Premiering in early 2020, with a successful UK tour cut short by theatre closures in the wake of COVID-19, Night of the Living Dead™ – Remix is the latest production by imitating the dog. As a performance collective, imitating the dog are known for their breadth – from stagings of comic serials to musical theatre, and from adaptions of classical novels, including Heart of Darkness (2018), to Cold War spy dramas. Now, turning to a darker Americana aesthetic, their new ‘remix’ of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) is a striking new entry to the imitating the dog catalogue.
Photography Credit: Ed Waring
The original Night of the Living Dead was a ground-breaking take on a horror icon which dates back to Golden Age Hollywood cinema. Beginning with Victor Halperin’s voodoo-themed The White Zombie (1932), the zombie evolved through war-time 1940s films, including the Nazi-themed King of the Zombies (Jean Yarbrough, 1941), and through 1950s imaginings of speculative nuclear wars, including Creature With the Atom Brain (Edward L. Cahn, 1955). Romero’s landmark film shook off the zombie’s supernatural origins and transformed it into a living and visceral threat which turned the spotlight onto profound injustices at the heart of US society.
In Romero’s film, a zombie outbreak brings the legacies of historical wrongs into America’s present. Its opening scenes depict Barbra (Judith O’Dea) and her brother, Johnny (Russ Streiner), driving through a graveyard entrance adorned with the US flag. While Johnny lays a wreath at a family grave, a solitary zombie attacks him and forces the panic-stricken Barbra to flee through the Pennsylvania countryside to a rural farmhouse. The film’s other protagonists – its African-American hero Ben, an adolescent couple, Tom and Judy, and the husband, wife and child of the Cooper family – barricade themselves in the farmhouse as the undead close in. Ben, played by Duane Jones, survives the fatal night only to be shot at daybreak, mistaken for one of the living dead by a roaming hunting party. The famous ending captures the acute grievances of a decade defined by the Civil Rights Movement and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Night of the Living Dead™ – Remix, directed by imitating the dog founders Andrew Quick and Pete Brooks, draws parallels between Romero’s era and the present-day. The original film is projected onto a screen above the stage whilst actors recreate the film below, scene by scene. It’s difficult at first not to feel sceptical at the prospect of a restaged Night of the Living Dead. Zombie hordes have been proliferating on 21st-century cinema screens ever since Danny Boyle’s sole survivor woke up in deserted London in 28 Days Later (2002). Within the same time frame, zombies have also been lurching across US and UK theatre stages with surprising regularity. We’ve had operas (Living Dead Opera, 2013), live-action zombie walks (from Chicago to San Francisco), tourist attractions (Dead Exciting!, 2015), and re-stagings of Night of the Living Dead as participatory theatre (Coterie Theatre, 2008). Zombies seem to be everywhere – and they are just as likely to be greeted with laughter as with fear and screams
The good news is that imitating the dog’s ambitious concept avoids easy humour and is realised with real confidence and skill. It helps that the minimalist staging is a neat fit for the claustrophobia of the original film. The energetic cast re-enact the film between the three walls of blank screen animated by projections of farmhouse interiors. This on-stage recreation appears on a second screen which matches the timing and camera angles of the original film. Beneath the screens, the cast capture the energy of the rehearsal space as they use miniature props for ambitious wide-shots. Their skilful dexterity is apparent. Actors operate cameras to film fellow cast members in the grip of wide-eyed terror (with extra help from evocative, hand-drawn images by artistic-director Simon Wainwright).
Photography Credit: Ed Waring
And it’s Wainwright’s use of archival footage, with lighting design from Andrew Croft, which ignites the production’s most electric moments. Spliced into the screening are snippets of historical 1960s footage– from protests against the Vietnam War to campaign speeches from figures including Robert F. Kennedy. In Romero’s original, news broadcasts gave Night of the Living Dead an eerie plausibility for film audiences (‘the aggressors are irrational and demented’, intones a news broadcaster, ‘their sole urge is the quest for human flesh’). This was emphasised by the closing credits which, overlaid by grainy photographs with echoes of Vietnam War coverage, gave an unforgiving view of Ben’s corpse being prepared for a mass grave. The film’s low-budget production values conferred upon the film a documentary-like realism which made onscreen events seem like they were happening in real time.
Check out the trailer for Night of the Living Dead – Remix here:
Night of the Living Dead REMIX – Trailer 1 from imitating the dog on Vimeo.
imitating the dog continues this generic tradition which has seen zombie films and fictions draw insistent attention to the politics of news and broadcast media. With historical snippets, it addresses the spectacle that accompanies politics, both in the US and elsewhere. The production reminds us that paranoia and division, enflamed by spectacle, are becoming defining features of political experience. In the second act, clips from the aftermath of Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination overlay interviews with eye-witnesses. The camera captures the story forming in real-time through a journalist’s urgent interrogation: ‘Did you see the Senator fall? Did you see the shooting? Could you tell me what he was wearing?’. This raw footage contrasts to contemporary understanding of Kennedy’s assassination as a watershed moment for US history. Journalism can take moments of historical chaos and turn them into a compelling narrative. It can amplify their significance and turn them into an epic story with national symbolism. Using this footage, anyone who appreciates the insight of Romero’s horror will find political critique at the forefront of imitating the dog’s production.
Ultimately, Night of the Living Dead™ – Remix reminds viewers of the original’s political themes whilst staging a production with full use of eye-catching multi-media effects. The opening and final curtains are book-ended by two famous segments of footage: the announcement of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, Texas and Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. King’s speech plays against Ben’s assassination, with the character stepping out of his performance to mime King’s most memorable words: ‘I still have a dream, a dream deeply rooted in the American dream’. If Night of the Living Dead was a snapshot of Civil Rights Era US, Night of the Living Dead™ – Remix refuses to give its viewers the comfortable vantage point of history or the reassurance that King’s words are only relevant for the past. The production does not need any direct Trump allusions to critique the times we live in. All of this could be heavy in the wrong hands, but Brooks’ and Quick’s staging is startlingly modern and full of energy. If the goal of this remix was to enhance and extend the message of its original, imitating the dog undoubtedly succeeds.
The production is streaming online on the Imitating the Dog website.
You’ll be excited to know that the production includes an introduction by Russ Streiner and Judith O’Dea:
You can follow the production company on the following social media platforms:
Twitter: @ImitatingtheDog
Facebook: @ImitatingTheDog
Instagram: @imitatingthedog
Christina Brennan recently completed a PhD in American Studies and she has written for The American Journal for Popular Culture and U.S. Studies Online. She is working on an essay on The Empty Man comic series and its forthcoming film adaptation (August 2020). Brennan is especially interested in post-apocalyptic horror and in comic book adaptations.
You can read more about Night of the Living Dead on Horror Homeroom – about Romero’s film’s social commentary, about the relation of Romero’s film to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and about the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead, with its very different Barbra, as well as about Barbra’s androgyny in the remake.
