ROBOTA

Speaker
A Headlong and Schwarzman Centre Production
Event date
3 Jul 2026 to 18 Jul 2026
Event time
19:00
Venue
The Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities
Radcliffe Observatory Quarter
Woodstock Road
Oxford
OX2 6GG
Venue details

Theatre

Event type
Drama
Event cost
Ticket prices vary, from £16.50
Disabled access?
Yes
Booking required
Required

A creation story for the end of time.

In 1920, Karel Čapek imagined a world of A.I. and rebellion and gave us the word 'robot'. Headlong reawakens his visionary play R.U.R. as ROBOTA – high-voltage theatre for the age of artificial intelligence.

In a distant tomorrow, the Rossum Corporation has done the impossible: created machines indistinguishable from humans. Built to serve. Programmed to obey.

But when these perfect workers begin to dream of freedom, the system starts to glitch. As the line between human and machine blurs, can humanity survive the revolution it set in motion?

Blending origin story with sci-fi, myth with machine, this is a bold, unsettling look at what it means to create life – and what happens when it turns on its maker.

ROBOTA collides theatre, sci-fi and philosophy in a charged exploration of power and progress.