The Time Machine

Inspired by H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, Creation Theatre will take audiences on a journey through the labyrinth of the iconic London Library, to a world in which time travel has generated thousands of parallel universes.

Award-winning playwright Jonathan Holloway (BBC Audio Drama Awards, Edinburgh Fringe First Awards, Prix Italia) pulls apart this classic sci-fi novel, re-invents it, and pieces it back together to create a world in which the present is endlessly shifting, and the future is strange and uncertain.

Small audience groups will be led by their very own Time Traveller through the Library - where H.G. Wells was a member for over 50 years.

Travellers tinker with timelines causing people's names, faces and indeed the colour of their socks to change without warning!

Directed by Natasha Rickman (The Faction Theatre Company, Associate director RSC's A Comedy of Errors) The Time Machine is a surreal and psychedelic adventure that draws on cutting edge research from the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities, challenging perceptions and raising important questions about the future of neuroscience, big data, genomics and global connectedness.

The Time Machine was H.G. Wells' first full-length work of fiction and was widely regarded as his finest literary achievement.

The novel was first published in 1895 as a serialization in The New Review, original copies of which can be found in The London Library.

Wells became a member of the London Library the following year on 9th April 1896 at an extraordinarily productive period in his life having established a position as a major arrival on the literary scene.

About the company

Award-winning Creation Theatre Company is Oxfordshire's largest producing theatre company.

Specialising in classic texts and unusual locations, Creation brings to life the stories you know even if you've never read them.

Creation has been producing in Oxford for 20 years, delighting audiences in venues from parks to bookshops to car- manufacturing plants. Previous notable productions include A Midsummer Night's Dream (Omnibus Theatre 2017) The Pit And The Pendulum (Bodleian Library 2018), Dracula (The London Library 2019), Don Quixote (The Covered Market, Oxford 2019) The Tempest (2019) The Snow Queen (North Wall Arts Centre 2019).

Creation's education programme reaches 2,000 children every year through live performances, weekly Drama Clubs, Holiday Workshops and courses in schools.

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