Pop-up chapel donated to Paperback Theatre for outdoor festival

A pop-up venue built as part of an installation at Coventry Cathedral has been donated to theatre company Paperback for an open-air festival.

The Chapel of Many was designed by architect Sebastian Hicks, a lecturer at Coventry University, and features walls made out of folding chairs. When the chairs are removed, the space opens up.

In July, Hicks announced his intention to offer the space to a theatre company looking to stage outdoor shows.

After reading about it in The Stage, Paperback Theatre contacted him. The company has since been donated the venue for the festival, which will take place in Birmingham’s Moseley Park.

Paperback co-director George Attwell Gerhards said that being up the road from Coventry in Birmingham, as well having a “clear idea” of what the company wanted to do with the space, secured it the use of the venue.

“I also think our production of Romeo and Juliet, which explores love at a distance to reflect the weird spring/summer we’ve just gone through, chimed with Sebastian’s ethos behind the design of the structure, where walls came down as more people assembled and more seats were taken away,” he added.

Romeo and Juliet is directed by Lucy Bird, while the festival will also include comedy curated by Birmingham-based double act the Kamikaze Club and improvisation from Box of Frogs.

It runs from September 18 to 20.