The Paper Man
Directed by Tanuja Amarasuriya
In 1938, Matthias Sindelar captains the Austrian football team to victory over East Germany, in stark defiance of a Nazi order that the game should be drawn. A few months later, Sindelar and his girlfriend are found dead in their apartment.
In 2018, middle aged, white British, football addict-in-recovery Lee Simpson wants answers. He decides to make a show. A show about football, about rebellion, about standing up to fascism. And at its heart, the myth of the man who ridiculed the Third Reich.
Yet when Lee hires four women to make the show with him, they decide they don’t want to perform (yet) another play about a “heroic”, dead, white man. So what stories do we tell? And who gets to tell them? Is Sindelar an inspirational little guy or yet another man and his ego?
In a paper world of light and shadow, violence and dance, five performers work together on what sets them apart…
"What an incredible piece. So vulnerable and exposing and confronting and hilarious and brave. It's not what you think it will be all. Thank you SO MUCH for this important work."
Audience response
Credits:
Created and performed by Vera Chok, Jess Mabel Jones, Keziah Joseph, Lee Simpson, Adrienne Quartly, and Anna-Maria Nabirye (in the original production)
Directed by Tanuja Amarasuriya Set Design by Sophia Clist Lighting Design by Colin Grenfell Sound Design by Adrienne Quartly Shadow Puppetry Direction by Jess Mabel Jones Movement Direction by Grace Willis Production Photography by Camilla Greenwell
Produced by Improbable in a co-production with Norwich & Norfolk Festival. Co-commissioned by Norwich Festival, La Strada Graz, and Soho Theatre. Supported by Cockayne - Grants for the Arts and the London Community Foundation.
"The kind of evocative chaos you could watch over and over again.”
Everything Theatre
