- Title: JAPAN: Robot actress plays key role in Japanese stage play
- Date: 11th November 2010
- Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (Japanese) CHIHIRO AIKAWA, 28-YEAR-OLD BOOK PUBLISHER, SAYING: "It looked like the android was acting an android."
- Embargoed: 26th November 2010 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Japan
- Country: Japan
- Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment / Showbiz,Science / Technology
- Reuters ID: LVAVCURBPFUJLLU8K0G6OTBTNX2
- Story Text: Critics may call Japan's newest stage star's acting a bit stiff, but at least she has a valid reason.
Geminoid F is a robot, or android, acting the part of a robot in a Japanese play titled "Sayonara" and being presented media and select audiences on Wednesday (November 10) ahead of a two-day Tokyo arts festival.
The play, which means "Good-bye" in English, is a 20-minute piece where most of the action revolves around an android caretaker of the not-so-far future reciting poetry to a human woman suffering a fatal illness.
Geminoid F, designed to look 'a quarter Russian' with blond hair and brown eyes, remained seated through out the play as a human controlled most of her expressions and voice from behind the scenes.
"It may not be that a robot replaces human beings on stage; it's more like a new type of actor has emerged into the theaterical world," said the director Oriza Hirata, who has already put together two plays featuring robots since 2008.
But this is the first time Hirata says he has used a human-looking android, which he insists are not only good actors but also brilliant in boosting ticket sales.
"For me as a director, there is nothing more appreciable than robot actors; all kinds their acting problems can be ultimately solved only if I can invest enough time, and the audience always loves to see them acting," said Hirata.
Hiroshi Ishiguro, a renown robot developer of Osaka University and the father of Geminoid F, added that the potential of android actors is unlimited.
"Android can look very similar to human actors; but more than that, we can technically create a superior actor by featuring all good techniques of human actors such as staring, moving, and talking," said Ishiguro.
Ishiguro says he's created this thespian version by simplifying the usual 100-million-yen (1.21 million U.S. dollars) model as cheaper but more accessible robots at one-tenth of the cost.
Only 12 motors were used to enable the machine to speak, smile and dumbfounded audiences while keeping her eyes blinking and chest moving up and down as if she was actually breathing.
But acting along side a robot is, apparently, a total different issue.
"I kind of feel like I'm alone, I think. There's a bit of distance; the robot has a quite particular position because it's got a voice but it's not some kinds of human presence," said budding U.S. actress Bryerly Long, who now can probably claim to have become the first actress ever to play a part with a real an android co-actor.
Audience felt the casting was impeccable as 'who best to play the part of a robot but a robot.'
"It looked like the android was acting the part of an android," said a 28-year-old Chihiro Aikawa after watching the performance.
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