THEATER IN THE RAW.Byline: Bob Keefer The Register-Guard Yes, folks, Matt Ginsberg really is trying to be a Renaissance man Renaissance man n. A man who has broad intellectual interests and is accomplished in areas of both the arts and the sciences. Noun 1. . And he's pretty much succeeding. Ginsberg, 51, is a whiz in the arcane computer world of artificial intelligence. He's co-founder and CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. of On Time Systems, a Eugene company whose software helps the Navy schedule ship repairs more efficiently and helps the Air Force conserve jet fuel. With a doctorate in math from Oxford, Ginsberg helped found the Computational Intelligence Computational intelligence (CI) is a successor of artificial intelligence. As an alternative to GOFAI it rather relies on heuristic algorithms such as in Fuzzy systems, Neural networks and Evolutionary computation. Research Laboratory at the University of Oregon The University of Oregon is a public university located in Eugene, Oregon. The university was founded in 1876, graduating its first class two years later. The University of Oregon is one of 60 members of the Association of American Universities. . While there he wrote GIB See NIST binary. , the world's first expert bridge-playing program (which Bridge World calls "the best bridge-playing program we have seen" and The New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times called simply "the best of its kind'). His latest literary accomplishment is getting a crossword puzzle accepted by the New York Sun (he's in discussion, he notes, with New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz Will Shortz (born August 26, 1952) is a U.S. puzzle creator and editor. Early life Will Shortz was born and raised on an Arabian horse farm in Crawfordsville, Indiana. ). Pretty good background for a playwright, you're probably thinking. Well, that's what Ginsberg has been thinking. Besides being a computer genius, he is the author of "Old Friends," a dark drama that's among the three new plays to be presented this weekend at Willamette Repertory Theatre's annual Readings in Rep. The play is revised from an earlier version. "This is a play I wrote a while ago," he says. "In 1990. And it was done by a little tiny company in the (San Francisco San Francisco (săn frănsĭs`kō), city (1990 pop. 723,959), coextensive with San Francisco co., W Calif., on the tip of a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, which are connected by the strait known as the Golden ) Bay Area. And then I came up to Eugene and started a research lab and the company and never had a chance to get back to it in any way." Meanwhile, Ginsberg and his wife have become fans of Willamette Rep. So, naturally, he submitted "Old Friends" for a reading. He has dusted it off a bit, conscious that the world has moved on in the 17 years since it was first written. "I have changed it a bunch," he says. "It's amazing how fast language changes. Every now and then it sounded like, `Wow! People wouldn't talk that way anymore.' ' The play got its start in a moment of personal romantic tragedy. Ginsberg was dumped by a girl he was engaged to. That was bad enough - and then he made a worse discovery. "My best friend at Stanford was fantastic," Ginsberg recalls. "He was everything you could ask for - until I found out he was dating her." The relationship is still strained. "Old Friends," he admits, is a revenge play. It has a dark ending - very dark - so dark, in fact, that he wrote an alternative happy ending for Willamette Rep. Artistic Director Kirk Boyd said last week he still didn't know which ending would be used. "Old Friends" will be directed by Chris Pinto and features actors Frank Muhr, Jennifer Taggart and Emily Gilbert. |
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