Feel Me – January 2025

Performed from Tue 28 — Wed 29 Jan

Who do you care about and why?

'Feel Me' is an interactive theatre show from The Paper Birds, UK leaders in devised verbatim theatre. The show asks, via your mobile phone, who and what you care about from the stories unfolding live on stage in front of you.

A stunning mixture of live performance, film, projection, dance and music, 'Feel Me' will explore the different lenses through which we are told, and connect to stories in the modern digital world.

Worlds unfold from backpacks, and tents are constructed and dismantled again, each scene and location temporary, like a transient teenager in search of safety, acceptance and a new place to call home.

An interrogation of empathy, 'Feel Me' asks what makes us ‘feel’ for another person, as we journey through landscapes and across borders, through weather storms and paperwork, changing seasons, endless queues and interviews.

Working with academics from Essex University, the theatre company uses audiences' mobile phones to measure empathy levels during and after the show. The data is then shared live as part of the performance.

Audiences use their phones to anonymously share their emotional responses at different moments during the show. The interactive elements are woven into the performance, which combines live theatre, film, projection and dance.


Presented by The Paper Birds and the New Wolsey Theatre.

Production photography - Will Green Photography