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TagsAs anyone who watches Futurama knows, in the future some of the finest actors around will be robots. The first steps towards this glorious tomorrow have been taken, as the first robot-human theatre production has had its premiere. And to absolutely no-one’s surprise, it’s the work of the Japanese.
Hataraku Watashi (I, Worker), by Oriza Hirata, took its bow at Osaka University. Set in the near future, it tells of a young couple with two housekeeping robots, one of which loses its motivation to work, complaining about its boring job and discussing its place in its owners’ lives with them.
The robots (one of which is pictured in rehearsals with human co-star Minako Inoue) are made by Mitsubishi. The model is already used as a mechanical house-sitter, but the two acting droids were built especially for the production. It took two months for workers at the university to develop the acting programme, which makes the robots speak lines and move around the stage.
Hirata says the work is intended to raise questions about the relationships between humans and technology, and hopes to expand it from its current 20-minute running time to a full-length production by 2010.
Rumours that Mitsubishi are now working on a real-life version of Calculon were sadly made up by us just now. But we can dream…
