The Paper Architect

The Paper Architect is a theatrical piece combining paper-craft, animation, projection and performance. It tells the story of an elderly model-maker who uses his paper creations as vessels for his imagination.

The show features tiny accurately mapped animations playing across intricate paper sets: sunrises and sunsets come and go; flocks of birds pass by; leaves flutter from a tree... When the actor places a cut-out dancing woman on a detailed paper model, she comes alive; he adds a paper man and watches their romance unfold. The projected would-be lovers’ story is presented with a gentle humour; the life character, meanwhile, veers from rapt, childlike delight in his created world to a weary melancholy as the rigours of real life impinge.

★★★★ "It’s a show with a gossamer touch that leaves you shivering."

Metro

★★★★ "What follows makes the jaw drop and the head whirl..."

The Times

★★★★ "The McGuire’s have created a world of trembling delicacy"

The Sunday Times

★★★★★ "A piece that speaks to our imagination and challenges our notions what theatre can be. A very inspiring forty-five minutes"

One Stop Arts

"The Paper Architect is as delicate as a poem by Keats, like someone pressing on a pressure point you didn’t know you had."

The Londonist

★★★★★ "Technical wizardry combines with whimsical sensibility to create magic."

Artshub

★★★★ "Theatrical language of exquisite quality."

The West Australian

The Paper Architect is among the Observer's Top 10 best theatre shows 2013!

Winner of the 2013 Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award, co-produced by the Barbican with Create London and in association with the Tobacco Factory Theatre Bristol.