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In this work, I intervene in discussions of robot performance, pointing to a history of a performance mode I classify as ‘robot camp’ that, in offering techniques that overcome potential affective repulsion to these near-human machines, shifted the trajectory of the relationship between humans and robots. I first invoke ideas of theatre artists Edward Gordon Craig and Oriza Hirata, along with theatre scholar Louise LePage’s reinterpretation of Judith Butler’s ‘performativity’, in order to offer a consideration of the robot as a performer. This leads to a reframing of Steve Dixon’s ‘metallic camp’ in conversation with Masahiro Mori’s concept of the uncanny valley (and through a return to Susan Sontag’s foundational ‘Notes on “Camp”’), through which I theorize the performance strategy of robot camp. I trace robot camp throughout the history of performative robot portrayals, primarily early twentieth-century automaton exhibitions and Elizabeth Meriwether’s contemporary science fiction play  Heddatron , foregrounding how techniques of robot camp have been successfully employed to overcome affective uneasiness toward the robot (i.e., manifestations of the uncanny valley); in doing so, I highlight how live theatre has shaped public engagements with and imaginings of the robot from its early origins.

A history of robot camp: performing beyond the uncanny valley, from early twentieth-century automata to contemporary science fiction theatre