Arguably, it’s been a triumphant year for American ufologists so far. Barack Obama came clean about his belief in aliens, though he hasn’t seen any in the flesh and denies the U.S. government is hiding extraterrestrial evidence. Steven Spielberg released his fourth UFO blockbuster, Disclosure Day, alongside affirming his growing belief in another “intelligent civilisation in the Universe.” And President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. Department of War to release 80 years’ worth of UFO files. On Truth Social, he wrote: “with these new Documents and Videos, the people can decide for themselves, ‘WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?’ Have Fun and Enjoy!” God knows what he was trying to distract the American public from – a different kind of files, perhaps.
Despite the U.S. Department of War’s inability to determine the nature of the observed phenomena, the greyscale footage of embryonic-like orbs shooting through the sky will be convincing evidence of alien life for many believers, who form a widespread yet tight-knit global community. But how do believers – the uncompromising kind – react when they are faced with evidence to the contrary? At the Edinburgh International Festival, the Scottish collective groupwork explores the mental phenomenon of cognitive dissonance through the real-life story of a 1950s doomsday UFO cult.
During the height of Brexit and Trump’s first presidential campaign, Groupwork’s Lewis den Hertog read the psychological study When Prophecy Fails (1956) in a bid to better understand the term ‘cognitive dissonance’ – the mental tension that occurs when we hold contradictory beliefs – which was frequently being used in public discourse. When Prophecy Fails appeared to him as a “found object”, begging to be transformed into theatre. Inside its pages, den Hertog learned about the Seekers, a Midwest cult spearheaded by New Age spiritualist Marian Keech. Keech claimed to have received messages from aliens, who told her that North America would be destroyed by a catastrophic flood, but believers would be saved by aliens in flying saucers and transported to planet Clarion. Needless to say, that never happened, but the Seekers doubled down, clinging onto their belief in aliens with dear life.
After the pandemic, den Hertog adapted the study with his collaborators, brother, director and co-writer Finn den Hertog, and choreographer and director Vicki Manderson. Their dance-theatre adaptation premiered at the 2025 Manipulate Festival, receiving a string of four- and five-star reviews. This year, When Prophecy Fails slots provocatively into the International Festival’s theme of ‘All Rise’, which marks the 250th anniversary of American independence. After August, When Prophecy Fails will zip across Scotland.
For groupwork, the work’s American setting is integral for an exploration of national myth-making and collective belief. As Finn observes, America has been “the defining kind of geopolitical, cultural power of our lifetime”, and that in recent years we’ve witnessed “the breaking apart of the American dream, in many ways.” While the Seekers prepared for Armageddon in post-war America – a period of prosperity and optimism, underpinned by trauma and grief – the adaptation offers a parallel examination of contemporary politics: When Prophecy Fails focuses on “a really specific microcosm that somehow speaks to the macro or the global,” expands Finn.
Importantly, groupwork adapt the historical microcosm from a point of empathy, rather than ridicule. The collaborators emphasise that the Seekers were all on individual journeys of grief, and therefore vulnerable to forces of group psychology. As choreographer, Manderson’s challenge was to dynamise the long wait for a world-altering event that never actually occurs; she translates her sensitivity towards the characters’ longing for connection (both earthly and extraterrestrial) into movement. Ultimately, When Prophecy Fails occupies a space where psychological reality brushes up against the strange and the uncanny, treating the UFO phenomenon as less of a patronising story of “little green men” than one concerned with consciousness.
While Trump would rather distract us with the possibility of alien life, When Prophecy Fails urges us to be alert to the power of group psychology and the rise of misinformation on planet Earth. “Have Fun and Enjoy!”
When Prophecy Fails, Studio Theatre, 27-30 Aug, various times