Imitating The Dog find new route to the Heart Of Darkness in the Brexit era

Written more than 100 years ago amid the optimism at the turn of a new century, the impactful book explored the journey of Conrad’s narrator, Charles Marlow, as he travelled up the Congo river into the Congo Free State in the heart of Africa.

Now, Conrad's tale of lies and brutal greed and of the dark heart that beats within us all is retold by the Leeds theatremakers as a journey of a black woman through war-torn Europe.

Fusing live performance with digital technology in a co-production with Italian company Marche Teatro and Cast, Doncaster, Imitating The Dog's version explores a forsaken landscape lost to the destructive lust for power.

Negotiating race, gender and the themes of exploitation, violence and nationalism, it becomes a searing parable for our times, created at a moment when "versions of Britain’s colonial past seems to be being held up as a golden era and when our relationship to Europe is being severely tested" [by the Brexit tragi-comedy].

Heart Of Darkness is re-told and directed by Imitating The Dog founder members Pete Brooks and Andrew Quick, with projection and video design and live film-making by fellow original founder member Simon Wainwright.

"It’s a very important and influential novel but there are real problems with it, especially in its representation of Africa and the people who inhabit what was then called the Belgian Congo," says Andrew. "This makes it a challenging novel but one of the ways we have approached our adaptation is to make our own struggle with Conrad’s writing a crucial part of the staging."

In Quick's words, Imitating The Dog are "taking some of the historical context from the original but re-imagining it from our particular point of view".

"We take Conrad’s story of the river journey and reset it as a road journey across a devastated Europe and our Kurtz is not in the depths of the rain forest but in a bombed-out building on the edge of London," he says.

"Our Marlow is not a sailor but a private detective from Kinshasa, and she’s a black woman, not a man. So, we are reversing or creating a parallel version based on Conrad’s original. We keep some of the plot and tone, but it is a radical re-imagining.

"And this story, which is used to create a live film projected above the stage action, is framed by our struggle to deal with the Conrad story, a kind of witty and condensed version of our actual process – our journey into our heart of darkness, if you like – the heart of darkness of its making."

Imitating The Dog's approach to such a "profound novel about the human experience" has been to be not too reverential, but still respectful, yet radical. "Look, I think I can speak for the others when I say we like much of the novel but there are real problems in how it represents the victims of the colonialism it describes. It does not give them any kind of voice. And this is a profound problem that we have to deal with," says Andrew.

Brexit is not mentioned but is an "unspoken presence because the country is going through a shift of identity". "One of the narratives of Conrad's late 19th-century novel was pointing out what can happen with an amoral or immoral trading attitude, which is still very pertinent, and that's something that we're going through now," says Andrew.

"We were drawn to the novel by our despair at the lack of in-depth discussion of what we're going through. It's not for us to criticise the reasons people voted the way they did, but we would like to get people to think about what might be at stake in our relations with other people, other cultures, and we hope we've introduced a sense of discussion and emotion around it."

Imitating The Dog in Heart Of Darkness, York Theatre Royal, April 9, 7.30pm; April 10, 2pm and 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk

Topical drama: Matt Prendergast and Morgan Bailey in Heart Of Darkness

IMITATING The Dog are making a second visit to York Theatre Royal after their debut at the TakeOver festival with Hotel Methuselah.

"We did one night at that festival about a decade ago," recalls founder member Simon Wainwright, who provides the Leeds company's projection, video design and live film-making imput.

Now Imitating The Dog return with Heart Of Darkness, a show that was developed in Italy, while they were the company in residence last October at Marche Teatro. "They gave us the theatre to use for a month, when allowing a space that size to be dark for such a length of time is rare," says a grateful Simon.

"Doing this piece has been a huge challenge, partly because of the language Conrad used and the way it presented Africa as a continent. We always come up with quite a complex concept as to how video and film will interact with the language, and as with our last touring show, Nocturnes, we are using actors on stage doing voices to the film showing above them.

"But this time, as they change their minds as they negotiate their way through the piece, and the live film changes to respond to their decisions. So many factors come into it, camera positions, lighting, so you get a different show every time to some extent, with both actors and technicians using the cameras, so it's like a technical ballet."

Blend in the video and the soundtrack, and it adds up to weaving everything into a "multi-media tapestry", green-screen filming and all.

"The way we work is very fluid. It's not like we resolve everything and then go into rehearsals. Those performing the play are very much part of the creative process, and in something as volatile as this piece, everyone has an opinion," says Simon.