The Arcola (Dalston)

Grimeborn is the annual opera festival at one of London’s coolest theatres, The Arcola. Over the last ten years, the festival has become the home for adventurous takes on familiar classics, resurrections of forgotten gems, and premieres of brand new works. This year there are no less than 16 productions. There are £12 tickets available for each one. It’s cheap, it’s accessible – and it’s mindblowing when you realise how much there is to the opera world. 

Don’t take our word for it. Here are some examples that we can’t wait for:

Bringing back unknown operas to life – like Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha

Somehow Scott Joplin, the ‘King of Ragtime’, is only known for his famous piano tune The Entertainer. But then you hear about an American opera-musical like this, entirely ahead of its time, entirely relevant still – and with a title like Treemonisha… well, you just kinda have to go!

See also Aaron Copland’s Twelve Poems by Emily Dickinson.

Radical takes on opera classics – like Die Fledermaus

Our very own artistic director Jo Turner and composer Leo Geyer return with a new take of Strauss’ classic. Working with designer Marina Hadjilouca and lighting designer Jack Weir, Baseless Fabric will bring our street opera indoors for two performances only, for an entirely new take on our style of relevant, irreverent opera re-imagining. Find out more here. Read more

Every two weeks, director Elen and musical director James lead a session in Cranmer Primary School. We chatted to Elen about what they’ve been working on.

Baseless Fabric Theatre workshop with primary school group – Wimbledon Foundation

Tell us a little bit about what you’ve been up to at Cranmer.

Since January, James (the musical director) and myself have been working with year 5 and 6 students from Cranmer Primary School. We’ve been devising scenes. We’ve written and composed music. We’ve used improvisation techniques to adapt the characters from Die Fledermaus.

It’s been a thoroughly enjoyable experience, not just because we’ve facilitated these young people in creating their own performance, but we’ve also witnessed their confidence grow and creative ideas flourish. Read more

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

ENGAGEMENT IS AMAZINGLY REWARDING

Beatboxing Workshop in Mitcham Library

Opera sounds beautiful, but then so does the sound of a roomful of young people buzzing as they take part in a theatre design workshop, or parents waxing lyrically about how grateful they are that we’ve been doing work in areas that might not normally offer arts activities like stage combat or puppetry. It’s been a pleasure to see how seriously Baseless Fabric takes its community engagement projects – from school groups visiting Wimbledon Tennis, workshops in Mitcham Library – and I’m excited to start playing a role in making these things happen.

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Recently we took our Die Fledermaus adaptation into local community centres so that elderly lunch club groups can hear a professional opera singer and pianist perform live and chat to them about what it’s like to work as a professional musician.

We asked our session leaders to tell us what their favourite moment was: 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!

Conrad Murrary – Beatboxing

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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!

Aged 12-16?

Interested in Beatboxing, Stage Combat, Puppetry, Theatre Design?

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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.

What will you be doing?

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 are we looking for?

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