24/04/25
Meet Me at Mahogany | Virtual Open House | Events & Performances
Meet Me @ Mahogany: Virtual Open House
Mahogany Opera’s Virtual Open House is a series of online events and discussions, where we share insights and ideas around what we do and how we do it, connecting people to our creative practice.
We began our Virtual Open House series to bring more people into our conversations, strengthening our relationships and enriching our perspectives.
We hold four events across each year, with each gathering built around themes that relate to a particular strand or aspect of our work and look outwards to a larger question.
Each event is 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 are ticketed but free to attend.
More information about upcoming Virtual Open House events will be added to our Explore More section and the What's On tab on our Home Page when confirmed.
If you'd like to catch up with previous events, you can watch all of our past discussions below:
Meet Me @ Mahogany: Participation On The Move
One of the distinctive qualities of Mahogany Opera’s work is the inclusion of participation in the productions that we tour. 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?
In our Meet Me @ Mahogany event on Monday 17th February 2025, we teamed up with our friends at Hooligan Art Community to discuss our shared experience and passion for producing touring work that engages local participants actively in each performance.
This Virtual Open House took place one week before the third anniversary of the full invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
MM@M: Participation On The Move - Event Transcript
MM@M: Participation On The Move - Further Reading
Meet Me @ Mahogany: Open Call Opera
Mahogany Opera takes a distinctive approach to recruitment – our regular ‘Open Calls’ aim to diversify the people we reach, and our auditioning process looks to provide a more positive experience for performers interested in working with us. Through previous Open Calls we have recruited directors, singers and musicians, and our most recent open call connected us with composers and writers interested in creating a new Snappy Opera.
In our Meet Me @ Mahogany event on Wednesday 13th November 2024, we reflected on our approach to Open Calls – how we use these to reach different artists when recruiting for specific projects, how our approach to auditioning might differ from traditional opera companies, and what learning we (and others) could take from this to improve recruitment in the future.
MM@M: Open Call Opera - Event Transcript
MM@M: Open Call Opera - Further Reading
Meet Me @ Mahogany: A New Sound
In our Meet Me @ Mahogany event on Wednesday 20th March 2024, we will reflected on some of the key challenges that artists face when creating new work - how to avoid feelings of isolation by making meaningful CONNECTIONS with other artists, how to balance TIME to ensure productive work whilst maintaining SELF-CARE and wellbeing, and how visions for a better FUTURE can influence our work today. This discussion was aimed specifically at artist creating new work, following a successful artist day, A New Sound, in partnership with Edinburgh Futures Institute and Snap-Elastic, as part of our Various Stages programme.
MM@M: A New Sound - Event Transcript
MM@M: A New Sound - Further Reading
Meet Me @ Mahogany: What Can We Learn From Working In SEND Settings?
In our Meet Me @Mahogany online event on Wednesday 24th January 2024, we explored the importance of accessible creative opportunities for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities, and how the principles of working in this way can enrich an artist’s wider work, as well as the experiences for those that engage with it. The discussion was inspired by Roll Up! - a brand new Snappy Opera with and for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)
MM@M: What Can We Learn From Working In SEND Settings? - Event Transcript
MM@M: What Can We Learn From Working In SEND Settings? - Further Reading
Meet Me @ Mahogany: The Great Learning
In our Meet Me @Mahogany online event on Wednesday 15th March 2023, we heard from from the artists involved in our new community led commissioning project, The Great Learning, as we delved into the importance of community led commissioning and interrogated how vital creativity can be in healing the mind, body and soul.
MM@M: The Great Learning - Event Transcript
MM@M: The Great Learning - Further Reading
Meet Me @ Mahogany: Out Of Her Mouth
In our Meet Me @Mahogany online event on Wednesday 30th November 2022, we talked to the team behind Out Of Her Mouth, a new co-commission from Mahogany Opera, Dunedin Consort and HERA
Hear from Toria Banks as we delve into the provenance of the piece and how the new translations came to life, whilst interrogating more widely the importance of reinventing the old and finding contemporary relevance in ancient works. The discussion also introduces soprano Alys Roberts, & director Mathilde Lopez - artists involved in the project who were selected as part of a unique open call - who share their thoughts about that process and what it means to be involved in this new piece.
Meet Me @ Mahogany: Hooligan Arts Community
In our Meet Me @Mahogany online event on Wednesday 6th July 2022, we talk to the team behind Hooligan, a project supported through our Various Stages programme.
Hooligan is an extraordinary participatory music theatre project involving Ukrainian, German & British artists. The project was originally due to have taken place in Dnipro, Ukraine as part of the British Council UK-Ukraine Season. Instead, eight Ukrainian artists gathered in Halle, Germany (with colleagues participating remotely from Kyiv), working with a chorus of Ukranian refugees and local Germans to present Hooligan at the WUK Theater Quartier on 25 May 2022.
Meet Me @ Mahogany: How do you make an opera in a week?
In our Meet Me @Mahogany online event on Thursday 10 March 2022, we shared learning and inspiration from a series of creative workshops at Edinburgh University. Composer Gareth Williams, poet Jane McKie, and Mahogany Opera’s Artistic Director Freddie Wake-Walker worked with University of Edinburgh student composers, writers and designers (eight of each) on a week-long creative journey of opera making, and in this discussion they talk about that process and the things they learned along the way.
Meet Me @ Mahogany: Make It Snappy
In our Meet Me @Mahogany event on Wednesday 6th October 2021, we explored the process of collaborative composition as creative development for professionals and participants.
Using Mahogany Opera's work with young people as a starting point, we explore the process of making a Snappy Opera and other participatory projects that combine devising with structured composition, taking everyone on a creative journey together.
Meet Me @ Mahogany: Nwando Ebizie
On Monday 14 June we hosted a conversation between Mahogany Opera’s artistic director, Frederic Wake-Walker and award-winning multidisciplinary artist Nwando Ebizie.
The two artists discussed 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. Coinciding with Nwando’s residency at East Street Arts where she presented a new installation Extreme Unction Vol 2, together they consider the potential healing qualities of immersive performance and imagine its future.
Meet Me @ Mahogany: We Ask These Questions Of Everybody
In our first public Meet Me @ Mahogany event in February 2021, Dr Charlotte Armstrong (founder of the Opera and Disability blog) guided a discussion with featured guests, Toria Banks (librettist/director) and Amble Skuse (composer) to explore disability theory in relation to the arts, talk about the creative process and and share more information about their new opera We Ask These Questions of Everybody.
Meet Me @ Mahogany: Dido's Ghost
Our very first Meet Me @ Mahogany event took place on 14 October 2020.
Mahogany Opera’s Artistic Director Frederic Wake-Walker talked with composer Errollyn Wallen and writer Wesley Stace about Dido’s Ghost, unwrapping the process of collaboration.
Co-commissioned by Dunedin Consort, Barbican and Mahogany Opera, Errollyn and Wesley’s opera reframes and illuminates Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. Performed on period instruments by Dunedin Consort, Dido’s Ghost bridges worlds, blurring past and present, creating a distinctive new classic for our time.
