imitating the dog to tour bold new retelling of Joseph Conrad’s HEART OF DARKNESS from March 5 – 11 May
UK Tour: 5 March – 11 May 2019
The story is impossible to tell, but it must be told
imitating the dog, one of the UK’s most original and innovative performance theatre companies are set to bring their unique theatrical vision to the stage this Spring when they premiere a bold retelling of Joseph Conrad’s extraordinarily influential and timely novel – Heart of Darkness. The production will open at CAST, Doncaster from 5 Mar and will then tour till the 11 May 2019.
Following on from their popular and critically acclaimed adaptation in 2014 of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, imitating the dog will stage an exploration of Conrad’s classic novel filled with visually rich, multi-layered work that fuses live performance and digital technology.
Written more than 100 years ago, amid the optimism at the turn of a new century, Heart of Darkness, which explored the journey of Conrad’s narrator Charles Marlow travelling up the Congo river into the Congo Free State in the heart of Africa, is a tale of lies and brutal greed and of the dark heart which beats within us all. Now retold as a journey of a Congolese woman through war torn Europe, the play explores a forsaken landscape lost to the destructive lust for power and emerges as a tale absolutely for our time.
Negotiating race, gender and the themes of exploitation, violence and nationalism, imitating the dog’s Heart of Darkness is a searing parable for our times, created at a moment when versions of Britain’s colonial past are being held up as a golden era and when our relationship with Europe is being severely tested.
The production will tour to Cast,
Doncaster (5-6 Mar); Tron Theatre,
Glasgow (7-9 Mar), The Dukes Lancaster (19-23 Mar)
Theatre by The Lake, Keswick (26 – 30 Mar)
Northern Stage, Newcastle (2 – 3 April)
Cornerstone Arts Centre, Didcot (4-6 April)
York Theatre (9-10 April);
New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich (12-13 April),
Lowry, Salford Quays (16-18 April),
Liverpool Playhouse (1-4 May) and
Belgrade Theatre Coventry (8-11 May)
For more information visit www.imitatinthedog.co.uk
