ROBOTA

Headlong presents a bold and provocative new production in its new home city of Oxford this summer. ROBOTA tells a classic yet startlingly timely story for our age of AI, and it’s the first full scale production mounted at the University of Oxford's brand-new Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities for a strictly limited run from 3-18 July.

The cast includes Ronkẹ Adékọluẹ́jọ́ (Alex Rider for Prime TV;  Been So Long for Netflix) as Helen, Umi Myers  (Dracula - Lyric Hammersmith, Dope Girls - BBC) as Robot Helen, Tiffany Gray (The Purists - Kiln, Between Riverside and Crazy - Hampstead Theatre) as Sulla, Ian Drysdale (The Spy Who Came In From The Cold - Chichester Festival Theatre; The Crucible - Sheffield Theatres) as Busman, Trevor Fox (The Pitman Painters - National Theatre, West End and Broadway; Billy Elliot The Musical) as Dom and Irfan Shamji  (Industry - BBC/HBO, Marriage Material - Lyric Hammersmith) as Ali.

In 1920, playwright Karel Čapek imagined a world of A.I. and rebellion, inspiring and influencing a century of sci-fi cinema. 100 years later, Headlong reawakens his visionary play R.U.R. as ROBOTA – high-voltage theatre for the age of artificial intelligence.

In a not-too-distant future the Rossum Corporation has done the impossible: created machines indistinguishable from humans. Built to serve, programmed to obey and ready to be rolled out worldwide.

But when idealistic activist Helen gets involved, these perfect workers begin to dream of freedom and the system starts to glitch. As the line between human and machine blurs, how do we hold on to our humanity?

Blending origin story with sci-fi, myth with machine, this is a smart, timely and often funny look at what it means to truly be alive.

Where: Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, Woodstock Road, Oxford  OX2 6GG

When: 3 July – 18 July 2026

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