While we’ve all been to a play or two in our lifetime, chances are none of us have seen anything quite like what’s being done at the Seinedan Theater Company, where Japanese playwright Orizata Hirata is staging two plays which feature humans acting out roles alongside robot counterparts.
Scene from Orizata Hirata’s play, “I, Worker”.
The first piece is entitled “Sayonara”. It’s a short play that details how a dying woman communicates with a robot to find depth and substance in her life. The other show is called “I, Worker”, and it’s about a man dealing with his wife’s recent passing and a robot servant that suffers from depression (yes, you read that right — a robot with emotions). For those curious, robot voices are pre-recorded by company actors.
Will this be a major breakthrough for human-robot relations? Doubtful. Is it an interesting interpretation of how humans interact with the technology. Artistically — definitely. Scientifically — that’s up for debate.
The Company produced the play as part of the Osaka University Robot Theater Project, with support from the Japan Society, whose representative, Yoko Shioya, had this to note about the plays:
It’s not about robots trying to replace the human actors. Rather, robots play as a robot role . . . So it’s about the encounters of robots in the near future where they serve in every human’s living space and how they interact with human beings.
While the original plays made their debut in Tokyo, Japan, the Company is currently running a six-city tour across eastern North America, with stops in New York, New York; Columbus, Ohio, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Burlington, Vermont; Toronto, Canada; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
To get a closer look at the plays, check out the trailer below:
To learn more, visit japansociety.org
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