An Excellent Building-Costume

Building Opera

(part of the ICA‘s Live Weekends Series)

In collaboration with clarinettist, singer, and teacher Kazia Smith, Studio Weave were proud to present, for one night only, a unique Opera of Buildings.

Building the costumes

Taking as a starting point our practice design methodologies of making up fairytales, personifying buildings and landscapes, and discovering the important imaginary relationships between buildings in the city, we made building-puppets and building-costumes and in them performed a Building Opera of nursery rhymes as you’ve never heard them before.

A Princess Palace

Twenty children thought to themselves: “If I were a building, what kind of building would I be?” Results included the Hotel Magnificent, a country house, a princess palace, a turreted stone castle, twin skyscrapers with green roof gardens and many more…

A Sweet Shop

And as if re-inventing yourself as a building isn’t enough for one evening, we then re-learnt old nursery rhymes with new words and performed an opera telling the tale of two towns who discovered each other and became the best friends two towns have ever been. We even did a few nursery rhyme mash-ups. (All the words are on the left hand side of this screen, if you feel like having a sing!)

A two-girl Castle

Thanks to Kazia, the ICA and everyone who took part. What a strange and wonderful evening!

Performing the Opera