Radio Drama · 2026-06-29
The sex robot who leaves its buyer: a new German radio play
The SWR (Südwestrundfunk, the public broadcaster of south-west Germany) radio play "Kind aus Seide" (Child of Silk) by Leonie Ziem won the 2024 SWR Kultur radio-drama prize; it explores the glut of digitalisation and love across the boundaries of species.
Its protagonist is Judith, who no longer loves humans: from her inheritance she buys an ice-cream parlour and a sex robot — an "Artificial Stupidity," cleverer than AI, with early-childhood traumas, crude language and a will of its own. The robot soon leaves Judith, who sinks into heartbreak.
The author, Berlin's Leonie Ziem, is 27 and currently studies language art (Sprachkunst) at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. The €5,000 SWR Kultur radio-drama prize has been awarded annually since 2021 to an as-yet-unstaged play from the author competition of the Heidelberg Stückemarkt; SWR produces the winning work as a radio play, premiering it at the next Stückemarkt. The piece can be heard on the SWR Kultur site. (Sources: SWR; radioszene.de)
Sources: SWR · radioszene.de
This article was machine-composed under human supervision.