48 Thoughts Per Minute - Work-In-Progress Script Reading

A fast-paced, hilarious and chaotic show, about all the things we think but do not say.

Nationally and internationally touring The Paper Birds Theatre Company, who are based in Maldon, invite you to get behind the scenes and experience this brand new play before anyone else! 

Join Artistic Director Jemma McDonnell and actors from the company for a relaxed and informal script reading, before the show tours nationally in Spring 2027. The event will also include a Q&A with the creative team.

More on the show: 

Working with a team of academic experts, and based on interviews with people up and down the UK, this is a show set inside a head, where emotions, memories and chemical reactions all meet. 48 Thoughts Per Minute is a fast-paced, joyfully chaotic and warmly relatable story about the relationship we all have with ourselves. From mirror-based self-reflection, 3am catastrophising and memories that arrive uninvited, it’s a high-speed journey through one woman’s unstoppable cascade of thoughts.  

Some scientists believe that your brain fires off around 48 thoughts per minute*; that's 70,000 a day. So what exactly are we thinking about? The Paper Birds, UK leaders in devised verbatim theatre, are back with their most inventive, laugh-out-loud show yet, celebrating the ways we think.

Written by The Paper Birds & Jessica Fostekew  

Co-produced by New Wolsey Theatre. 

Co-commissioned by Corn Exchange Newbury and Warwick Arts Centre. 

Funded by Arts Council England.

Content Warning: Contains strong language and themes of infertility and grief throughout.

Age guidance: 14+