A struggling novelist strikes up a friendship with an AI chatbot named Bobby, and the whole relationship unfolds right in your neighbor's living room — or at least a stand-in for it. IAMA Theatre Company is staging the world premiere of Bobby Robotowitz inside two secret residential venues on opposite sides of Los Angeles, one near Pico-Robertson and one in Silver Lake, running through Nov. 2 on the Westside and Nov. 5 through Nov. 23 on the Eastside.
Written by Matt Schatz and directed by Casey Stangl, Bobby Robotowitz follows novelist Dina Katzman as she finds an unlikely confidant in an AI chatbot modeled on ChatGPT, exploring, as the Los Angeles Times reports, both the human need for connection and the risks of a machine built to always agree. The production is a co-presentation between IAMA Theatre Company and InHouse Theatre, the latter a company that, per the Los Angeles Times, has spent 12 years making site-specific work inside real spaces rather than conventional theaters.
Guests don't find out exactly where they're headed until after they buy a ticket, when the venue address is sent along, according to the Los Angeles Times. Both the Westside and Eastside casts rehearse together at IAMA's black box theater in Atwater Village, though the Los Angeles Times notes the Westside cast gets only two rehearsals there before relocating to its living-room venue. Each location hosts 13 performances for audiences capped at 35 seats, the paper reports.
Two Casts, Two Neighborhoods, One Script
James Luster plays Bobby in the Westside production opposite Amy Rosoff as Dina, while Drew Rausch takes on the role of Bobby in the Eastside staging alongside Erin Alexis as Dina, per the Los Angeles Times. Luster and Rosoff reportedly used ChatGPT itself as research while preparing their roles, a detail the paper says speaks to how closely the script's AI character hews to the real thing.
Accessibility differs sharply between the two secret venues. According to guidelines from InHouse Theatre, the Westside Pico-Robertson location is wheelchair accessible, while the Eastside Silver Lake venue requires navigating one flight of stairs and cannot accommodate wheelchairs.
An Anxious Bot, Not a Villain
Director Casey Stangl pointed to television series like Westworld while discussing how she approached Bobby's characterization, describing an underlying anxiety rooted in the bot's programmatic imperative to help the humans around it. Stangl told the Los Angeles Times the play is ultimately about people's need and craving for connection, a theme she said shapes how Bobby and Dina's bond develops over the course of the show.
Schatz told the Los Angeles Times that the play is about the importance of art and human-made things, a point that lands differently given where audiences are sitting to watch it. InHouse Theatre's Cara Greene Epstein told the paper the production is deliberately analog, designed to bring people together around technology rather than isolate them behind it. The Los Angeles Times reports that Bobby Robotowitz portrays a relationship in which Bobby learns and grows as Dina does, rather than remaining a static tool.
Built on a History of Collaboration
Schatz and InHouse Theatre have worked together before, on Schatz's earlier site-specific play The Past, A Present Yet To Come, according to New Play Exchange, making Bobby Robotowitz an extension of an existing creative partnership rather than a one-off experiment. Schatz's broader résumé spans musical theater and commercial media alike: he shared the 2012 Kleban Prize as the most promising musical-theatre librettist, and his show Love Trapezoid received a developmental production in 2012; he has also picked up the Edgerton New Play Award, the ASCAP Foundation Harold Arlen Award, and the Reva Shiner Comedy Award, according to Playbill. Beyond the stage, Schatz co-wrote a Netflix Animation pilot adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory alongside Taika Waititi and wrote original songs for season three of the Gimlet/Spotify podcast series The Two Princes, per the University of Dayton.
A National Rolling Premiere
Bobby Robotowitz carries a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere designation, a program the network created in 1998 so playwrights could continuously develop and refine new works across multiple member theaters in front of live audiences, rather than betting everything on a single debut, according to IAMA Theatre Company. The Los Angeles Times reports the play will next travel to Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Washington, D.C., City Theatre in Pennsylvania, Luna Stage in New Jersey, and Theatre Lab in Florida. City Theatre's own listing specifies its run as Jan. 23 through Feb. 14, 2027, while Woolly Mammoth's schedule places its production from March 29 through April 25, 2027.
The play arrives as AI-themed theater has found mainstream footing elsewhere: Maybe Happy Ending, a musical about two human-like helper robots, won the Tony Award for best scenic design in 2025, the Los Angeles Times notes. Bobby Robotowitz opens IAMA Theatre Company's 2026–2027 season, which also includes world premieres by Gloria Calderón Kellett's What We Leave Behind and Grace McLeod's Closing Costs, the latter co-produced with Geffen Playhouse, according to an IAMA season press release.
