On May 20, 2026, the Grote Zaal at Muntstraat 2A (Utrecht University) hosted the TiM Seminar Session “Griefbots in Research and on the Stage,” led by Ulrike Quade, Sorcha Ní Bhraonáin, and Evelyn Wan. Maaike Bleeker, leader of D4D project, organized the event together with Laura Karreman, who served as moderator. The event was divided…

On Monday 11 May 2026, Dramaturgy for Devices (D4D) organised a workshop in Delft at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering (IDE), called “Countertechnique for Engineers.” The workshop served as an introduction to Countertechnique, aiming to discover inspiration and practical methodologies for integrating the technique into human-robot interaction (HRI). This seminar emerged from the Dance…

On the 6th of February, Dramaturgy for Devices and Robotstories | Expanding Narratives organised a collaborative exploration of Prompts & Theater. With the advent of LLMs, the concept of “prompt” has entered the HRI vocabulary. However, in the theater domain, formulas and systems resembling what a prompt might be for AI have been in use for much longer. For example, Forsythe’s Improvisation…

Author: Maaike Bleeker // This paper proposes ensoulment as an artist-led relational approach to developing robot behavior. As an alternative to the more commonly used term animation, ensoulment offers a radical relational perspective on how to bring about a sense of personhood or character that starts from exploring the potential of puppets and robots for…

On September 25th 2025, Dramaturgy for Devices organized a workshop on dance knowledge. The participants included choreographers, roboticists, dramaturges, and performance scholars, each of whom brought their own distinct understanding of and relation to dance. Four choreographers/researchers were invited to share their view of what dance knowledge entails. The aim of the workshop was to…

How will we live together with robots? During the Highlight Symposium ‘Robotic Relations’ on 13 February 2026, Maaike Bleeker, Ulrike Quade and Marco Rozendaal facilitated two sessions. Through talks, panels, and interactive installations, they explored whether robots can become extensions of human creativity, how we might understand robots as more-than-tools, and what happens when we

What happens when autonomously moving objects become part of our everyday environments? And how can we design their movements in ways that thoughtfully interact with human bodies? To explore these questions, PhD-candidate Enne Lampe (TU Delft) and Master-student Hannah Kleijne (TU Delft) conducted a live experiment during Highlight Delft. Visitors were invited to move with…

Recently, the online Performing Robots Catalogue was published. This catalogue is a living archive of projects, artworks, performances and experiments which combine theatre and robotics. It is part of the larger research project Dramaturgy for Devices.In order to organize the different projects within the catalogue, we have created a taxonomy with relevant categories and sub-categories.

VU Lecture by Laura Karreman and Ulrike Quade On December 1st, 2025, Dr. Laura Karreman—Associate Professor in Media and Performance Studies at Utrecht University (UU)—and Ulrike Quade—theater director, artistic researcher, puppeteer, and scenographer—gave a lecture at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) titled The Dramaturgy of Robots on Stage. The lecture was presented in the context

We invite submissions to the special session Skillful Practices in Social Robotics and HRI – Approaches from the Performing Arts at the International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR 2026), held 1–4 July 2026 in London, UK. CALL FOR PROPOSALS The past decades have witnessed increased recognition of the relevance of skills and expertise from the…