Done!

Thanks so much to everyone who made it to Riverside this weekend to see Passing Afflictions; we really appreciate the huge amount of support and feedback we received! We're planning on workshopping the piece further in November-December, and are working towards a completed show by early 2010. Some of the many faces of Tania to your left (huge thanks, as ever, to Mat Smith Photography)...

Would you HIRE or FIRE this spread...?

(Nat and Cheryl writing...)


Today we met up in London to discuss the interactive elements of the performance on Saturday...

We are asking the audience to give us their opinion on different settings of extracts from Passing Afflictions, but we had to work out exactly how we'd go about it. It's now all totally sorted, and we're hoping the audiences will be thrilled and entertained by the result! The weekend is bounding ever closer now, and we're very excited to show you what we've come up with...! If you still haven't got a ticket, we're selling out fast, so do follow our ticket link on the GHO website to book up and avoid disappointment :)

A sneak peek into practicing...

(Nat writing) My table, this morning. If you squint really hard, you might just get a small preview of some of Tania's ranting ;)

A week before Passing Afflictions opens, and I'm working a four-cup-of-coffee-a-day week on learning all the music for the show. We're very excited about picking the audiences' brains about different musical approaches to our three characters, and, singing both varients, I certainly can't decide! We really do need your input, so do please come along to Riverside and help us! Tickets are selling fast - we'd sold over half when we checked out sale on Monday - so act fast to be sure of a seat... The admin side is going swimmingly, thanks to some very kind friends - namely Mark, Mat, Linda and Zoë - who have lent us their considerable talents to make us look very swish indeed :) We're very grateful to them, and would urge you to check out their websites (which can be found linked on our site). One last thing: am I the only performer who uses gigs as an excuse to buy fabulous things in the sales? I'm saving this stylish bit of kit to debut it on Saturday:

*loves*

A weekend in the sun planning an opera...

At the beginning of this month, Nat came to stay with me (this is Cheryl writing :) for the weekend and we had a fabulous time talking about everything Golden Hat. I hadn't started writing the music yet, so it was wonderful to really talk about the characters in Passing Afflictions: I felt like I really knew Tania, Sarah and Leonora by the end of the weekend! Ideas came thick and fast to us both, perhaps helped by the odd glass or three of red wine, and a rather nice barbeque! Although you'll notice in these photos that I originally put the coals where the food was supposed to go! I guess that's what happens when you get two musicians together...non stop musical chatter but absolutely no common sense!

The Golden Hat Opera Photo Shoot!

We had a fabulous time with Mat Smith (www.matsmithphotography.com) recently, shooting the publicity photos for GHO. We went to loads of different venues around London, including Tate Modern, the National Film Theatre, and even the skater park in the South Bank! Here are some photos from the day, which we are thrilled with. Visit our website, www.goldenhatopera.co.uk, for more of the photos, and lots of information about our latest project, Passing Afflictions.