imitating the dog have been making groundbreaking work for theatres and other spaces for more than 20 years. Our work has been seen across the world, and we have made work for outdoor festivals and events, seen by hundreds of thousands of people.

As a company, we are most interested in telling stories. We create beautiful, memorable images for audiences, and the work fuses live performance with digital technology, in order to serve the story in the best possible way. The work is always fresh and often surprising. We take risks.

We make work for touring to mid-scale theatres as well as studio productions. We want to tell stories which are important and which contain important ideas. Sometimes this is an adaptation of a classic novel or a film, and at other times it might be a new story, devised by the company. We also make large-scale sited video mapped projects, but always with a story to tell. In 2018, our piece Arrivals & Departures was part of the opening events for Hull’s year as City of Culture.

“[imitating the dog’s] three artistic co-directors, Pete Brooks, Andrew Quick and Simon Wainwright, magicking together technology and live performance, create spectacular, innovative theatre, as dramatically forceful and thought-provoking as it is entertaining.“

Clare Brennan, The Guardian, 2021

The core creative team are the three co-artistic directors: Andrew, Simon and Pete. They work very regularly with a number of key associate artists.

In addition to the theatre and festivals work, imitating the dog deliver a year-round creative learning programme, including workshops and residencies in schools, colleges, universities and community settings, alongside productions, and an annual international skills exchange, aimed at developing and sharing digital technology skills for live performance with our peers in the UK and beyond.

From April 2018, we became part of Arts Council England’s National Portfolio, and are proud to be contributing to the UK’s cultural ecology, and representing the UK when we take our work to other parts of the world.

The company was formed in 1998 by Alice Booth, Seth Honnor, Andrew Quick, Richard Malcolm and Simon Wainwright. Read more about the people who now make up imitating the dog here.