Robot Fringe Festival Month – INTERVIEW – Welcome To The World Of Robots…

By Holly on 3 Jun 2026 • ( Leave a comment )

All this month we are talking to Dr Heather Knight and Dr Piotr Mirowski every Wednesday Morning. This year they are hosting a brand new event in the heart of London – Robot Fringe Festival . It is set to take place on the 2nd July at Senate House, part of the University of London. The event is set to explore experimental, bold and creative ideas as part of the Internal Conference on Social Robotics ICSR+ART 2026. All this month we are talking to Heather and Piotr to find out all about it. This week we get to know a bit more about them both.

Hello Heather and Piotr tell us how you both met!

Piotr: We have been following each other’s work for years. Heather pioneered stand up comedy with robots in 2010 (see her 2011 TED talk) and was running the first ever Robot Film Festival in 2011-2019, and that greatly inspired Kory Mathewson and me to connect improv and AI (an improvising chatbot “stage partner”) back in 2016! (see the film by Phoenix Remix).

You are curating the first ever Robot Fringe. How did the idea come about?

Piotr: We have been performing tech-inspired shows at regular festivals, comedy clubs, and thought about creating a performing space for artists who love tinkering with robots.

Heather: I have waited my whole career for a live show with robots to be easy. Here’s why I started the Robot Film Festival in 2010, back then it was more realistic for a robot to do something one time on film than get it to work in person, but these days Entertainment Tech is taking off! We hope to do our part to help with experimental, bold new works! http://thenextweb.com/industry/2011/05/06/the-worlds-first-robot-film-festival-in-new-york-city/

“I’ve put comedy robots in Washington Square Park of New York City acting out postcards people would show of different neighborhoods…”

Heather

Why a festival for robots?

Piotr: Robot Fringe is mostly for humans but we welcome our robot friends! Robots and theatre are intrinsically linked: the first ever mention of the word “robot” dates back to a 1920 theatre play, R.U.R. Rossum’s Universal Robots, by Czech playwright Karel Čapek (it was already a dystopian play at that time). It was time to establish a Robot Fringe Festival.

We will talk more about the festival in the up and coming weeks but give us a brief overview of what people can expect?

Heather: We invite artists, roboticists, and interdisciplinary practitioners to present their performance work with robots. Piotr and I have curated 10 great acts that mix comedy, cabaret, dance, clowning, theatre and music, featuring robots, puppets, and human actors, including an a capella trio of robots! Daniel Simu of ACROBOT will be our keynote performance.

“Robot Fringe is mostly for humans but we welcome our robot friends! “

Piotr

We have spoken many times to Piotr about how his interest in robotics came through promotion we have done for Improbotics, how did you get interested in them Heather?

Heather: I fell in love with robots by building them at the MIT Media Lab, specifically because when we would demonstrate them to people it got a wow factor that I fell in love with. I’ve put comedy robots in Washington Square Park of New York City acting out postcards people would show of different neighborhoods, and supported mixed human-machine dance and comedy performances ranging from robot jellyfish to sanitizer-dispensing robots that hit on you.

Now I’m getting into producing robot shows myself. And developing rehearsal software to help prototype real products. Sensing is my second love.