We will be creating an outdoor theatre performance:

Chit chat, clandestine conversations, and calling your mum for a lift home: what springs to mind when we think of the iconic red telephone box? Join their designer, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, in a twilight journey across Liverpool with an ensemble of actors and a jaunt through the ages, as we explore our country’s love affair with the red telephone box.

Paperwork Theatre’s upcoming production, How May I Direct Your Call?, is formed of five site-specific street performances, as well as three roaming performers. Focussing on the great British icon that is the red telephone box, 90 years after they were installed, this performance celebrates the city’s connection with the famous boxes and their designer Sir Giles Gilbert Scott*. In addition, it has been 30 years since BT abandoned the traditional red phone box design. These anniversaries show the development of the telephone technology, and the radical impact it has on our lives. We have moved from an age when the telephone box was thrilling and new, to a time when (some might say) it is obsolete.

The audience will be given or can download a map of our performance sites, and will follow the map to discover our actors - the mini-plays can be seen in any order, and the audience can move between them a their own pace.

In addition to live performance, we will collate recordings from the Liverpool community in advance, exploring their most important telephone conversations; these stories will form the basis of an audio installation at the Liverpool Anglican Cathedral (subject to final approval), which will run in conjunction with the street performances, and be shared online after the performances, to engage with people from across the city.

We use the striking red telephone boxes to ask: what was your most important conversation?

• As well as designing the red telephone box, he also designed Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral.