2020 WOMEN OPERA MAKERS WORKSHOP / ATELIER CRÉATRICES D'OPÉRA 2020
June 29 2020 to July 3 2020
WORKSHOP OPEN TO WOMEN COMPOSERS, AUTHORS, STAGE DIRECTORS AND CONDUCTORS WHO HAVE AT LEAST 5 YEARS CONSIDERABLE EXPERIENCE IN THEIR RESPECTIVE FIELD
For the fifth year in a row, the Académie du Festival d'Aix is running an empowerment program for female opera creators – composers, authors, stage directors and conductors – in the middle of their careers.
This 5-day programme is led by the stage director Katie Mitchell and aims to offer tools, support and advice for women working in the opera industry, in order to help them grow stronger in their art, improve their ability to communicate this art, and develop the skills needed to navigate a male-dominated profession.
Thanks to the incredible sense of emulation that reigns at the Festival d’Aix, female creators have the opportunity to meet artists and professionals who are present during the festival period, such as the composer Kaija Saariaho and the conductor Susanna Mälkki, who will be taking center stage at the 2020 edition with the world premier of the opera Innocence.
In a few short years, the Women Opera Makers Workshop has become one of the Académie’s most symbolic programs. Led by the theatre director Katie Mitchell, the workshop aims to reduce the professional inequalities between men and women in the field of opera. The workshop provides concrete career development tools, support, and advice for women present in the opera industry in order to support them in their craft and their abilities to communicate this craft. This year, the workshop will take place entirely online. Within the framework of this workshop, the participants will e-meet the conductor Susanna Mälkki and Sofi Oksanen, author of the libretto of Innocence, whose world première was scheduled to take place this summer at the Festival d'Aix.
MENTOR
Katie Mitchell — Stage director
GUESTS
Susanna Mälkki — Conductor
Sofi Oksanen — Playwright
PARTICIPANTS
Chris Bush, Violeta Cruz, Penda Diouf, Beatriz Fernández Aucejo, Samantha Fernando*, Stacy Hardy, Anna Himali Howard, Daniela Kerck, Carmen C. Kruse, Patricia Martinez, Natalie Murray Beale, Silvina Peruglia,Helena Röhr, Sita Thomas
* Participant supported by institution member of enoa network: Snape Maltings — Aldeburg
UPLOAD THE BIOGRAPHICAL LEAFLET
https://www.enoa-community.com/training/women-opera-makers-workshop-2020
Katie Mitchell
DIRECTOR
Biography
English director Katie Mitchell made her Royal Opera House debut in 2009 on Parthenogenesis and has since returned to direct Clemencyfor ROH2, Written on Skin, Lucia di Lammermoor (revived in the 2019/20 Season) and the world premiere of Lessons in Love and Violence for The Royal Opera. In the 2019/20 Season she also directs Zauberland (Linbury Theatre).
Mitchell has been an Associate Director for the Royal Shakespeare Company, National Theatre and Royal Court. Theatre credits include Shadows (Eurydice Speaks), Lungs and The Yellow Wallpaper(Schaubühne Berlin), Cleansed, Hansel and Gretel and A Woman Killed with Kindness (National Theatre), Ophelias Zimmer (Schaubühne, Royal Court), Reisende auf einem Bein, Happy Days, Everything Else You Know from the Movies and Sleeping Men (Schauspielhaus, Hamburg), La Maladie de la Mort (Théâtre du Bouffes du Nord, Paris), The Maids (Toneelgroep, Amsterdam), Anatomy of a Suicide and 2071(Royal Court), The Cherry Orchard (Young Vic), The Forbidden Zone(Salzburg Festival, Schaubühne), A Sorrow Beyond Dreams(Burgtheater Vienna), Say It with Flowers, The Trial of Ubu (Hampstead Theatre), Night Train (Schauspiel, Cologne, Avignon Festival, Theatertreffen), Ten Billion (Royal Court, Avignon Festival) and Rings of Saturn and Waves (Schauspiel, Cologne). Film and television credits include an untitled short film (Warp/Film4),?The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd, Jenufa, Rough for Theatre II and The Turn of the Screw.
Mitchell’s opera productions include Ariadne auf Naxos, Pelléas et Mélisande, Alcina, Trauernacht and The House Taken Over (Aix-en-Provence Festival), The Way Back Home (English National Opera/Young Vic), Le Vin herbé (Berlin State Opera), Al gran sole carico d’amore (Berlin State Opera, Salzburg Festival) and Orest and Jenufa (Dutch National Opera). In 2016/17 she was Visiting Chair in Opera Studies at Oxford University. In 2009 she was awarded an OBE for services to drama.