For all the ideas embedded in "Turing Machine," actor Lee Sang-yun says the play is about a human being.
“There’s a great deal in the story,” Lee said during a group interview with reporters Thursday in Seoul, “but in the end, it’s about one human being — someone who was lonely because of the gap between what he was searching for and the reality he faced.”
Lee plays Alan Turing (1912-1954), the brilliant British mathematician at the center of the production that traces his life as a pioneer of modern computer science and artificial intelligence. During World War II, he helped crack Germany’s Enigma code — an achievement credited with saving millions of lives and shortening the war. Yet, he lived much of his life under the weight of social exclusion because of his sexuality and a speech impediment. Homosexual acts were outlawed in Britain at the time.
“He was ahead of everyone else in science and mathematics,” Lee said. “And that ‘being ahead’ seems to have made him appear strange in his own time. Historically, people who are ahead of their time are often treated as odd. In that sense, he was someone the times could not fully accept.”
Rather than portraying Turing as an eccentric genius sealed off from others, Lee said he wanted to depict him as someone recognizable and familiar.
“I wanted him to feel like someone around us, someone a little different, but not totally alien,” he said. “Anyone can stutter when they’re flustered. And there are accounts that describe Turing as humorous and witty. He wasn’t strange. He was simply different.”
To render Turing’s life convincingly onstage, Lee said he often recalled lessons learned from the veteran actor Park Geun-hyung, with whom he previously worked on “Death of a Salesman” and “Waiting for Waiting for Godot.”
“What I learned from him was how to express the arc of a human life within a work,” Lee said. “That’s how I approached Turing — not as a symbol or an idea, but as one complete life.”
A graduate of Seoul National University’s physics department and known for his work in television dramas, Lee began his stage work in 2019 with “Almost, Maine.”
Lee describes his relationship with the stage as one of constant fracture and growth.
“Every time I go onstage, I feel like something breaks within me,” he said. “And each time, the point where it breaks changes. At first, it’s the basics. Then it’s something more advanced. Because of that, the way I read a script, the depth of my interpretation, all of it keeps deepening.”
Lee says he is breaking open again, watching the other actors cast as Turing, including Lee Dong-hwi and Lee Seung-joo.
“When we share interpretations, I realize how much further I can think. Actors who’ve lasted a long time and are deeply loved always have a reason. Watching them, I think, ‘So that’s how far one can go.’ That’s part of the breaking process. I haven’t reached that place yet.”
"Turing Machine" opened on Jan. 8 and runs through March 1 at the S Theater of the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts in central Seoul.
hwangdh@heraldcorp.com
