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.
Skills Sharing Workshop
During this workshop we gave the practitioners an insight into how we run opera workshops to teach young people about opera in a modern and accessible way so young people with no or little previous experience of opera can truly engage with the characters, their relationships and the story in a way that feels relevant to life today. We shared how we discuss our interpretation of the story, teach children about the different people involved in an opera production, and how we teach them to sing and act out a section of a duet (plus what is a duet? And a bit trickier, what’s an aria?) As well as this insight into our process all the practitioners shared different games and exercises they use in their practice for energising or focussing a group of young people. We met some fantastic people who you may very well see leading our workshops in future and we certainly hope to hold another workshop very soon.
Merton Creative Networking Event 2017
The Creative Networking Event last Tuesday evening was a great success in Mitcham Library with some old faces re-joining us from last time as well as some new ones coming to see what it was all about. It was fantastic to hear more about the Merton Borough of Culture Film Funding, the different elements of that project that will take place throughout 2019 and be able to ask questions about the project of members of the advisory board. We also heard about various other exciting projects and plans for creative events taking place throughout the borough including about the two Merton Arts Spaces in Wimbledon and Mitcham libraries. Following the event we’ve set up a Facebook group so anyone interested in keeping in touch, sharing ideas or looking for collaborators for creative events in between these meetings can easily do so. If you’re interested in joining please do: Merton Creative Network – we’ll see you there!
Meanwhile, we’re back to busily planning our Cosi Fan Tutte performances on 9th June. So do get booking your tickets for Wimbledon’s Merton Arts Space if you haven’t done so already and stay tuned as we’ll be announcing more details very soon!
Cosi Fan Tutte 2018
Following the success of our OffWestEnd Finalist Best Opera Production of Cosi Fan Tutte in 2017, we are excited to announce that it will be returning in June 2018 for a very limited number of performances!!
Location: 
Merton Arts Space, Compton Road, Wimbledon, SW19 7QA
(2mins walk from Wimbledon Station)
Date: 9th June 2018 at 7.30pm
Duration: 1hr approx
Tickets: £12 / £10
Immersive indoor production (not moving around the high street)
