A.L.EX AND THE IMPROBOTS Comes to Edinburgh
Performances run 30 July – 17 Aug 2025.
By: Stephi Wild Jun. 03, 2025
An interactive science theatre experience for the whole family that blends comedy with STEM, A.L.Ex and the ImproBots: How to Train Your Robot explores what makes kids laugh – and whether a robot can learn the art of comedy. The Improbots, a team of human performers, are on a mission to train their robot pal A.L.Ex to become the funniest AI in the galaxy. Part scripted, part improvised, the show follows the little humanoid robot, who's powered by advanced speech recognition and custom-built AI, as he discovers his inner silly. With help from the younger members of the audience, the performance transforms into a real-time filmmaking adventure where children are invited on stage to co-create a short film using greenscreens, silly costumes and audience-generated scripts. How To Train Your Robot is a joyful, imaginative hour designed to spark curiosity about technology and AI while celebrating laughter, creativity, and collaborative storytelling.
ImproBotics Kids!' parent company Improbotics will also be at the Fringe this year with Improbotics Presents: RoboTales (Gilded Balloon 30 July – 17 Aug)
Boyd Branch said ‘'The show is a great intro to AI for kids- both to the creative potential and the over-hype. Our mission is to empower kids to playfully and critically engage with this wild new weird technology''
A family-focused spin-off of the world-renowned AI improv pioneers Improbotics, Improbotics Kids! is led by award-winning theatre artist and technologist Dr. Boyd Branch and AI researcher Dr. Piotr Mirowski. The company is redefining science communication and AI literacy through live comedy, rejecting both AI hype and dystopia in favor of play, creativity, and critical thinking. This is their second year with the show at the Fringe.
Dr. Boyd Branch, is a theatre technologist and research fellow at the Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE) at Coventry University, co-director of the AI Theatre Lab Improbotics, and founder of Improbotics Kids!. He works across disciplines with scientists, engineers, and artists to develop novel tools, experiences, and pedagogies aimed at fostering adaptive radical social change through play. He is a former Fulbright fellow whose art, designs, lectures, and workshops have been produced for the Venice Biennale, off-West End, off-Broadway and major cities in the U.S., England, Colombia, the Netherlands, and Pakistan. He holds a PhD in Digital Media from the University of Kent, an M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Digital Media from Arizona State University, and an M.A. in theatre studies from the University of Utrecht.
Dr Piotr Mirowski is the co-founder of Improbotics, the world's first AI-enabled improv theatre company, as well as a prominent research scientist in artificial intelligence, with expertise spanning robotics, weather and climate forecasting, human-centred AI and computational creativity, and is the author of over 80 research publications including Nature papers and Routledge book chapters on AI and theatre. Piotr obtained his PhD in computer science at New York University, with an award-winning thesis supervised by Turing award laureate Prof. Yann LeCun, and trained as an actor at the London School of Dramatic Art. Piotr leads a team on AI and Society at a world-leading AI research lab, is a Visiting Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London, and has worked as creative coder on critical AI installation “Friendly Fire at the Shrink” (Zürich University of the Arts) and on “AlphaGo_Lee: Theory of Sacrifice” (Teatr STUDIO, Warsaw).
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