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Meet Me @Mahogany is Mahogany Opera’s new virtual Open House where we share insights and ideas around what we do and how we do it, connecting people to our creative practice.

We began Meet Me @ Mahogany to bring more people into our conversations, strengthening our relationships and enriching our perspectives. Each gathering will be built around themes that relate to a particular strand or aspect of our work and look outwards to a larger question.

Each event will be a guided conversation with opportunities for you to ask questions and join the discussion. Hosted on Zoom, with live captioning and BSL interpretation, the events will be ticketed but free to attend.

Without a venue or defined home, Mahogany Opera envisions Meet Me @ Mahogany as a space for transformational thinking, where we can connect through ideas and experiences.

To find out more about future Meet Me @ Mahogany events sign up to our mailing list.

Join us for Meet Me @ Mahogany on Monday 14 June as we host a conversation between Mahogany Opera’s artistic director, Frederic Wake-Walker and award-winning multidisciplinary artist Nwando Ebizie.

The two artists will discuss Nwando’s evolving immersive operatic experience, inspired by the life and work of Hildegard von Bingen, Hildegard: Visions and the ongoing process of creative collaboration. Mahogany Opera has worked together with Nwando Ebizie on the development of this multi-sensory ritualistic experience of sound, scent and taste through workshops as part of our Various Stages Festival last year and a recent seed commission*. We are really pleased to have the opportunity to talk with Nwando about this fascinating, ambitious work and to invite you into the conversation.

Coinciding with Nwando’s residency at East Street Arts where she presents a new installation Extreme Unction Vol 2 (find out more here), together we will consider the potential healing qualities of immersive performance and imagine its future.

Nwando Ebizie is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist and curator whose work converges around immersive installation, performance art personas, experimental theatre, neuroscience, music and African diasporic ritual.

Her own personal strand of Afrofuturism combines explorations of the perception of neuroscience (inspired by her own neurodivergency) and an obsession with science fiction with ritualistic live art.

This has manifested as curated late night events for Wellcome Collection, music theatre shows such as Lady Vendredi which ran at Soho Theatre in 2016 and critically acclaimed albums (called “Fresh, Raw and Unique’ by BBC Radio 6Music and Worldwide FM DJ Gilles Peterson).

Collaborations and commissions include: The Hepworth, The Wellcome Collection, Snape Maltings, The Royal Court, HCMF, Radiophrenia, The Young Vic, ICA, Royal Opera House, Melbourne Science Gallery and Mahogany Opera. She was recently awarded The Jerwood Live Work Fund, The PRS Composers Award and Writing the Future with London Sinfonietta.

Frederic Wake-Walker is a director and producer of opera, contemporary music theatre and multi-disciplinary performance working with a broad and diverse range of artists in a variety of contexts. He is Artistic Director of Mahogany Opera and one of the team behind Mica Moca. He was awarded Best Director at the inaugural Oper! Awards in 2019.

You can read more about the evolution of Hildegard: Visions and the workshops that took place as part of our Various Stages Festival in 2020 on the Mahogany Opera website, click here.

Find out more about Nwando Ebizie’s new installation at East Street Arts as part of the Seasons for Change, The Space Between here.

*The seed commission has been generously supported by The Marchus Trust and RVW Trust.