ABSTRACT
This chapter takes the Japanese Robot–Human Theatre production Hataraku Watashi by Hirata Oriza and Ishiguro Hiroshi from 2008 as its starting point. The robot Takeo states: "a robot should be working, we are created to work". The "identity crises" of the robots mirror those of the humans. It turns out that Yuji, the male human being, is out of job and also does not want to leave the house. In a scene following the "identity crisis", the male human Yuji tries to cheer up the miserable robot Takeo by playing the theme song from RoboCop on his CD player. For Ishiguro, the naturalism in Hirata's play is the main reason for the collaboration because this is where the artistic and the scientific approach have central elements in common. The play was an aesthetic manifestation of Hirata's and Ishiguro's imaginations concerning likely scenarios of robot–human interaction, but the play also contributed to scientific investigations related to social robotics.
