend a Performance.