The story of 1930s player Matthias Sindelar seemed a great subject for the stage. But the cast of The Paper Man had other ideas

It’s easy to see why a theatre company might want to put the story of Matthias Sindelar on stage. After all, it involves football, Nazis and a mysterious death. That’s certainly how Lee Simpson felt when he watched an old BBC documentary and wondered: “Why haven’t I heard of this bloke?”

Sindelar was, after all, perhaps the greatest Austrian footballer ever, a man who inspired the “wunderteam” of the 1930s to within a whisker of the World Cup. But that’s not all. The story goes that, following the 1938 annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, a friendly game was arranged to signal the merging of the two nations’ teams. Set up to finish as a draw, Sindelar disrupted the script by scoring in the second half and then celebrating wildly in front of the Nazi high command. The following year, he was found dead in his apartment with his girlfriend. Was he murdered? Or was it, as was concluded at the time, a case of carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty heater?

These were the questions Simpson was hoping to explore when he invited three actors – Anna-Maria Nabirye, Vera Chok and Jess Mabel Jones – to workshop the story for his theatre company Improbable.

“But after two weeks we decided we weren’t really interested in football,” says Nabirye, when we meet for coffee at Improbable’s rehearsal space. “We didn’t really think the story of this dead white man who did something heroic-ish, but not that heroic, was the most pertinent story of our time to tell.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘After two weeks we decided we weren’t interested in football’ … The Paper Man. Photograph: Camilla Greenwell

Oof! So obviously Simpson sacked all the actors and brought in three new ones who could realise his vision, right?

“Some directors might have done that but it didn’t occur to me,” says Simpson, whose company prides itself on doing things differently. “I thought, well, if that’s the conversation going on in the room, I want to have that conversation on stage.”

And so The Paper Man – “Der Papierene” was Sindelar’s nickname due to his slight frame – is not really about the Austrian striker at all, or even football or Nazis that much. It’s about how we choose the stories we tell, and who gets to tell them. Nabirye concedes that Sindelar’s story is far from boring – if it was, there’d be no debate about staging it. She just doesn’t know if the story merits arts funding in a world where so many other brilliant stories get overlooked. Why not, for example, tell the tale of footballer Lily Parr instead, the towering munitions worker with a shot so strong she once broke a goalkeeper’s arm? Parr helped pack out stadiums during the first world war when the men were sent to the front, and Jess Mabel Jones got so excited when she stumbled on her story that she apparently yelled at Simpson: “Why aren’t we doing this instead?!”

“And I did think, ‘Yeah, why aren’t we?’” laughs Simpson.

Maybe they will – the play isn’t officially finished yet, despite the fact they’re less than three weeks away from it opening when we meet. Improbable like to keep things fluid: cast members come and go as they please, with each one taking turns at writing sections and directing. It’s a brave, occasionally chaotic but ultimately rewarding way of putting a play together. To illustrate the spontaneity, Simpson recalls returning from a toilet break to find the three female cast members dancing together to Take That. “I’d never dream of hanging out with my friends in that way, it just wouldn’t happen,” he says. As a result this play ostensibly about football and Nazis currently features an “outrageous dance scene” that serves as a metaphor for how different people like to communicate.

Despite the loose working methods, the team are certain that some things will make the final cut. There will be shadow work and puppetry and sections of improvisation, although no staging of actual football. (As Simpson points out: “Go and see a football match – they do it really well there!”) There’s also going to be at least some of Sindelar’s story in the mix, even if they ended a recent rehearsal without even mentioning him once. “But we really missed him,” laughs Nabirye. “So after all this time of saying we didn’t want to tell his story we think we probably need him in there.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Shadow work, puppetry and improvisation … The Paper Man. Photograph: Camilla Greenwell

There will also be some grappling with the same issue Sindelar faced: namely, how do we respond when fascism arrives in our neighbourhood? Would we be heroes, risking our lives? Would we seek to cheekily disrupt the official narrative, like Sindelar may have done? Or would we end up complying as most people ultimately do?

It’s a prescient subject. And, as Simpson points out, it’s something people in this country are facing not just in the future but right now. “Maybe someone’s employee’s immigration papers have been destroyed, so do they keep them in a job?” he says. “People are making those choices right now. Whereas for people like me, I can see that the fascists are in town, but they’re not on my doorstep. Yet.”

To tell all these multiple stories and arguments, all four cast members play themselves, with Simpson fronting the show. Does that not mean that Improbable have switched from telling the story of Matthias Sindelar to telling the story of … well, another white guy?

Simpson nods, aware of this contradiction: “Sometimes, when you intend to have a conversation about which stories get told, or even to tell a different story altogether, you end up spending more time about the white guy in the room. But recognising that and unfolding it has been really interesting.”

There’s still a little time left for the Improbable crew to carry on unfolding it, no doubt while rewriting the play entirely and – who knows – maybe even throwing in the odd rollerblading scene. However The Paper Man ends up, though, it’s likely to be quite a story.