imitating the dog, one of the UK’s most innovative theatre companies, will premiere a bold new retelling of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds at Cast, Doncaster in February 2026.
This audacious production, created by co-artistic directors Andrew Quick, Simon Wainwright and Pete Brooks, will run from 5–7 February before embarking on a UK and Switzerland tour through to May.
Four performers take to the stage to construct an epic road movie live before the audience’s eyes.
The story, familiar yet reimagined, explores an alien invasion that leaves Britain in ruins and its people scrambling for survival.
Using miniature environments, model worlds, camera tricks and projection, imitating the dog blend live performance with recorded media to deliver a thrilling and timely adaptation of Wells’s classic.
Following acclaimed adaptations of Heart of Darkness, Dracula, Macbeth and Frankenstein, the company continues to push the boundaries of theatrical storytelling.
Andrew Quick, Co-Director and Artistic Director of imitating the dog, said:
“I am so excited to be working on our adaptation of War of the Worlds. It’s a great story, and its themes of paranoia, moral panic, technological and ecological catastrophe, and the ways in which society implodes when faced with crisis, seem so relevant to today.
It’s a story of immense intensity and adapting the novel produces some difficult challenges. We are testing our technological and storytelling skills to the limit but producing some amazing sequences that do justice to the novel, but which also connect to contemporary concerns.
We have been exploring how to combine live green screen acting with miniature model worlds to create a live movie that is created in front of the audience. Imagine a detailed model of a destroyed city: you see a performer operate a camera that moves through its devastated buildings. At the same time, in another part of the stage, you see a live performer being filmed and the image of their performance is then projected into the city landscape, so you see them looking out of one of the windows in one of its burnt out buildings. This interlacing of the live and the miniature, the real and the model, is a new direction for us, but it creates some stunning effects.
And we need these effects to create the extraordinary, compelling and epic story that we are telling – all with just four performers. Of all productions across 27 years of theatre making, this is the most ambitious and technologically challenging work that we have made. I really can’t wait to see how audiences react.”
The creative team includes set and costume design by Abby Clarke, projection and video design by Simon Wainwright, lighting by Andrew Crofts, and original music by James Hamilton. Casting will be announced soon.
The tour includes stops at The Dukes Theatre Lancaster, Lowry Salford, Liverpool Playhouse, New Wolsey Theatre Ipswich, Belgrade Theatre Coventry, Theatr Clwyd Mold, and Blackpool Grand Theatre, with additional dates to be confirmed.
War of the Worlds is supported by Lancaster Arts and Cast, Doncaster.
Listings and ticket information can be found here.
