“People don’t realise that they can laugh!”
Wild Arts is a charity bringing opportunities to emerging musicians, inspiration to people who might not have seen opera before and its music to extraordinary places. Its performances are high-quality, lively and full of fun.
My brief was to come along to the Wild Arts touring show An Evening of Opera at St Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury and capture some of the energy and moments that Wild Arts is all about.
Technically, that meant arriving for the show, butterflying around sketching it and flitting off.
But I asked if I might cover string quartet and vocal rehearsals, by way of a rehearsal of my own. That enabled me to get my eye in, understanding how each musician was playing, the shapes of the instruments, the character and performance of the singers, how they were performing together and the feel of the heritage location before the work of sketching the performance, moving between sightlines without being in anyone’s way.
Producer Max Parfitt, who knows my work from writers’ organisation 26’s one-day Wordstock festivals, got the original sketches in a box, with a lid labelled and illustrated before I handed it over. I also shared a link to my record pictures of the sketches.
That’s more than I was asked for. But you only get one go at sketching something live and I always think through what clients might find useful.
Was there fun? Well, it would be hard not to laugh when a young singer gallops around a heritage site, clapping, with Cinderella’s broom for a horse. Sketching while laughing is a new skill, I feel.
If you would like to discuss live illustration for your event, contact me for a chat.
