Premiering in 2007 at the National Theatre, War Horse featured projection and video design by 59. War Horse had 7 record-breaking years in London’s West End and played in 14 countries around the world to over 8 million people. The show returned for a major UK and Ireland tour in September 2024, running until November 2025.
At the outbreak of World War One, Joey, young Albert’s beloved horse, is sold to the cavalry and shipped to France. he’s soon caught up in enemy fire, and fate takes him on an extraordinary odyssey, serving on both sides before finding himself alone in no man’s land. But Albert cannot forget Joey and, still not old enough to enlist, he embarks on a treacherous mission to find him and bring him home.
Based on the beloved novel by Michael Morpurgo, this powerfully moving and imaginative drama, filled with stirring music and songs, was a show of phenomenal inventiveness. At its heart are astonishing life-sized horses by South Africa’s Handspring Puppet Company, who brought breathing, galloping, charging horses to thrilling life on stage.
Supporting these theatrical wonders was 59’s projection design, which transported audiences from rural Devon to the depths of war-ravaged France. Drawing on war artists and charcoal sketches of the war, the animations presented an expressionistic vision of war, that is powerfully entrenched in the horror, power and textures of the world’s first mechanised war.