AN ACTOR with no ego might sound like an oxymoron, but when the Japanese star of a forthcoming play at the Arts Centre was reviewed as "a bit mechanical", there were no tantrums or tears. As perhaps the world's most realistic android, it was less criticism than fact.

Geminoid F is one of the two actors appearing in Sayonara, a work of "Android-Human Theatre" that explores the slippery boundaries between the two categories. Canadian performer Bryerly Long plays a dying young woman whose parents enlist the robot as a caretaker. The play began as a 20-minute work in Osaka, and Melbourne will be the first city outside Japan to witness this expanded version of the production.

Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro is the creator of the Geminoid series of robots. He first came to international attention when he produced an android identical to himself, which he uses to deliver lectures and workshops on his behalf. He's director of the robotics department at Osaka University and will be appearing in Melbourne to discuss Sayonara after performances this month.

In the Western tradition the artificial human has long been viewed with suspicion — popular culture is rife with Frankenstein's monsters and Terminators warning us of the dangers of taking on the role of life-giver. Not so in Japan, where robots more commonly figure as friendly companions. Professor Ishiguro traces the distinctions to cultural and religious differences: Shinto and Buddhist understandings of the world grant a kind of consciousness to the inanimate.