Cast Set For BOBBY ROBOTOWITZ at IAMA Theatre Company
Site-specific production stars Amy Rosoff, James Luster, Christine Woods, and Drew Rausch in two secret Los Angeles venues.
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IAMA Theatre Company will open its 2026–2027 season with the National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere of Bobby Robotowitz by Matt Schatz, directed by award-winning Los Angeles director Casey Stangl, and produced in association with InHouse Theatre. Performances run October 15 through November 23, 2026, with press opening October 16, inside two secret private homes: one on the Westside (Pico/Robertson), one on the Eastside (Silverlake).
Bobby Robotowitz unpacks questions around identity and AI and what it means to be a writer in today's digital world. Dina Katzman is struggling. As a novelist, as a mother, as a wife, and as a person. Then she starts talking to an AI chatbot named Bobby: a confidant who always listens, never judges, and somehow seems to understand her better than most people in her life. What could go wrong?
This production is the first of five rolling world premiere productions planned across the country over the next eighteen months, including DC's Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, which means Los Angeles audiences meet Dina and Bobby and weigh in on the conversation before anyone else in America does. Bobby Robotowitz is also a finalist in the 2026 Terrence McNally Award from the Terrence McNally Foundation.
For Bobby Robotowitz, IAMA is partnering with InHouse Theatre, the Los Angeles company that has spent twelve years making intimate, site-specific work in real spaces rather than in any fixed theatre. Bobby Robotowitz is performed at two different secret venues – one on the Westside from October 15 to November 2 (press opening October 16) and a secret Eastside venue from November 5 to November 23. Audiences will receive the address after booking their tickets.
"The National Rolling World Premiere of Bobby Robotowitz starts right here in LA and we're thrilled to share Matt Schatz's hilarious, poignant, and incredibly timely play with our audiences first, before it heads to the East Coast and beyond,” said IAMA Executive Director Cara Greene Epstein. “One of the dangers of AI is that it distances us from each other, so there is something wonderfully subversive about taking a play about technology and making it analog, intimate, and personal. Bobby Robotowitz turns the AI debate on its head, moving it from a place of theory and fear to one of feeling and very messy human connection. And there's no better partner for immersive, site-specific work than InHouse Theatre.”
Playwright Matt Schatz said, "AI is terrifying. Especially to someone who attempts to make a living telling stories. I think everyone is at least a little terrified of it. But that doesn't mean a lot of us don't use it. DO YOU USE IT? I'm not judging you."
Schatz continued, "Bobby Robotowitz is a comedy about career disappointment, being broke, being married, being a parent, and the search for connection at a moment when it feels like we're either alone in a crowded room, talking to everyone we've ever known through a device, or stuck inside our own heads. It's a play about my life, sure. It might also be a play about all of our lives right now. But it's also about one very specific person: a novelist named Dina, who sometimes wishes she weren't a person. And it's about Bobby, a chatbot who sometimes wishes he were. Most importantly, it's a comedy."
Director Casey Stangl said, "I first encountered Bobby Robotowitz at a reading in a new play festival in Florida earlier this year. I was immediately taken by the play, not only its humor, but the way Matt has captured the struggle we're all going through to meet the challenges of our over-busy, under-enriching lives. We experiment with things that are supposed to make our lives better or easier or sexier, and most of the time those promises are illusions. In the end, we just have to do the work and hang on to our humanity and our loved ones for dear life. Will AI be a gift or a curse? Probably both."
The secret Westside venue cast beginning October 15 is
- Amy Rosoff can be seen currently as Dr. Sykes on Apple TV+'s Shrinking, and heard as the voice of Hope on Hulu's The Croods: Family Tree.
- James Luster star of IAMA Theatre Company's world premiere of John Lavelle's The Very Best People and Douglas Lyon's Don't Touch My Hair. IAMA Ensemble Member.
The secret Eastside venue is from November 5 to November 23 with
- Christine Woods most recently seen in Cooper Raiff's Hal & Harper opposite Mark Ruffalo and Lili Reinhart, and known for HBO's Hello Ladies and ABC's FlashForward. IAMA Ensemble Member.
- Drew Rausch best known as John Finch on ABC's Grey's Anatomy and Station 19. A founding member of InHouse Theatre.
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