Photo credit, Bob Van Danzig: Goodnight Ladies - Hesitate and Demonstrate
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Geraldine Pilgrim to appear at symposium.
Feminist Theatre: Documenting The Past, Inspiring The Future Sat 30 Nov 2024 10am – 6pm GMT London Performance Studios Penarth Street London SE15 1TR A symposium bringing together theatre makers, artists, thinkers, and archivists to explore the women’s and feminist theatre movement, from the 1960s through to the 1990s and into the present day. A panel of talks will explore the Unfinished Histories archive, legacies of women’s and feminist practices in British alternative theatre, and key concerns around documenting and archiving fringe theatre. This will be followed by a soft launch for the new Radical Rediscoveries publication, a long table discussion, and will culminate with a drinks reception. Guest speakers will include Professor Anna Furse; Paula Brown, producer of Women Live and Katrina Duncan of Women In Entertainment in the 80s; writer and performer Rose Collis; experimental theatre-maker Natasha Morgan and site-specific theatre artist Geraldine Pilgrim, with more to be announced soon. Contact & booking: Email: [email protected] Click here for website Phone: 02038 597 271 |
Photo by Robin Savage: Two in the Hand - Christmas at Kew Gardens Light Trail 2023/24
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Two in the Hand
Geraldine’s light installation is part of “Christmas at Blenheim Palace” this year. The light trail is open from Friday 15th November 2024 to Wednesday 1st January 2025. Commissioned originally for the Stourhead Christmas Light Trail in 2021/22, 'Two in the Hand' then travelled to Christmas at Kew in 2022/23 and now arrives at Blenheim Palace. Click here for full information at the Blenheim Palace website. |
Pieter Claes: Vanitas with Violin and Glass Ball
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Memento Mori – remember you must die
Geraldine has been awarded an ACE Research and Development grant for Memento Mori – remember you must die a site-specific performance/installation journey - integrating visual and performance imagery with sung voice and live music - of remembrance, grief, and resolution, in partnership with Highgate Cemetery. |
Inspired by 17th century Memento Mori and Vanitas still life allegorical artworks, which included symbolic objects designed to remind the viewer of their mortality and of the worthlessness of worldly goods and pleasures, this performance aims to explore and contemporises this genre creating animated 3D life size Vanitas installations that are relevant to today.
Memento Mori address’s themes common to all humankind, ‘a reminder that we must die’ and will resonate with everyone; people of all ages, cultures, of faiths or none, (including atheists, humanists, and agnostics) as will the opportunity that it will provide for all those who mourn those they have lost, especially post covid.
The underlying theme also aims to confront the most confusing element of death – someone is there and then they are not – true presence and absence.
The resulting ideas from the research period will aim for a full -scale project planned to initially be reimagined to tour London’s ‘7 Magnificent Cemeteries’ and then to tour nationally and internationally. It will be a work imagined site -specifically for each different cemetery in which it takes place.
Inspired by personal loss, the history of the cemeteries, and our changing attitudes to death and grief, Memento Mori, most importantly explores different cultures rituals of death, burial, and grief; resonates within the common chord of loss and allows an audience space to contemplate their own personal resolution.
A five-part requiem composed by Felix Cross sung by recruited participatory choirs local to each cemetery, (the word requiem is used in its non - religious definition which is “requiem: an act of remembrance) - provides the infrastructure exploring with performers and dancers, musicians and singers how psychologist’s Kubler Ross’s 5 stages of Grief - Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance can lead to resolution and acceptance for both the grieving and the dying.
Memento Mori address’s themes common to all humankind, ‘a reminder that we must die’ and will resonate with everyone; people of all ages, cultures, of faiths or none, (including atheists, humanists, and agnostics) as will the opportunity that it will provide for all those who mourn those they have lost, especially post covid.
The underlying theme also aims to confront the most confusing element of death – someone is there and then they are not – true presence and absence.
The resulting ideas from the research period will aim for a full -scale project planned to initially be reimagined to tour London’s ‘7 Magnificent Cemeteries’ and then to tour nationally and internationally. It will be a work imagined site -specifically for each different cemetery in which it takes place.
Inspired by personal loss, the history of the cemeteries, and our changing attitudes to death and grief, Memento Mori, most importantly explores different cultures rituals of death, burial, and grief; resonates within the common chord of loss and allows an audience space to contemplate their own personal resolution.
A five-part requiem composed by Felix Cross sung by recruited participatory choirs local to each cemetery, (the word requiem is used in its non - religious definition which is “requiem: an act of remembrance) - provides the infrastructure exploring with performers and dancers, musicians and singers how psychologist’s Kubler Ross’s 5 stages of Grief - Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance can lead to resolution and acceptance for both the grieving and the dying.
Tattoo working image credit: Joseph Marshall
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TATTOO
Rooted Festival | Kew 7 July - 17 September 2023 TATTOO is a Geraldine Pilgrim installation that explores the “dynamics of carbon” with an ancient oak tree - created from recycled fallen branches sourced from the grounds at Hatfield House, emerging from a circle of limestone boulders. The installation aims to make ‘the invisible visible’ with its shadows of absent oak leaves reflected on its trunk and branches. |
These shadows of the invisible are created from carbon black ink; inspired by the discovery of the 5,300-year-old tattoos on Ötzi the Iceman’s mummified remains and in between the shadows of the absent oak leaves, are glimpses of the patterns of these original tattoos. Three constellations; Orion’s Belt, The Plough and Cassiopeia, are etched onto the limestone boulders and embedded with Swarovski crystals where the stars are.
Rooted Festival | Kew:
7 July - 17 September 2023
10:00am - 6:00 pm (last entry 5:30 pm)
Kew Gardens
Wakehurst
Ardingly
Haywards Heath
Sussex
RH17 6TN
01444 894 066
Rooted Festival | Kew:
7 July - 17 September 2023
10:00am - 6:00 pm (last entry 5:30 pm)
Kew Gardens
Wakehurst
Ardingly
Haywards Heath
Sussex
RH17 6TN
01444 894 066
Photo credit: Vincent Beaume
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Women Opera Makers workshop 2023 Académie du Festival d'Aix
10 – 14 July 2023 Geraldine has been selected as one of 12 artists in the Women Opera Makers workshop 2023 as part of the Académie du Festival d'Aix. Since 2016, the Académie du Festival d'Aix has been working to improve the representation of women in the field of opera and, while offering artists a unique support programme, is enabling the sector to evolve. |
Conceived by stage director Katie Mitchell, the Women Opera Makers workshop aims to increase the visibility of women who are evolving in the fields of music creation, directing, conducting, playwriting and performance. In addition to its action for the equity between women and men in the fields of multidisciplinary and musical arts, this workshop works for diversity in the broad sense. As such, it deliberately encourages the expression of different aesthetics and the creation of new narratives, and values artistic creativity at the highest level. The workshop objectives are to strengthen the artists’ artistic and multidisciplinary network, to receive personalised advice in career development strategy, to offer guidance about managing sexism in the workplace, to reflect on the function of opera today, an to get in contact with professionals of the sector in a unique context.
A Garden for the Gardenless
Photographer Unknown
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A Garden for the Gardenless
Lauderdale House has been awarded ACE R&D funding for “A Garden for the Gardenless” Geraldine’s site–specific performance in Waterlow Park and Laudedale House Highgate planned for September 2024. Created collaboratively with the composer Felix Cross, this site- specific performance journey is a new departure for her site work, with sung voice and live music at the core. |
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Click Viewer to Enlarge
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Geraldine recently completed her ACE: Developing Your Creative Practice (DYCP) - Discovering the Operatic Form – resulting in a sung voice and live music exercise Season of Sorrow in The Ditch at Shoreditch Town Hall.
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Geraldine says:
After 2 years working with students in the empty former Holloway Prison and inspired by a sense of the memories of the women once imprisoned there especially women of colour whose voices and stories have not been heard; I extracted text from Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis, forming two verses and a chorus, creating an image exploring a contemporary female prisoner incarcerated in her cell imagining herself free and singing accompanied by a live cello to music composed by Felix Cross.
After 2 years working with students in the empty former Holloway Prison and inspired by a sense of the memories of the women once imprisoned there especially women of colour whose voices and stories have not been heard; I extracted text from Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis, forming two verses and a chorus, creating an image exploring a contemporary female prisoner incarcerated in her cell imagining herself free and singing accompanied by a live cello to music composed by Felix Cross.
Photograph Jimmy Lees
Geraldine Pilgrim Performance Company & Mountview London present Handbag at Home:A celebratory, online, participatory performance with wonderful music, dancing, and handbags.
Watch at www.geraldinepilgrim.com & www.mountview.org.uk.
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In different rooms, remnants of parties the night before are cleared away.
A woman sits in her bedroom dreaming, as she gets up a beat begins, and the sound of a classic dance track fills the air. She puts down her handbag and begins to dance… |
Geraldine Pilgrim’s Handbag was originally commissioned by Battersea Arts Centre in 2008 for their Grand Hall, and, since then Handbag has been re-imagined for every space – inside and out – where it is performed; including theatres, galleries, parks, festivals, village halls, streets, and a women’s prison in France.
During the pandemic, with theatres and community centres closed, Geraldine Pilgrim Performance Company and Mountview London presented Handbag at Home, a performance maintaining the joy of Handbag but now online; with over fifty women dancing round their handbags at home to ‘Let’s Dance’ by David Bowie.
During the pandemic, with theatres and community centres closed, Geraldine Pilgrim Performance Company and Mountview London presented Handbag at Home, a performance maintaining the joy of Handbag but now online; with over fifty women dancing round their handbags at home to ‘Let’s Dance’ by David Bowie.
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Whilst the men clear up the remains of parties the night before, the empty rooms of the women fill with wonderful music, dancing and handbags.
Handbag at Home
premiered for free from 7pm on Monday June 29 at www.geraldinepilgrim.com and www.mountview.org.uk. |
Geraldine is Artistic Director of Geraldine Pilgrim Performance Company and is known for her evocative installations and site-specific performances which she has been making for over twenty years. Geraldine created and leads the MA in Site-Specific Theatre Practice at Mountview, provided in partnership with Shoreditch Town Hall. The course is the first of its kind in the UK and gives students access to highly specialised training across all elements of site specific practice.
Mountview has been training performance artists since 1945 and in 1992 became the first provider of specialised musical theatre training in Europe. Vocational undergraduate courses include Acting, Musical Theatre, Actor Musician Scenic Art and Prop Making, Lighting, Sound and Stage Management. Postgraduate training includes Theatre Directing, Musical Direction, Creative Producing, Site Specific Theatre Practice, Theatre for Community and Education, Acting and Musical Theatre.
Keep your eye on this page, as we will be posting information concerning a number of projects to take place in during 2020 and 2021. We anticipate announcements concerning new runs of Handbag, including in the digital realm, along with workshops, and mentoring sessions. Additionally, information is now available be for the 2021 MA in Site-Specific Theatre Practice at Mountview, designed and led by Geraldine Pilgrim.
For a look back at some of Geraldine's recent work, you can visit the News section. For earlier work, please stop by the Projects page.
To be kept in touch, sign up to our mailing list on the Contact page.
For a look back at some of Geraldine's recent work, you can visit the News section. For earlier work, please stop by the Projects page.
To be kept in touch, sign up to our mailing list on the Contact page.