Lucy
Lucy Bird is a director and creative learning practitioner. She studied English and Theatre. Alongside her directing work, Lucy has worked for the education departments at Birmingham REP, Shakespeare’s Globe, and as a Creative Learning Associate at Stan’s Cafe. She received the JMK Regional Assistant Director Bursary in 2018 to work on a new adaptation of The Lovely Bones, adapted by Bryony Lavery and directed by Melly Still.
Lucy
George Attwell Gerhards is an actor and writer from the Midlands. He's worked for the Royal and Derngate, Northampton; Birmingham REP; Arena Theatre, Wolverhampton; Bridge House Theatre, Warwick as well as writing Paperback's adaptations of The Wind in the Willows and The Wizard of Oz.
We’re Paperback, a theatre company from Birmingham run by Lucy and George.
We produce plays. We’re fascinated by the stories we tell each other now, those we choose to remember and why it is we keep telling them over and over again.
We've created a range of productions, from outdoor family shows, to black-box fringe style plays, to community productions. Our work is unified by its fast pace, witty energy and unpatronising approach to engaging and challenging audiences. We would love continue making work with and for our local community, and to be able to take our plays to national theatres.
We also founded the Little but LIVE! festival. Created in 2020 as a response to COVID, Little but LIVE! in Moseley Park is a local outdoors arts festival celebrating the best Birmingham’s cultural scene has to offer. Covering theatre, music, comedy, fine art, workshops, we produced the festival for 5 years.
Lucy is now developing Little but LIVE! into a grassroots music project, providing artist development workshops; safe, supportive and inclusive open mic nights; and small scale gigs showcasing the city's best emerging talent. Working alongside local musicians it will help build and cement Birmingham's reputation as a must-go venue on the touring circuit.
We try to challenge ourselves with something new, or something bigger each year and we're delighted to say that 2025 will mark our largest tour to date, with our productions of The Wind in the Willows & The Wizard of Oz visiting over 18 venues nationwide.
Dates and tickets coming soon.
Paperback has never been just a two person operation. We are indebted to the freelancers we work with, the friends who support us, our donors and our brilliant volunteers.
As we grow as a company we would like to acknowledge those who we think of as our "Associate Artists", people who have worked with us on a couple of our projects, who match our values, bring new skills we don't have, and who we are always looking to work with again.
Introducing our associate artists...
AMELIA CAMERON PADMORE
IMOGEN WOOD