Seven Days: Vermont's Independent Voice

Acting Mechanics

What brings an acclaimed playwright and theater director together with a world-renowned roboticist? The answer lies in Oriza Hirata and Hiroshi Ishiguro’s Japanese Robot Android Human Theater, a groundbreaking production in which remotely controlled actors star opposite their flesh-and-blood counterparts. Two works portray a not-so-distant future in which people and their mechanical likenesses coexist. I, Worker presents a young couple living with two robots named Takeo and Momoko. In Sayonara, an android caretaker recites poems to a terminally ill woman to ease the latter’s pain. Both performances pose questions about the role of technology and how it relates to human experience.