ORACLE | Łukasz Twarkowski, Dailes Theatre Latvia

“ORACLE” moves across decades. It shines a light on visionaries who changed the course of history. From science to war, from algorithm to intuition, from the thirst for knowledge to the anguish for peace, from human to machine, from presence to absence, it ultimately celebrates those who dare to imagine another world and break boundaries, without hesitating to pay the price of their courage.

What does Alan Turing (1912–1954), the mathematical genius who foresaw the world of computers and artificial intelligence and broke the German Enigma code during World War II, have in common with Hedy Lamarr, the Hollywood star whose rare beauty is reflected in Disney’s Snow White, but also an inventor who paved the way for modern wireless communications? What connects the medium Helen Duncan, who brought spiritualism to the fore, with Blake Lemoine, the dismissed Google engineer who raised the question of consciousness in artificial intelligence?

Shifting between post-war Britain and a timeless digital realm, “ORACLE” employs thermal and infrared cameras—not neutral video tools, but first and foremost weapons of war. At the same time, through immersive soundscapes and cinematic projections, it dissolves the boundary between reality and illusion. Visually striking and conceptually provocative, the performance reflects on Turing’s secrets, his prophetic insights, and the future shaped by artificial intelligence that he helped imagine, placing it alongside forgotten stories and biographies that haunt the margins of the official historical account.

Twarkowski explains that the title of his immersive multimedia theater performance is inspired by Turing himself and refers to the notion of the oracle: “He called one of his imagined machines ‘the oracle,’ a figure of possibility. You could say Turing was an oracle too, someone who saw something that others couldn’t yet imagine. Maybe the oracle is the thing that tells the truth and gets ignored.”

“ORACLE” delves into chillingly accurate predictions about the future and into the dark side of technology that is already shaping our lives. A constantly shifting revolving stage, music that stirs you, and cameras that bring out every breath, every heartbeat of the characters in the performance by the Polish visionary of contemporary theater, who emphatically calls out to us: “The future is here.” A production by Dailes Theatre.

– “ORACLE” marks Łukasz Twarkowski’s third collaboration with Onassis Stegi, further cementing the institution’s role as his long-standing partner in Greece. “ROHTKO” was presented for two consecutive seasons to great acclaim (in May 2023 and March 2024), while the six-hour “Respublika” (June 2024) offered an immersive experience at the intersection of cinema, theater, and rave culture. Staged in the fields of Malakasa, it kept hundreds of audience members awake for three consecutive days, quite literally until dawn.

– “ORACLE” is the second part of a trilogy centered on three landmark scientific breakthroughs of the 20th and 21st centuries. The first part, “Quanta” (2024), explores the origins of quantum physics. “ORACLE” (2025) examines the story of Alan Turing and the evolution of computing through to the age of artificial intelligence. The third part, scheduled for 2028, will focus on James Watson, Francis Crick, and Rosalind Franklin and the discovery of DNA’s structure.

– The idea for the trilogy emerged from Twarkowski’s reading of Benjamin Labatut’s “When We Cease to Understand the World,” a novel about scientists whose discoveries have shaped the world we live in.

– Functioning like a time machine, the performance brings four historical figures – along with others – from different eras and circumstances into a single narrative, allowing them to appear, coexist, and interact: Alan Turing (1912–1954), Hedy Lamarr (1914–2000), Helen Duncan (1897–1956), and Blake Lemoine (b. 1981).

– Alan Turing was an English mathematician, logician, computer scientist, cryptanalyst, and philosopher, one of the leading figures of modern science and a foundational figure in the theory of artificial intelligence. His name became associated with the famous Turing Test, and at the age of just 24, he published his landmark paper “On Computable Numbers,” introducing the theoretical concept of the Turing machine, which laid the foundations for modern computing. During World War II, he joined Britain’s secret codebreaking center at Bletchley Park, where he led Hut 8 and played a crucial role in deciphering messages encrypted by the German Enigma machine. According to historians, his contribution was instrumental in shortening the war. After the war, he continued his pioneering work on the development of the first electronic computers, but in 1952 he was prosecuted for homosexuality.

– Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian-born American actress and inventor who, together with composer George Antheil, developed a frequency-hopping guidance system for torpedoes, designed to prevent enemy forces from detecting the signal and to reduce the risk of interference. Their patent later contributed to the development of wireless technologies, including GSM and other technologies used in wireless communications, such as GPS, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi. Walt Disney is said to have drawn inspiration from her features and appearance to depict Snow White in his eponymous film (1937).

– Helen Duncan was a Scottish medium known for her séances and claims that she could communicate with the dead. She was the last woman in Britain to be convicted under the Witchcraft Act of 1735, after revealing secret information during World War II, and served a nine-month prison sentence. Her séances were later challenged after the use of theatrical tricks and props was exposed.

– Blake Lemoine is an American software engineer who publicly claimed in 2022 that Google’s LaMDA language model had become sentient. Google subsequently placed him on administrative leave, citing violations of the company’s confidentiality policies.

– Twarkowski began working on the trilogy in 2023, a year after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. According to Twarkowski, the work is connected to “our inner fear of war at this moment.”

– “ORACLE” had its world premiere on August 28, 2025, at the international Ruhrtriennale festival. Its official premiere followed on September 19, 2025, at Dailes Teātris in Riga.