Blog

Sharing Creative Skills…

May has kicked off with a busy couple of weeks for the Baseless Fabric Team as we gear up for our Cosi Fan Tutte performances in June, prepare for our Die Fledermaus school workshops in July as well as collaborating with local theatre company Attic to run another successful Merton Creative Networking Event.

St Teresa’s Primary School opera workshop

In July we’ll be offering schools in Merton and Wandsworth opera workshops to give young people an insight into what opera is, hear a professional opera singer sing right next to them and teach them to sing and act out the characters of an opera duet themselves. We have professional drama practitioners, musical directors and opera singers leading these school workshops and as part of the process of choosing these practitioners for our forthcoming workshops we recently held a Skills Sharing Workshop to meet workshop leaders new to Baseless Fabric. Read more

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Introducing new members of our team!

It’s a hugely exciting time at Baseless Fabric and we have two new members joining our team. We’re thrilled to welcome Astrid Hilne as our General Manager and Rachel Barnett as one of our trustees.

Astrid Hilne

Astrid Hilne – General Manager

Astrid Hilne has been a professional theatre practitioner since 1986. Her theatre producing and directing credits include work at the Gate Theatre, Lyric Hammersmith Studio, Bridewell Theatre, Young Vic Studio and Royal National Theatre in London.

In the UK she has produced and directed (and translated) tours of new work and foreign classics to art centres and festivals. Astrid has also worked for Chichester Festival Theatre, Bath Theatre Royal and West Sussex County Youth Theatre. Further afield she has directed and lectured at Athens University, Ohio, USA, performed and directed in France and collaborated with Iindiza Theatre Company, in South Africa and the UK. Read more

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Announcing Cosi Fan Tutte 2018!

Cast & Crew from Cosi Fan Tutte (2017) at The Off Westend Awards

We are extremely excited to announce that our OffWestEnd Finalist Best Opera Production of Cosi Fan Tutte is returning in June 2018 for a very limited number of performances!!

Since our new Die Fledermaus project takes place over 2018 and 2019, with the full production performances taking place in summer 2019, we wanted to ensure our audiences could have another opportunity to experience our 5 Star Cosi Fan Tutte this summer. Read more

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Merton Creative Networking Event

Following on from the success of last year’s successful Creative Networking Event, we are excited to again be collaborating with Attic Theatre Company to host another similar event this May. Last year’s event was at the new Merton Arts Space in Wimbledon Library and this year we’ll be in Mitcham Library.

It was a fun friendly evening for local creatives of all disciplines to meet and chat over a glass of wine and meet like-minded local creatives and this year will be no different. As well as the informal networking we’ll also have an opportunity for several creatives with upcoming projects or events to present to the group – including hopefully hearing more about the exciting Merton Borough of Culture Film project!

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Our new production supported by Wimbledon Foundation

Pop up Opera Performance at Wimbledon Foundation

Pop Up Opera Performance at Wimbledon Foundation

We are beyond thrilled to announce that we have been awarded funding by the Wimbledon Foundation’s new Arts and Community Engagement Fund (ACE) to create our next Merton Street Opera!

Following on from the success of Drifting Dragons (2016) and Cosi Fan Tutte (2017) we are now re-imagining Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus for free unticketed high street performances enabling everyone to experience high quality professional opera for free. Read more

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Cosi Fan Tutte Pop-Up Performance!

Two girls catch the eye of two good looking guys across a crowded room at a party and fuelled by a couple of glasses of wine and having checked their make-up decide to go over and chat to them. A scene that happens all the time across many a crowded room. Except that this time our two girls were Fiordiligi and Dorabella singing a duet from Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte from Baseless Fabric’s new adaptation with arrangement by Leo Geyer and libretto by Joanna Turner.

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“Seeing your ideas come to life… is so rewarding and addictive.”

Following our ACTS: REACTS residency at Wimbledon College of Art in 2016, we are keen to support local young creatives as they develop both creatively and on their journey to a career in the theatre industry – so we were pleased to be able to support recent Wimbledon College graduates Cecilija Berg and Nadine Froehlich as they worked with us on our 2017 productions. You can read about Cecilija’s work with us as Costume Assistant on Cosi Fan Tutte and here we caught up with Nadine to find out a bit more about why she became a theatre designer, how she worked on Reunion & Dark Pony and what she’s up to next:

Nadine Froehlich

Where did you study and what course did you do?
I trained on the Theatre Design course at Wimbledon College of Arts, UAL.

What made you want to become a Theatre Designer? What do you enjoy most about it?
I always saw myself as an artist, working on big paintings and drawings. What I enjoyed most of all was the process, researching themes that start to form a concept, but making paintings as a final piece didn’t seem enough for me. Read more

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2017 A year in review

St Teresa’s Primary School opera workshop

It’s the start of a new year so it’s that time of year that gets you thinking about what you’ve achieved over the last year. We had a big year in 2017 with two massively successful productions – Cosi Fan Tutte and Reunion & Dark Pony – both of which included professional performances, workshops for young people, and for Cosi also sessions for the elderly, not to mention re-writing the music and libretto for the high street! We loved working with so many shops, cafes, supermarkets and libraries for performances, especially being part of National Libraries Week for our Reunion & Dark Pony production. Our Cosi Fan Tutte further embedded our work in our home borough of Merton, while Reunion & Dark Pony took us further across South London to Southwark, Lambeth and Wandsworth as well as our first performances in the new Merton Arts Space in Wimbledon Library.  Read more

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Looking back on Reunion & Dark Pony…

A few weeks ago we had a fantastic time being part of National Libraries Week presenting our Reunion & Dark Pony production. Libraries are such amazing spaces and to be part of a national week of events showcasing a wide range of fun activities and events that libraries can be used for was just brilliant.

We had lovely feedback both from reviewers and audiences about our site-specific performances of these fantastic plays. As one reviewer commented: ‘The company couldn’t have chosen a more suitable author for this purpose than the one who once said “My alma mater is the Chicago Public Library. I got what little educational foundation I got in the third-floor reading room, under the tutelage of a Coca-Cola sign”.’ (Everything Theatre)

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