Robota at the Schwarzman Centre uses AI as a mirror through which to examine humanity itself. The play is ultimately less concerned with whether robots can become human than with a more fundamental question: what makes us human?
Stories like this are hardly new. Human-like robots, the blurred boundary between people and machines, and the themes of creation and rebellion have long been staples of science fiction in both literature and film. Yet as generative AI now drafts news articles, composes music and produces artwork, expanding rapidly into creative fields once thought uniquely human, the world imagined in a century-old play no longer feels like a distant future. Written in 1920 by Czech playwright Karel Čapek, Rossum’s Universal Robots (R.U.R.) has acquired a striking new immediacy. To mark its 50th anniversary, Headlong has reimagined the play as Robota, co-produced with the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities at the University of Oxford, using Čapek’s classic to re-examine what it means to be human in the age of AI.
The production is staged at the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, Oxford University’s new humanities hub, which opened in 2025. Located in the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, the building combines a concert hall, theatre, cinema, black box performance lab and white box exhibition spaces with academic departments including English, Philosophy, History, Music and Theology, as well as the Institute for Ethics in AI. There is something especially fitting about Robota being performed in a building where AI ethics is studied alongside the humanities. On stage, the play imagines the increasingly blurred boundary between humans and artificial beings; beyond the auditorium, researchers are examining the ethical implications of that very boundary in the real world.
Headlong has long established itself as one of Britain’s leading theatre companies for politically and socially engaged work. Productions such as People, Places & Things, Chimerica and Enron have explored contemporary political, economic and social issues through theatre, guided by the belief that good theatre starts conversations. Robota continues that tradition. Rather than treating AI as simply another science fiction premise, the company has developed the project in collaboration with researchers in AI ethics at Oxford and scholars of Czech literature. The result is a production that is less interested in technological innovation than in the ethical questions that innovation raises about humanity itself.
The story is set in the near future. Rossum Corporation, a powerful technology company, has created robots indistinguishable from humans. They are the perfect workforce: tireless, efficient, endlessly knowledgeable, incapable of mistakes and designed to obey without question. The equilibrium begins to fracture when Helen, the British Prime Minister’s daughter and a campaigner for robot rights, arrives at the corporation’s remote-island research facility, determined to expose the reality behind its machines and secure their freedom. As she encounters the scientists responsible for creating the robots, however, her own understanding of where the boundary between humans and machines lies begins to shift.
Gradually, the robots are taught what it means to be human. They learn jokes, humour, melancholy, jealousy and love. As they acquire emotions, they also begin to desire freedom, and cracks start to appear in what once seemed a flawless system. Rather than focusing on artificial intelligence itself, Robota continually returns to a more fundamental question: what makes us human? As the distinction between people and machines becomes increasingly uncertain, the play tests that question through a series of encounters. A scientist falls in love with a robot; robots experience jealousy and affection of their own. Emotions and even the idea of creating life—once assumed to belong exclusively to humanity—are no longer uniquely human.
The set resembles a large-scale installation artwork. A skeletal steel scaffolding framework dominates the stage, while scattered objects create a landscape that feels at once like a laboratory and an abandoned warehouse. Although the creative team describes the space as a “robot testing lab”, it also evokes the atmosphere of an old museum storage facility, leaving the audience with the impression of standing before a contemporary artwork whose meaning resists any straightforward interpretation.
The most striking image is an upside-down tree, suspended throughout the performance with its roots reaching towards the ceiling and its branches stretching down to the floor. Suggesting a world in which the natural order has been inverted and humanity has assumed the role of creator, it becomes a powerful visual metaphor that distils the production’s central ideas.
The production is equally compelling in the way it depicts robots learning humanity. Initially, they are machines that can be switched off at any moment with the command, “Power off, please.” Yet they soon begin downloading Impressionist painting techniques, learning how to tell jokes and discovering love and jealousy. A being that casually eats an onion as though it were an apple gradually learns pity, experiences shame and eventually confesses love. Humans believe they are teaching emotions, but the robots ultimately turn the question back on their creators: if emotions can be learned, what, then, proves that you are human? Robots remember more accurately than people. Emotions can be programmed, imitated and acquired. If that is so, what is the final measure of humanity?
It is here that Robota uses AI as a mirror through which to examine humanity itself. The play is ultimately less concerned with whether robots can become human than with a more fundamental question: what makes us human? Are emotions merely a form of programming? Can love be learned? Does memory define identity? Ironically, as humans teach robots how to become more human, they are forced to reconsider their own understanding of what humanity actually is.
Yet the production’s philosophical ambitions are not always matched by its dramatic execution. Helen’s dual role as both a political activist and the Prime Minister’s daughter feels somewhat contrived, serving more as a narrative device than a fully convincing characterisation. The plastic toy guns used during the war sequence may well be an intentional embrace of kitsch, but they ultimately undercut the tension the play has carefully built. The ending, too, feels more abrupt than open-ended, closing the story before its central questions have fully resonated.
Even so, what makes Robota compelling is less the production itself than the fact that it has been revived at this particular moment. The world Karel Čapek imagined more than a century ago now feels remarkably close to our own. Robota asks what, if anything, remains uniquely human as technology continues to advance. Is it memory? Emotion? Imagination? Or our capacity for empathy? Rather than offering definitive answers, the production demonstrates why this century-old play deserves to be read anew in the age of AI. Ultimately, Robota is less a story about robots than it is about humanity. As technology advances, what comes into sharper focus is not the capability of artificial intelligence, but the meaning of being human.
Robota played at the Schwarzman Centre, Oxford, through to July 18.
Follow Us