Participation On The Move: A Virtual Open House

Monday 17th February 2025 18:00 - 19:30 (UK time) (Online) Zoom Register your free place here https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/mahogany-opera/t-eanqana

For Mahogany Opera's latest Virtual Open House, they are teaming up with Hooligan Art Community to discuss our shared experience and passion for producing touring work that engages local participants actively in each performance. How do you tour a concept? What frameworks are required that support the participants within their own context, while honouring the artistic core of the piece? What are the benefits in creating this hybrid form? If you would like to share your experience of producing this kind of work, or are curious about how it’s made, then join us for this free online discussion. One of the distinctive qualities of many of Mahogany Opera's productions is how they tour their work, whilst involving local participants in the show (for example, Mozart vs Machine, Brundibar, Snappy Operas). Mahohany Opera's collaboration with Hooligan Art Community started in 2019 when they supported the R&D of The Hooligan Project, and especially the involvement of young adults as participants. The Hooligan Project is now a fully developed touring production which brings together the Hooligan artists (some of whom are displaced Ukrainian nationals) and local participants in each place, to reflect on themes of belonging, violence and vulnerability in a piece of music-theatre that responds to Ukrainian actor Simeon Kyslyi's teenage experience of being a football hooligan. Simeon's story provides a window on the violent subcultures that some teenage boys and young men resort to in search of belonging or to overcome fear. By encouraging the artistic and expressive development of all participants "The Hooligan Project" results in extraordinary performances in which Simeon's elegy for the hooligan firm of his youth is played in delicate counterpoint to the emergence of a new community of local artists. This Meet Me @ Mahogany will take place one week before the third anniversary of the full invasion of Ukraine by russia in 2022. During the week of 24 February, Hooligan Art Community will be producing a series of performances, screenings and sharings using archive material from their catalogue to reflect on the last three years and look forward to the future for Ukraine and the next steps for the Hooligans.

Speakers will include Mahogany Opera's Frederic Wake-Walker, composer & Musical director Jessie Maryon Davies, filmmaker Liubov Sliusareva and director for The Hooligan Project Peter Cant.

All Meet Me @ Mahogany events are FREE to attend. The discussion will take place in English on Zoom. It will be BSL-interpreted and live-captioned. Please register on Ticket Source to receive the Zoom link for the event. We hope to see you there.

Meet Me @Mahogany is Mahogany Opera’s virtual Open House series, where we share insights and ideas around what we do and how we do it, connecting people to our creative practice. For more details, or to catch up on previous discussions, visit the Meet Me @ Mahogany overview page.