Poster design by Helen Wyllie website

Powerful, humorous, emotional

audience member at the Tete a Tete: The Opera Festival 2023

Exposing the embarassment, guilt, anger

“A half hour full of switchback changes, genuine surprise & delight“

 Florence Anna Maunders

Composition: Rania Chrysostomou and Sarah Parkin
Performance: Sarah Parkin
Film: Catherine Valve
Design & illustration: Helen Wyllie
Direction: Sarah Parkin and Rania Chrysostomou
Production: Rania Chrysostomou

Show Pack can be found here

Program Note:

In a world that prides itself on progress, women continue to face deeply ingrained societal pressures and gender inequalities. Despite the modernity of our times, the expectations placed upon women remain both unrealistic and overwhelming, often forcing them to sacrifice their own well-being.

This opera introduces a fictional group of women from diverse generations, backgrounds, and aspirations. Each woman brings her own story, but they share one common experience: the pressure to suppress their true emotions and hide the more “unacceptable” aspects of their lives. They’ve been conditioned to conceal feelings of guilt, shame, and internal conflict—compelled to push down the very emotions that make them human.

Through this piece, we ask: what might a woman reveal if she were given the time, space, and freedom to express herself without fear of judgment? By giving voice to these silenced experiences, we explore the profound impact of unspoken truths and hidden struggles, and the power that can emerge when women are finally allowed to speak their minds.

Titles:

1. Respiration, performed by Group Leader 
2. Spoonful Of Water, performed by Black Jumpsuit Woman
3. Gambling, performed by Dress-and-Handbag Woman
4. Needing A Beat, performed by Orange Dress Woman
5. A Mother Is A Woman Who Is A Person Who Is Human, performed by Blue Sports Shorts Woman
6. She That Will, performed by Sunglasses On Head Woman

Bios:

Sarah Parkin
www.sarahparkin.com/

Canadian/French Soprano Sarah Parkin (she/her) specialises in new music and contemporary opera. She is an experienced deviser of new, immersive pieces and regularly incorporates physical theatre practices into her work.
Select performances include: Plastic Bodies (Co-Creation, Tête-à-Tête); Roll Up! (Jack McNeill & Claire Willoughby – Mahogany Opera); Voices of the Sands (Michael Betteridge); Student 3, Innocence (Kaija Saariaho – Cover – Royal Opera House); p.e.r.s.o.n.a.l.c.l.u.t.t.e.r. (Dark Music Days); A Kinder Society (Amy Bryce -Stiftung Kunst und Musik für Dresden); Robe (Alistair White – Tête-à-Tête and Métier). In 2023-24, Sarah will take part in the inaugural cohort on VOICEBOX (Juliet Fraser with Britten Pears Arts; City, University of London; Sound Festival and Dartington Music Summer School). She is the performer and co-creator of On Being Vocal.

Catherine Valve
www.catherinevalve.com/

Catherine is an LGBTQ+ filmmaker from Herefordshire. She graduated from Buckinghamshire New University with a degree in Film & Television production. She is particularly focused on telling the stories of under-represented groups and strives to make experiences of the LGBTQ+ community and women a central theme of her work. She has lived in London for 8 years, working mainly as an editor for short form productions.  Catherine directed several projects, including an award winning short film, and collaborated with other filmmakers and creatives to produce engaging films for a range of audiences. 

Helen Wyllie
www.wylliecat.co.uk/

Scottish Helen is a designer and illustrator, mostly operating where the two disciplines meet. She loves a flowing line, a good impending sky, and a flock of seagulls. Her design work tends to be clean but with warmth, often quite informal, and her illustration takes two forms – completely vector, or with collaged textures which she gathers from life.

Helen’s commissioned illustration features in many festivals and brands. It can be found on theatre posters, marketing and merchandise across the country, and has also included shortbread tins, children’s books, games and animations

Rania Chrysostomou
www.rchrysostomou.com

In June 2022, British Cypriot composer Rania Chrysostomou produced the Cypriot melodrama Stories, Odes and Chants (Ιστορίες, Ωδές και Άσματα) that toured 3 cities in Cyprus. It told the story of a young lady in a time long ago who went on a quest to find a mystical spider who weaved magical mantles that brought prosperity to anyone who had it. The show featured poems by living Cypriot poets and traditional poems that she set to music. 

Through her music, she explores themes of Womanhood like in Statue of the Earth, inspired by the ancient Greek Goddess Hestia, commissioned by British singer – violist Katherine Clarke, performed in 2020 in London. And dealing with deeply personal feelings, Tillein (Τίλλειν) for an intimate percussionist, inspired by the trichotillomania disorder. It received its USA premier at PASIC (Percussion Arts Society International Convention) in Indianapolis in 2021, by Dr. Alex Fragiskatos. Musically she is very keen on exploring the combination of loudness and timbre as sound qualities and how it affects the audience. In The Clouds (Στα Σύννεφα), premiered by the flute percussion duo Plekό Duo (here is an arrangement performed in Stories, Odes and Chants). Musical storytelling is the backbone of her music as in her piece Lockdown Diaries: The Death, commissioned and performed by Skipton Camerata in Autumn 2020.

‘On Being Vocal’ would not have been possible without the funding support from the National Lottery Fund from the Arts Council of England.