A stage version of classic horror film Night of the Living Dead is to be available to watch online as part of a series released by theatre company Imitating the Dog.
Night of the Living Dead – Remix recreates the 1968 movie on stage in real time with seven performers, shot for shot in front of the audience.
The show was reaching the end of its UK tour – a co-production with Leeds Playhouse, where it opened in January – when Britain’s theatres were shut down, leaving it unable to play its last date at Home in Manchester.
It will be released online at imitatingthedog.co.uk/watch/ on Friday 17 April. However, it is just one of a series of past productions that the theatre company is releasing every two weeks during the shutdown.
Its projection project Oh, The Night!, described as a strange and fantastical bedtime story, is the first to go online, available now.
After the zombie apocalypse, this will be followed by Arrivals and Departures on 1 May, a Hull 2017 commission which looked at the city’s legacy of migration.
On 15 May, the company will release its theatre production, 6 Degrees Below the Horizon, which is a macabre and playful tale involving sailors, pimps, barflies, chorus girls and nightclub singers.
Yorkshire Electric, a projection project using clips from the Yorkshire Film archive, will go live on 29 May.
Further productions will be announced through social media in the coming weeks. Keep an eye on @imitatingthedog on Twitter and Instagram for information.
Each production will remain on the website and can be viewed on a “pay what you like” basis. The income from this will go into a development fund for the company to support freelance artists and practitioners to create new work.
Simon Wainwright, co-artistic director of Imitating the Dog, said: “With the end of our own Night of The Living Dead – Remix tour cancelled and so, so many events and performances now postponed, we thought we’d make some of our past shows available for people to watch online.
“We’re in a lucky position to have some fantastic recordings of past work, mostly filmed by our friends Shot by Sodium. It’s obviously no substitute for the real thing but in these isolated days, and until we can get together in a room again, we hope these videos will provide joy, thinking and entertainment in equal measure.”
Imitating the Dog has been making ground-breaking work for theatres and other spaces for more than 20 years. Its 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. Other previous productions include Hotel Methuselah, A Farewell to Arms and Heart of Darkness.
