IMITATING The Dog’s disturbing yet romantic new multi-media show is a twisted tale of how a moment in history can have an infinite number of outcomes.

Premiered at the West Yorkshire Playhouse from Thursday to Saturday, The Zero Hour follows the stories of five couples living through five very different versions of the same historical events in the final hours of the war in Berlin in 1945.

Across these varied accounts, the protagonists’ lives connect and build a picture of stoicism in the face of history. Framed as a film being directed by a Chinese director and crew, it fuses live action with pre-recorded film, animation, and computer-generated imagery to create a world where human relations are located to be at the heart of historical events.

“The stories come from the imagination, but one story, the central one from which the other threads hang, is based on a true story when a British intelligence officer arrived to work with the Russians,” says Andrew Quick, writer and director of the Leeds company. “Everything beyond that is fictional.

“In one of the stories, Britain has come to an uneasy truce with Russia, which is at war with America; in another, the Germans won the war. That story is the one that fascinates the most because it’s the most outlandish.

“In fact there were so many possibilities that we had this thing called ‘the grid’ where we jotted all the narratives down and then put asterisks on the timeline of each story.”

Explaining the decision to have a Chinese film maker in the performance, Andrew says: “What we were interested in there is that our history has always been written from a western perspective, so it would be fascinating to see what the Chinese perspective would be – though we’ve not done any research on that.

“But making film is a brutal process, where you don’t shoot scenes in sequence; it’s a very disconnected way to construct a story. So in our version, when he says ‘Cut’ you are having to work between different versions, trying to make sense of the gap between those moments.

“While we as a company love telling stories, we also like our audience to make up stories – which is how we write history.

“What we’re doing in this play is showing how everyday stories are caught up in the sweep of history; those little stories that aren’t usually told. It’s these stories that history, in reality, is made of.”

The show’s title comes from the German words ‘Stunde Null’, signifying the end of the Second World War and starting again. “That’s what a film director does when saying ‘Cut’ and starting again,” says Andrew.

As always, Imitating The Dog’s innovative show embraces digital media, design and physical performance. “My view is that technology affects all of our lives; it’s part of our daily life, and theatre has to deal with that,” says Andrew. “That’s why one of the things we play around with is placing film alongside theatre and seeing what the effect is.”

• Imitating The Dog in The Zero Hour, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, Thursday to Saturday, 7.45pm. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or wyp.org.uk