The Paper Birds' ASK ME ANYTHING to Open in Canterbury Tomorrow

The Paper Birds will be opening tomorrow at the Marlowe Theatre with Ask Me Anything, a new immersive show in which members of the multi-award-winning theatre company become agony aunts for young people. Featuring real-life verbatim stories, the show is set to the original live music from the singer-songwriter Rosie Doonan.

On returning to Canterbury, the Company's Co-Director, Jemma McDonnell said: "Canterbury has always been such a special place for us. We first visited in 2011 as a company with our show Thirsty and since this time have worked with community groups, run workshops in schools and the universities, made our show MOBILE (in a caravan behind The Marlowe) and have then gone on to perform this show in locations all over Canterbury including on the main shopping High Street! For us, Canterbury is such a wonderful place to visit and tour or to make work in, as it is so beautiful and full of history and culture - the perfect inspiration!"

Known as UK's leaders of verbatim theatre with political and social slant, The Paper Birds devised Ask Me Anything inspired by magazine's 'problem pages' they read growing up in the 90s and 00s. The Company has asked young people living today in the era of mobile phones and Google to write and ask them anything. Nothing was off limits. The show, filled with The Paper Birds' trademark mischief and mayhem, is its response.

So welcome to the 90s, era of dial-up Internet, pen pals and house phones where the Company explores the themes of cyber addition, self-expression, peer pressure, sisterhood and youth suicide, among others, using real-life verbatim stories of young people from across the UK.

Set in a teenage bedroom, Ask Me Anything features live video streaming and original live music from the celebrated singer-songwriter Rosie Doonan, BBC Radio 2's Folk Awards-nominee who performed with the likes of Peter Gabriel, Birdy and Chris Martin of Coldplay.

Ask Me Anything is for teenagers, grandparents and everyone in between who is also still figuring it all out. It's about what we can teach the next generation and what they can teach us.

The Paper Birds is a multi-award-winning devising theatre company with a vision to provoke change, one encounter at a time. It prides itself on taking complex, multi-faceted subjects and making them accessible. As story collectors, they spend time in communities, listening to personal experiences. In 2008, The Paper Birds began utilising the method of interviewing people and placing verbatim material within the script.

The company has devised and produced 12 shows to date with Ask Me Anything being the 13th which opened in Newcastle in January 2020 and is now touring the UK.

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