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Two robot dogs walked across the Walt Disney Theater stage during Theatre UCF’s production of Legally Blonde – operated live, in real time, by theater students trained in the university’s engineering labs.
The moment came during “What You Want,” a nine-minute number in which Elle Woods turns her Harvard application into a full-blown performance piece. As UCLA cheerleaders filled the stage, a pair of engineering students – played by theater majors Mia Freeman and Isabel Ramos – walked the robots through a Harvard campus scene while the cheerleaders looked on. It was brief, unexpected, and landed exactly the way director Michael D. Jablonski intended: as a collision of disciplines that opened up something new.
The idea started at a football game. During last year’s UCF Space Game, Jablonski watched the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering’s robot dogs cross the field and saw storytelling potential. When Legally Blonde – a show built on defying expectations – became this year’s UCF Celebrates the Arts marquee musical, the pairing made sense.
The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering houses 15 robot dogs, nine of which are in Rakhshan’s Laboratory for Interaction of Machine and Brain, where they’re used for coursework and research on navigating real-world environments.
The production ran April 9–12 at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts as part of UCF Celebrates the Arts 2026, presented through special arrangement with Music Theatre International. Musical theater major Lyric Stratton led the cast as Elle Woods, with Jaxon Ryan as Emmett Forrest, Rachel Mertz as Paulette, and Mason Materdomini as Warner Huntington III.
And yes – Bruiser was there too. Elle’s loyal Chihuahua was played by a real dog named Marty McFly. Legally Blonde features music and lyrics by Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin, with a book by Heather Hach.
