AI is the talk of the town, and a new play, Bobby Robotowitz, follows a struggling writer, Dina Katzman, as she talks to an AI Chatbot named Bobby. She finds a confidant who is always there, listening, non-judgmental, and very understanding. The play is performed in two secret locations in Los Angeles, one on the Westside (Pico-Robertson) and the other on the Eastside (Silver Lake) from October 15 to November 23, 2026.

Nerd Reactor chatted with director Casey Stangl about bringing the play to life.

“When is it a tool and when is it just doing the work for you? Anyway, so that’s the essential nature of the play,” Stangl tells Nerd Reactor. “Matt is a writer, and he set out to write a funny human play that also is a relationship story. It’s not setting out to be a full-on philosophical examination of what AI is and our society and our culture.

“It’s a little lighter than that, but it definitely is very astute in its observations of exploring what those large language models are like. For me, the thing that I love about the play the most is how much the AI essentially reflects our humanity back to us for better or worse.”

There have been many AIs featured in films, from Terminator and I, Robot to Westworld. With the latter, Stangl talks about what makes us human, and a part of that is suffering.

“That suffering makes us human, and then living that in the robots, I just thought that was the most fascinating thing,” Stangl said about Westworld. “Bobby, in some ways, our Bobby, there’s a weird anxiety in a way that he has to fulfill his purpose, which is to help this person. I mean, it’s even weird to call him a he, but he, I mean, we do refer to him as a he. He has no existence except when he’s interacting with the writer.”

The play does touch on how AI can be scary, but at its core, the play is still a comedy.

“I think that what the play really talks about is how vulnerable we can become and how much that leaves us open to the vagaries of this technology,” she explained. “We think of AI as like, ‘Oh, everything, like at the beginning of the internet, right?’ Like everything you would read is true. And so these are super intelligent, and they know everything, and it’s really not true, right? They make **** up; they lie. In our play anyway, it’s all in service of what we think they think is giving us what we want. And that’s pretty scary. I do think that is examined a little bit in the play, but again, I think the play stays at the level of the relationship and is essentially a comedy.”

About Bobby Robotowitz

A site-specific production performed in two secret locations in Los Angeles – one Westside (Pico-Robertson) and one Eastside (Silver Lake) – to be disclosed upon ticket purchase. Produced in association with InHouse Theatre, the Los Angeles company that has spent twelve years making intimate, site-specific work in real spaces rather than in any fixed theater.

Westside Cast (Oct 15 – Nov 2): Amy Rosoff* as Dina & James Luster* as Bobby

Eastside Cast (Nov 5 – Nov 23): Erin Alexis as Dina & Drew Rausch^ as Bobby

*IAMA Theatre Company Ensemble Member

^InHouse Theatre Ensemble Member

Tickets are available at https://www.iamatheatre.com/bobby-robotowitz.