Drifting Dragons (2016), at Morrisons
We’re currently in the middle of our Research & Development for Cosi Fan Tutte, working out how to adapt a 3 hour Italian opera with full orchestra to the high street (perhaps not the easiest task!) But don’t worry, it’s sung with a new modern English text, our singers accompanied by 3 instrumentalists (bassoon, accordion and violin) and we’ve ruthlessly cut it down to about an hour.
We’re kicking off our young people’s workshops this week as part of our Cosi Fan Tutte street opera project. We’ll be running workshops at various schools across the borough of Merton over the next few weeks teaching young people about Mozart, getting them singing a bit of the opera themselves and hearing our professional opera singer Felicity Buckland sing! Kindly supported by the Wimbledon Foundation, we’re super excited to be introducing lots of young people in Merton to Mozart’s fabulous music!!
We’ll let you know soon how we get on but for now wanted to introduce you to our workshop leaders for this project – if we’re coming to your school or group you’ll get to meet these opera professionals over the next few weeks! And we’re all really looking forward to meeting you….. Read more
We are proud to announce our singers for the Cosi Fan Tutte street opera R&D.
Felicity Buckland
Felicity trained at the RNCM, and on ENO’s Opera Works programme. She studies privately with Mary Plazas.
Her operatic appearances include Angelina La Cenerentola (High Time Opera); Cherubino The Marriage of Figaro (Opera Up Close); Cupid Orpheus in the Underworld and Ida/cover Orlovsky Die Fledermaus (Opera Danube); Una, Kiss Me, Figaro! (Merry Opera) and Mercedes Carmen (Co-Opera Co). She has also spent seasons in the chorus at Opera Holland Park, as a chorus mentor for Birmingham Opera, and at English Touring Opera, where she also sang the role of Mama in Dust Child, a specially-written opera for children with special educational needs.
Felicity is in demand for solo oratorio, and performs and records extensively as a professional consort singer, including appearing on Eric Whitacre’s Grammy Award-winning choral disc, Light and Gold. She is also a singing tutor and experienced choral animateur, leading workshops for a variety of groups of people.
Felicity is currently preparing the role of Rossweisse in Die Walküre for Grange Park Opera, in their brand new theatre at West Horsley Place. Read more
Patisserie Valerie, Wimbledon Piazza
We had such an amazing time running our Merton Opera project Drifting Dragons this summer – we hope you managed to catch one of the performances on your high street or perhaps participated in one of our workshops at schools and young people’s groups in the area.
It was fantastic seeing the surprised faces in Morrisons and M&S as customers realised that other customers were opera singing their conversation! And we were delighted by the positive audience responses – everybody seemed surprised and pleased we’d gatecrashed their lives for 10mins in a public space as they went about their daily life, shopping, waiting for a bus or drinking coffee.
Jigsaw4u
The biggest thanks to all of the local businesses across the borough of Merton that supported the project and allowed us to perform in their stores – Wyevale Garden Centre, The Gorringe Park Pub, Tesco Tooting, M&S and the Qube Centre, Café La Lavella and Morden Library, the New Horizon Centre and Pollards Hill Library, Starbucks & Waitrose Raynes Park, Tag Elezz Café and Morrisons Mitcham, Patisserie Valerie and Morrisons Wimbledon, Saucer & Cup and the Co-Op Wimbledon Park, Maison St Cassien and Bayley & Sage! And also thanks for those involved in our performances as part of the Arcola Theatre’s Grimeborn Festival – Café Route, Dalston Junction station manager, Dalston Square, Hackney Council and of course the Arcola itself. We had so much enthusiasm and support so thank you all! Read more
Drifting Dragons outside M&S. Photo: Oliver.john Works
It was a daunting prospect. Write an opera? I had written a considerable amount of instrumental music and songs for theatre before but never an opera. This would be something new.
Those who have been following the Drifting Dragons journey will know that it began life around a year ago. Joanna Turner, Artistic Director of Baseless Fabric, wanted to create a promenade opera about the lives of Londoners. She was looking for a composer and I nervously but eagerly raised my hand across cyberspace. Before long we had agreed to work together and were interviewing local people in Merton (Baseless Fabric’s home borough) about their views on opera, as well as finding out about their lives and memories, which would ultimately feed into the story of Drifting Dragons. The theme for the opera soon established itself as friendship and how over time it can be rocked by setbacks and challenges. I set to work writing the libretto and music for a short work-in-progress performance at the Wimbledon Theatre at the end of January 2016. Read more
Workshop at St Marks Academy
We’re well underway with our planning for the full production of Drifting Dragons, our new promenade street opera kindly supported by the Arts Council, The Philip Bates Trust and The Humphrey Richardson Taylor Charitable Trust. We’ve been back into community organisations including the wonderful Merton & Morden Guild and New Horizon Centre to talk to people about the project, show them the filming from the R&D and get their thoughts on both what should happen next in the story and where we should perform on the high streets of Merton.
Workshop at St Marks Academy
Meanwhile, we’ve also run workshops for some brilliant young people teaching them to sing and act out some of our opera themselves. We taught them to sing some of our music, discussed the difference between an aria and a duet, and how to play a character while singing and playing a scene. We’ve seen some brilliant characters and heard some fantastic singing at Lonesome Primary, The Priory Church of England Primary and St Marks Academy, so we’re hoping the students will come along to the performances and give our professional opera singers some tips on how it’s done ☺
And I’m currently running round talking to supermarkets and cafes and getting everything organised for our high street performance locations so expect to see us on your high street very soon!
We are excited to announce the cast for our upcoming production of ‘Drifting Dragons’. This production is a new street opera coming to the streets of Merton and we’re also taking it to the Arcola Theatre’s Grimeborn Opera Festival
Felicity Buckland
Sadie
Felicity trained at the RNCM where she received the Eunice Pettigrew Prize and graduated with 1st Class Honours, and later on ENO’s Opera Works programme. She currently studies privately with Mary Plazas.
Her operatic appearances include Cherubino The Marriage of Figaro (Opera Up Close); Cupid Orpheus in the Underworld and Ida/cover Orlovsky Die Fledermaus (Opera Danube); Cunaide Iernin (Surrey Opera); Una, Kiss Me, Figaro! (Merry Opera) and Mercedes Carmen (Co-Opera Co). She has also spent seasons in the chorus at Opera Holland Park, Grange Park Opera where she covered Annina in La Traviata, and as a chorus mentor for Birmingham Opera.
Rehearsing ‘A Secret Life’ has been quite different to other processes I have previously been involved in. Due to the very specific nature of the piece, the delivery of the audio via the smartphone app, as well as the outdoor setting, Joanna and the creative team had to devise a rehearsal plan uniquely tailored to the needs of the project.
First came the unconventional order in which things had to be done. The play’s different elements (text, physical journey, digital) had to be rehearsed first apart and then together, focusing on each one separately and then looking at how they all combine to tell a story. At times there was a feeling we were doing things back to front, especially from the actors’ perspective, but in the same way that deciding on the route the play would follow had to precede the final script, so the recording, editing and treating of the audio content had to come before the rehearsal of exact physical action, and the all-important (and for this project ongoing) ‘technical rehearsals’ had to happen alongside the sessions working on characters’ relationships, events and intentions. This way of working meant the actors had to dive in head first and make choices that in a traditional rehearsal context they might not have been required to make until a few weeks in, as well as demanding exactitude and precision, challenges that our cast rose to with good humour and determination. Read more
Last Saturday the Baseless Fabric team headed to Wandsworth Radio to talk about ‘A Secret Life’ for Theatre 503 for the Wandsworth Arts Fringe. You can listen to the recording above to find out more about the show and how the app came about!
Before I met Jo, the artistic director of Baseless Fabric, last year to talk about the possibility of collaborating on a new promenade play, I couldn’t have imagined that six months later, we would have produced a script with verbatim stories from South Londoners as old as 92, which gets delivered to the audience via a smartphone app.
As a playwright, I’ve so far written what you may imagine when you hear the word ‘play’: people sitting in seats, watching actors on a stage. I’ve been to immersive theatre and promenade theatre before, but writing the script for A Secret Life is the first time that I’ve helped create a play that moves — the actors go on a journey out in the world, and you follow them. Read more
