The Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities has collaborated with Creation Theatre, Oxfordshire’s largest producing theatre company, on a contemporary re-imagining of HG Wells’ sci-fi classic The Time Machine.
In a unique theatrical experience, small audience groups will be led by their own time traveller through the labyrinthine London Library, where Wells was a member for over 50 years.
The new production, adapted by award winning playwright Jonathan Holloway and directed by Natasha Rickman, reimagines the novel to create a world in which time has fragmented, the present is constantly shifting and the future is strange and uncertain.
The surreal journey draws on research from the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities (WEH) to challenge the audience’s perceptions and raise important questions about time, society and the nature of human existence.
Mike Parker, Director of WEH, said ‘In partnering with Creation Theatre we hope to stimulate public debate around advances in neuroscience, big data and global connectedness, and encourage wider conversations in re-thinking ethics for the 21st-century and beyond.’
The Time Machine is widely regarded as H.G Wells’ finest literary achievement. It was first serialised 125 years ago in The New Review and Wells became a member of the London Library the following year in 1896. Other famous members of the library include Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Bram Stoker, Virginia Woolf and EM Forster.
The production opens on 29 February and runs until 5 April at the London Library, 14 St James’s Square SW1Y 4LG. Book tickets at www.creationtheatre.co.uk
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The Time Machine writer Jonathan Holloway, met with researchers from our Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities, to talk about their research. He then used these ideas in the final script for the Creation Theatre adaptation of The Time Machine.