Marketing Over Coffee · [email protected] (John Wall and Christopher Penn)

Chain Theater on the Cutting Edge with Robotics and AI

·29 min·2 clips

Kirk describes how the robot dog forms a heart to express love, making the audience audibly gasp.

A robot dog sounds like a stunt. John Wall starts with that obvious thrill, then gets to the better question: what happens when robotics and AI have to work in front of a live audience? Kirk Gostkowski keeps the answer grounded. The play, The Robot, the Spy, and the Love of AI, premiered as part of the 2025 Chain Winter One Act Festival in New York City, with the dog written into the story instead of dropped in as a gadget. The dog gets attention right away. Kirk and John spend more time on the better staging choice: hold the reveal, let the surprise build, and give the audience room to keep finding out what the dog can do. That feels very Marketing Over Coffee. John hears a production choice and turns it into a business lesson: if the wow factor is the asset, pacing decides how long that asset keeps paying off. The casting section gets more specific than expected. Kirk explains that the team split the dog into two jobs. David handles the voice. Daryl runs the physical unit from backstage. That split matters because each part has to sell the same character. David changes his voice enough that close friends came to the show and did not realize he was the dog. Daryl brings the right kind of nerve for a machine that has to hit cues. When Kirk showed him the robot video and asked whether he wanted to operate it, Daryl jumped in. Then the real world arrives. In rehearsal, a bigger battery changes the robot's weight and the dog collapses mid-stunt. Funny, yes. Also useful. Robotics onstage are not software demos with feet. Weight changes movement. Battery size changes timing. Calibration, voice, operator skill, and actor reactions all become part of the thing the audience experiences.

As heard by us

A tech-theater conversation that cares as much about how the machine works as the spectacle around it.

Marketing Over Coffee opens with a robot-dog stage pitch, then settles into a practical look at how Chain Theater is mounting The Robot, the Spy, and the Love of AI, which premiered in the 2025 Chain Winter One Act Festival.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a robot-dog Broadway story that stays close to the craft behind the wow.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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