Antibes’ artistic power couple Gaële Boghossian and Paulo Correia reimagines a sci-fi classic, blurring the lines between reality, truth, media, and the dark corners of human nature.

The stage is set – not in Victorian England or the panic-stricken streets of Orson Welles’ 1938 America, but on a barren, simulated Martian outpost. Here, four astronauts navigate an experiment designed to mirror humanity’s first steps on the Red Planet. Isolated from Earth, their mission tests the psychological and physical strains of extraterrestrial survival. Then the screens flicker, the data shifts, and the unthinkable unfolds – an alien invasion.

With La Guerre des Mondes – Life on Mars, leading French theatre company Collectif 8 thrusts us into today’s existential dilemmas: disinformation, digital paranoia, ecological collapse, and the ethics of space colonisation.

This production marks the final instalment in a loose trilogy of dystopian adaptations that Collectif 8 has developed at Théâtre Anthéa in Antibes. Their preceding plays 1984 and Brave New World – both critically acclaimed – laid the foundation for this ongoing exploration of control, media manipulation, and the fragility of human autonomy.

Photo by Charlotte Charroin

In 1984, Collectif 8 deconstructed Orwell’s dystopia into a startling high-tech nightmare, where actors and multimedia projections merged into a seamless interrogation of surveillance and state control. The play’s aesthetic was described as “a blend of cyberpunk tension and classic theatre,” a stark reminder that Big Brother never really left.

With Le Meilleur Des Mondes (Brave New World), the company shifted gears, contrasting the scary concept of an all-knowing, all-controlling state with “a dictatorship of happiness.” Here, the menace was not brute-force oppression but a culture anaesthetised by pleasure, consumerism, and chemical sedation. Collectif 8’s stage became a dizzying, disorienting space of artificial ecstasy… one that, like the book itself, lured the audience in before revealing its horrors.

Now, with La Guerre des Mondes (War of the Worlds) the series comes full circle, placing the audience in a scenario where reality itself is up for debate. The throughline? A relentless interrogation of truth: who controls it, who fabricates it, and who suffers when it crumbles? While 1984 exposed the mechanisms of fear and Brave New World dissected the tyranny of comfort, La Guerre des Mondes forces us to reckon with a world where both forces intertwine in the form of disinformation.

At the heart of this bold vision is Gaële Boghossian, not only the lead actress but also the architect of the adaptation, sharpening Wells’ original critique into a blade honed for the digital age.

Since co-founding Collectif 8 with director and video creator Paulo Correia in 2004 – under the benevolently critical eye of renowned theatre maker Daniel Benoin – Gaële Boghossian has been the driving force behind Collectif 8’s sharp “cinéâtre”, a genre-bending fusion of literature, film, and digital technology. The creative duo has sculpted a body of work that dismantles conventional storytelling, stripping classics down to their thematic core and reconstructing them with contemporary urgency. In La Guerre des Mondes, they reframe Wells’ vision of extraterrestrial invasion within a simulated Mars mission, an unsettling echo of today’s space-race-fuelled techno-utopian dreams.

“Theatre must be more than spectacle,” Boghossian explains. “It has to be a confrontation. An interrogation. If Wells was warning against colonial arrogance, what does that look like today? Who are the invaders now?”

Collectif 8 has a longstanding stellar reputation for its seamless fusion of theatre and digital arts, carving out a space where the physical and the virtual collide. La Guerre des Mondes is no exception. Here, the multimedia landscape is not merely a backdrop; it is a living, breathing entity, a fifth actor shaping the psychological tension of the play.

Photo credit Collectif 8

“Like the characters, the audience is thrust into a world where truth dissolves before their eyes,” explains Correia. “Reality is constructed through media, through images, through data streams. But what happens when those streams are corrupted? When the very tools we use to decipher truth become the instruments of deception?”

Throughout the performance, the stage pulses with fragmented broadcasts, emergency transmissions, shifting data feeds – an all-encompassing media storm designed to disorient both characters and spectators alike. The result is a theatre experience that is as immersive as it is unsettling.

Artificial intelligence and automation shape how humans interact with information, yet these tools can just as easily distort as clarify. Paradoxically, trust in them continues to grow. This theme resonates strongly with La Guerre des Mondes and its exploration of manipulated realities. A creeping sense of dread builds. What is real? What is fabricated? And in the end, does it even matter?

As the US (and by extension the Western world) is living through the first, rather chaotic, weeks and months of a new American administration intent on provocation and disruption via elected and unelected government actors, and with social media and mass communication platforms operating increasingly as instruments of manipulation, the themes of La Guerre des Mondes become chillingly prescient. Deepfakes, propaganda, and media distortion are weaponized to manipulate perception, consolidate power, and destabilize existing paradigms.

The confusion faced by the astronauts on stage mirrors the deliberate distractions created by those who flood the public sphere with contradictory narratives, blurring the line between fact and fiction.

This thematic exploration of perception and control also invites comparison to Steven Spielberg’s 2005 movie War of the Worlds. Where Spielberg leans into relentless spectacle and visceral terror, Collectif 8 dissects the psychological warfare of disinformation. In Spielberg’s film, the horror is external, towering tripods scorching the earth; in La Guerre des Mondes, the invasion is insidious, creeping in through flickering screens and manipulated realities. Both works leave us with the same unsettling question: when the world as we know it unravels, who – if anyone – can we trust? And what if we can no longer have faith in the evidence of our own eyes?

Photo credit Collectif 8

“Disinformation is the defining struggle of our time,” says Boghossian. “Governments, corporations, and extremists all use it to control perception, to rewrite reality. This is what our Guerre des Mondes explores – not just an alien invasion, but a war on truth itself.”

Collectif 8 has been an associate company at Théâtre Anthéa in Antibes since 2014, starting each new calendar year with a production that pushes the boundaries of theatrical storytelling. Their landmark pieces – 1984, Brave New World, and now La Guerre des Mondes – have cemented their reputation as theatrical innovators, crafting bold, high-concept works that bridge literature and digital media.

“We have grown with the Anthéa audience,” says Boghossian. “Every year, we come back to surprise them – and ourselves – with something bigger, something riskier. La Guerre des Mondes is the culmination of that journey.”

With a formidable cast led by Boghossian herself, alongside Matthieu Astre, Damien Rémy, and Lucile Houdy, La Guerre des Mondes is as much a psychological thriller as it is a sci-fi spectacle. The ensemble delivers performances that oscillate between tightly wound restraint and explosive paranoia, pulling the audience into their unravelling reality.

The invasion isn’t coming. It is already here. And it was never from Mars.

La Guerre des Mondes, through Saturday, 15th March 2025
Anthéa Théâtre d’Antibes
260, av. Jules Grec
06600 Antibes

Phone : +33 (0)4 83 76 13 13

Ticket booking information here

All photos and video courtesy Collectif 8