Others Review

Through movement, music and text the Paper Birds theatre group attempt to represent three absent women overtaken by stereotypes of the media and give the audience the chance to understand these ‘’women without voices’’ or indeed ourselves. They present the lives of three very different women, an Iranian housewife, a convicted husband killer serving a life sentence and the celebrity Heather Mills. Through this they let us share their hopes, experiences and disappointments giving presence to those characters who are usually absent on stage.
Performed at The Ustinov theatre, the Paper birds from the University of Chichester strive to create and share devised work that is important, work that is socially, culturally, politically observational and conversationally urgent. They attain a physical and visual approach with nothing more than a table with wheels attached to it and a T.V used for the interview with Heather Mills. As she was on mute they played the funny sitting room game of putting the words in her mouth for us. Whilst this was extremely amusing for the audience they were also purveying the message of how the media can interrogate a celebrity or culture by twisting their image into a negative representation or stereotype.
They would repeat certain movements (usually reflecting domestic violence) to keep their message alive keeping a dark undertone every time the audience saw it. The clean and choreographed movement of the performers across stage, their subtle costumes in florals which are at once matching yet individual at the same time showed their well-rehearsed potential. The versatile, emotive music which was added for light comic affect when one actor was frantically moving about stage or for a shocking scene when one women was being repeatedly hit ‘’over and over and over’’ again.
How they got their research was extraordinary as it was based on a six month exchange of letters and emails with these three women. The Paper birds constructed a series of stories from east to west, from different sides of the law and television screen. Asking questions such as ‘’Who is she? And how would you go about finding out? By interpreting the tilt of her head or the flick of her wrist? By imagining her world?’’ were announced on stage repeatedly to remind us just how curious and invasive our society is. It is definitely a new, fresh approach to theatre with relevant research to today’s society. Easily related to the census forms that every individual has to fill out themselves answering personal questions, it was definitely teaching us about our society on how we can be ignorant and invasive. A true masterpiece.


One line review: A truly eye-catching and hard hitting performance. The Paper Birds theatre group show their extremely relevant message of how our society can be ignorant and invasive through the media. Definitely an approach that must be used more often as they prove just how much research they put into this amazing production.