Noda Manabu    Department   Undergraduate School  , School of Arts and Letters    Position   Professor
Date	2011/08/11
Presentation Theme	Dramatic Intersubjectivity Called into Question: Oriza Hirata's Robot-/Android-Human Plays
Conference	IFTR Annual Conference Osaka 2011, Japan: "Tradition, Innovation, Community" (Osaka University)
Promoters	International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR)
Conference Type	International
Presentation Type	Speech (General)
Contribution Type	Individual
Details	A western young woman, seemingly an incurable invalid poor girl, is almost motionless in an armchair. Her sole companion is an android girl, a hyperreal robot. The audience cannot help wondering who the invalid girl is talking to. Can we call the conversation on stage a dramatic dialogue between two subjective minds? Or is it more of a monologue of the girl, since the android is designed to capture the mental state of its owner and recite a poem accordingly out of her unfathomable memory? If so, isn't she talking to herself after all? The paper I read is an intervention in response to Oriza Hirata's "robot-/android-theatre," inquiring the idea of intersubjectivity, and henceforth subjectivity itself that his theatrical pieces call into question. It discusses how Hirata's pieces destabilize the Szondian idea of modern drama by ironically using the classical (but beguiling) conflict-realization-reconciliation structure. Finally, the paper points out the limitation and possibility of Hirata's robot-/android-human theatre scheme.