A thrilling new production of WAR OF THE WORLDS from the renowned theatre company imitating the dog will land at Blackpool Grand Theatre from Wednesday 22 April to Saturday 25 April 2026.
One of the UK’s most original and innovative theatre companies is set to push their inventive storytelling to new heights when they visit The Grand in 2026 with their exciting retelling of H.G Wells’ classic science fiction story of alien invasion on planet Earth.
Four performers enter the stage and construct an epic road movie before our eyes.
It’s a story we know, or think we know – an apocalyptic tale of alien invasion and the unfolding destruction of everything we hold dear. Extraterrestrial lifeforms land from the skies. Lines of Brits scrabble to flee across the channel while their cities and towns lie in smouldering ruins. It’s all of our worst nightmares…
What would you do if order broke down? What would you do to survive? How far would you go to protect your own?
Using miniature environments, model worlds, camera tricks and projection, imitating the dogmix the live and the recorded, the animate and the inanimate to create a thrilling, audacious and timely retelling of H. G. Wells’ classic novel The War of The Worlds, which was written in 1897 and is considered to be one of the most influential pieces of literature in the science fiction genre.
War of The Worlds has been created by imitating the dog following their acclaimed adaptations of the literary classics Heart of Darkness in 2018, Dracula in 2021, Macbeth in 2023 and Frankenstein in 2024, and is supported by Lancaster Arts and Cast, Doncaster.
Co-Director and Artistic Director of imitating the dog, Andrew Quick, 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.”
imitating the dog have been making ground-breaking work for theatres and other spaces for 27 years. Their work, which fuses live performance with digital technology, has been seen by hundreds of thousands of people in venues, outdoor festivals, and events across the world. Past productions have included Hotel Methuselah, A Farewell to Arms, Heart of Darkness, Night of The Living Dead ™ – Remix, the award-winning Dracula: The Untold Story, Frankenstein, and most recently, All Blood Runs Red. In 2022 the company staged Cinema Inferno – a ground-breaking new show for the Parisian haute couture house Maison Margiela, based on an original concept by creative director John Galliano, for Maison Margiela’s Artisanal 2022 collection, presented on the official Paris Haute Couture Calendar.
Their revolutionary new take on War of the Worlds will thrill devotees of classic sci-fi, fans of cutting-edge contemporary drama, and anyone curious to discover how they’d respond when the unbelievable becomes reality.
Book your seats now and keep your eyes on the skies…
War of The Worlds from imitating the dog is at Blackpool Grand Theatre from Wednesday 22 April to Saturday 25 April 2026 with evening and matinee performances available.
Tickets from £15 with Concessions from 1894 Club Members and Friends of The Grand. Great Group Rates also available.
Please call the Box Office on 01253 290190 or visit www.BlackpoolGrand.co.uk for full listings, bookings and further information.
LISTINGS
War of The Worlds
Wed 22 Apr to Sat 25 Apr 2026
Thu & Sat matinee at 2.30pm
Grand Theatre, 33 Church Street, Blackpool FY1 1HT
Box Office 01253 290 190
blackpoolgrand.co.uk
Facebook – @blackpoolgrand
Twitter – @Grand_Theatre
Instagram – grandtheatrebpl
