Behind the scenes of RoboTales
Improbotics co-founder Piotr Mirowski takes us behind the scenes of _RoboTales_ to reveal how the show was created. _RoboTales_ is an improvised choose-your-own adventure game, played in front of the audience by the talented cast of Improbotics. The twist in RoboTales is that a robot writes and directs the show. The bot uses speech recognition and state-of-the-art AI to analyse the improv scenes and generate silly new choices and strange transitions. The audiences control the story by voting on their phones for their preferred choice, and then the actors take the story forward. It is like “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch”, brought to life by AI and the actors’ imagination and improv talent. The idea of improvising with AI came to Piotr about 10 years ago, when it was still a fairly niche topic. He was researching and building AI, while also performing on stage as an actor and improviser. One day he tried to improvise on stage with a robot, powered by a language model that he coded-up himself. There was a strange connection between language models and improvisers. Then he met Kory Mathewson, another researcher in robotics and improv comedian, who had the same idea: they became friends and set up a theatre company where human actors improvise alongside machines. The Improbotics’ ethos is to make your stage partner look good, even when it is a robot! Over the years, the shows have evolved quite a bit. Boyd Branch designed augmented reality shows that kept them connected and provided emotional support during Covid lockdowns. They improvised multilingual shows with live AI translation with the Swedish cast of Improbotics. And they explored AI as a tool for grounded, emotional improv with Sarah Davies. It’s hard to design a show that bridges different audiences, handles some very experimental technology while also entertaining festival punters looking for comedy. They now call themselves a science comedy troupe! Veteran improvisers and improv educators Katy Shutte and Chris Mead, as well as Jenny Rowe from The Maydays, have immensely helped design the dramaturgy of improvising with machines.
