Too Much World At Once

A new play by Billie Collins

“We should’ve seen this coming. We did. We did see this coming. The world will not be kind to us because we haven’t given it a reason to be.”

Nobles’s fifteenth birthday is not going well. After a fight at school, he returns home to a squashed cake and a leaky ceiling. His dad’s working away (again), and his sister Cleo is stationed on a remote island thousands of miles away with the British Antarctic Survey. Noble and Cleo have always been close – but now she’s gone silent, and he doesn’t know why. He’s never felt more alone, and whilst his mum Fiona is doing her best to hold things together, she always seems to say the wrong thing. There’s a strange energy in the air, and Noble knows he needs to get out. That night, he turns into a bird.

Noble wakes the next day in a barn belonging to new-kid Ellis, who agrees to help him lie low until he works things out. The son of an RAF pilot, Ellis has moved around a lot and, despite his bravado, never really found a friend. But there’s something about Noble that has him intrigued. And as their friendship grows, the world is thrown into crisis.

On Bird Island, Cleo’s losing faith. She always thought she could make a difference, but now the birds are disappearing and she’s struggling to cope. Back home, Fiona’s house is collapsing – and with it, everything she held dear. She sacrificed her own scientific career to have a family, and yet she keeps pushing them away. All the while, dark clouds gather on the horizon. There’s a storm coming – and when it arrives, it’ll be time to take flight.

At the height of the storm, more and more children transform, and in one epic journey Noble flies to Cleo. Pushed to the brink, each character must re-evaluate all they’ve clung to, and emerge from the wreckage into a new, unsteady world.

A lyrical, theatrical journey that spans continents and lives, Too Much World at Once is an urgent LGBTQ+ coming-of-age story for our times.

See it if you enjoyed Sap, Wreckage or Time and Tide.

Trailer

Schools Tickets

Tickets for schools are £10, with a free ticket for staff with every 10 tickets purchased.

Schools Order Form

Content Warning

Climate crisis, climate grief and anxiety.
Mental health – references to anxiety, depression and panic attacks.
Discussion of homophobia and use of homophobic language.
Family conflict.
Brief moment of nudity.