Leo and Jo at Wimbledon Tennis Championships
This week our Artistic Director Joanna Turner & General Manager Leo Mercer headed to the Wimbledon Championships and Jo chatted to the Wimbledon Channel & everyone on Henman Hill about our exciting Die Fledermaus project supported by the Wimbledon Foundation’s Arts & Community Engagement Fund. Read more
We are looking for reliable, enthusiastic volunteers with an interest in theatre, music and community projects to help us create our Die Fledermaus re-imagined for high street locations across Merton & Wandsworth , South London between 1st – 14th August.
No experience necessary – all training will be provided! Volunteers will get a sneak peek into our rehearsals and travel expenses covered on performance days. We also provide tea & cake!
You only need to commit to a couple of hours per show – and of course you get to see the show too! Whether you can commit to one, two or all of the performances we’d love to hear from you!
To find out further details or if you have any questions please contact General Manager, Leo Mercer.
Need more info? check out our Die Fledermaus page.
We look forward to hearing from you!
| Date | Time | Location | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thu 1st Aug | 5pm | COLLIERS WOOD Starts at  Savacentre / The Qube, SW19 1DD |
FREE |
| Fri 2nd Aug | 11am | POLLARDS HILL Starts at New Horizon Centre cafe, CR4 1LT |
FREE |
| Sat 3rd Aug | 1pm | RAYNES PARK Starts at Waitrose, Raynes Park, SW20 0BS |
FREE |
| Sat 3rd Aug | 5pm | WIMBLEDON Starts at Elys, Wimbledon SW19 4DP |
FREE |
| Tue 6th Aug | 8pm | Arcola Theatre – Indoor Seated Version24 Ashwin St, Dalston, London E8 3DL |
Book at: Arcola Theatre |
| Wed 7th Aug | 8pm | Arcola Theatre – Indoor Seated Version24 Ashwin St, Dalston, London E8 3DL |
Book at: Arcola Theatre |
| Thu 8th Aug | 5pm | WANDSWORTH TOWN Starts at Southside Shopping Centre, SW18 4TQ |
FREE |
| Fri 9th Aug | 1pm | MITCHAM Starts at Morrisons, Mitcham, CR4 2JS |
FREE |
| Sat 10th Aug | 1pm | CLAPHAM JUNCTION Starts at ASDA, 204 Lavender HIll, Battersea, SW11 1JG |
FREE |
| Sat 10th Aug | 5pm | WIMBLEDON VILLAGE Starts at Bayley & Sage, 60 High Street, Wimbledon, SW19 5EE |
FREE |
| Tue 13th Aug | 1pm | MORDEN Starts at Oxfam, 31 London Road, Morden, SM4 5HT |
FREE |
| Tue 13th Aug | 5pm | TOOTING BROADWAY Starts at Tooting Market, Tooting High Street, SW17 0SN |
FREE |
| Wed 14th Aug | 1pm | ROEHAMPTON Starts at Roehampton Library, 2 Danebury, Ave, SW15 4HD |
FREE |
| Wed 14th Aug | 5pm | WIMBLEDON Starts at Elys, Wimbledon SW19 4DP |
FREE |
Mitcham Library Beatboxing Workshop
Click the video above to play it!
Easter already feels like a long time ago but before eating too much chocolate we had a fab week with nearly 70 brilliant young people aged 12 – 16 and 5 different professional theatre practitioners creating great stuff in Mitcham Library’s Merton Arts Space!
Beatboxing, stage combat, puppetry, theatre design and of course drama! Each of the workshops was fully booked with a waiting list and from our post-workshop feedback forms sent to parents, 64% of respondents said their child had never taken part in arts activities before, and over 70% said their child gained new friends, new skills, more confidence and a desire to take part in more arts activities in the future. In fact, 100% said they would like to take part in the future so I think we can say the workshops were a resounding success! Read more
We’re thrilled to have these brilliantly talented professional practitioners sharing their skills with young people in Mitcham Library in our FREE Easter holidays. Check out their experience and don’t forget to sign up because spaces are limited!
So after the excitement of our young people’s workshops and our two school parallel productions for Die Fledermaus getting underway, we’re now pleased to tell you about our sessions for local elderly groups across Merton and Wandsworth!
Because our unique street opera concept means that audience members need to be able to stand for most of the performances and walk around to follow the story of our characters around the high street, it means it’s not suitable for those less physically able. So this means that we also go into local elderly organisations and run sessions for them so that they can also engage with our work.
We’re thrilled that shortly we’ll be running sessions at old friends including Merton & Morden Guild and Friends in St Helier, who we previously worked with for Drifting Dragons and A Secret Life as well as going to new organisations including the Alzheimer’s Society.
Our brilliant singers Claire Wild, Abigail Kelly and David Horton will sing a couple of arias for the groups accompanied on piano by Juliane Gallant and Giles Kennedy, talk to them about their work as professional opera singers and pianists while Astrid will talk about the company and show edited filming of the Die Fledermaus Research & Development and our previous Cosi Fan Tutte Street Opera.
We’ll be back in touch soon to let you know how the sessions go and our plans to run further sessions later on in the year! Read more
We are thrilled to be running some drama workshops at Mitcham Library, Merton Arts Space during the Easter holidays. We have some brilliant professional practitioners running these workshops, so if you are aged 12-16 sign up now!
CLICK to check out our brilliant workshop leaders!
We asked Elliott, our workshop leader for the St John Bosco College Parallel Production to give us an idea of what the groups are getting up to….
St Marks Primary School Workshop
In the beginning was the word, and the word was FUN! Toward the tail end of 2018, I was lucky enough to lead taster workshops for both our prospective primary and secondary school cohorts. The plan, to take Baseless Fabric’s modernised version of the classic, ‘Die Fledermaus’ and go wild with it; adding characters and scenes or doing them in new and different ways, learning to sing with correct operatic technique, acting, song and script writing and of course we play games! As you can imagine the reception was fantastic and our taster sessions were so much fun, we had scenes set anywhere from a hilarious family dinner, just after Eisenstein had gotten in trouble with the police, to a party at the top of a mountain and a marriage counselling session between Eisenstein and Rosalinde on the moon. Read more
Baseless Fabric Theatre is looking for enthusiastic and skilled people to join our Board of Trustees.
Our dedicated Board of Trustees oversees the strategic direction and governance of this performing arts charity. We are looking to further strengthen the sustainability of the charity, developing existing and creating new revenue streams, and increasing our network of supporters and partners. The Board offers strategic guidance, creative ideas and support as required.
What a year 2018 was for Baseless Fabric! We began the year with the thrilling news that we were the first recipient of the Wimbledon Foundation’s prestigious new Arts and Community Engagement Fund for our new street opera project Die Fledermaus!
This project, with the additional support of Arts Council England, Merton Council and the Samuel Gardner Memorial Trust, encompasses the creative adaptation of an opera for the high street, the free professional performances, workshops for both schools and elderly lunch clubs and two school parallel productions! So while the project has similarities to our previous street operas Drifting Dragons and Cosi Fan Tutte, it is also bigger and better than ever! Read more
We had a great time in our Research & Development rehearsals and sharing last week. Thank you to everyone who came along to see what we’ve been up to so far and give feedback. As well as working hard on the music, staging the scenes and making sure the storyline is clear we also asked our singers a few questions to help you get to know them….
Claire Wild: I want to be the invisible one from Fantastic Four for a million reasons really, but mostly to be sneaky and overhear conversations.
David Horton: Nightcrawler because he can teleport and is super agile and I’m neither of those things!
Alistair Ollerenshaw: Spiderman – to be super agile and be able to swing from buildings.
Abigail Kelly: Scarlet Witch as she is possibly the most powerful being in the Marvel universe. Read more
