Course D: I Saw Wonders with Simon Fraser and Mitch Mitchelson

Tuesday, March 4th, 2014 at 9:56 am | News & Events

“I saw wonders. I saw the entire future of the theatre. I saw millions of stages all over the world. I saw brilliant playwrights, great actors. I saw thousands of troupes, which would never had existed is not for you and your glorious ones. “

‘The Glorious Ones’ – Francine Prose

After completing the devised trilogy in musicality and devised ensemble theatre with his colleague Robert Hyman, Mitch Mitchelson this year is combining forces with the Musician, Actor and and Director of Absolute Theatre, Simon Fraser in bringing to life another musical and theatrical extravaganza. Taking their inspiration from the novel by Francine Prose, the musical by Stephen Flaherty of The Glorious Ones and from classical Commedia scenarios with lazzi and comic routines, Mitch and Simon will produce a Commedia dell’Arte Charivari ensemble theatre piece with music.

The musical textures of the piece will draw on sources such as original music, choral song and the rough percussive music of the Zannis, the cunning, foolish, hapless servants of the Commedia dell’Arte. The language of slapstick, the silent movie comedians, theatrical metaphor, transitional acting, bold, physicalised characterisation and the power of the ensemble will be to the fore in a happy marriage of high and low art, both of which the tutors have experienced and specialised in!

Suitable for people who want to do any or all of the following:

Sing
Act
Be in an Ensemble
Physicalise
Devise
Clown
Be romantic
Roll in the Dirt and Play

(Not necessarily in that order.)

Participants will also be required to bring a kitchen utensil if possible.

Open and suitable for all.

MITCH MITCHELSON – As a freelance teacher, Mitch has taught and directed in a diversity of colleges and institutions including Rose Bruford, Central School of Speech and Drama, East 15, Italia Conti, St. Mary’s University, The Royal College of Music and many more. Having worked in Theatres in Bath and London’s East end he set up the street arts company Original Mixture. He subsequently played “Trinculo” for Sphinx Theatre Co. and John Majors dodgy clown brother “”Mickey Major “ for Comic –Strip. Over the last year he has directed and adapted the production ” Smog” from the novel by Italo Calvino for St Mary’s University Theatre , London. He is currently working for Fourth Monkey productions, directing Arnold Wesker’s ” The Kitchen ” and developing a Goldoni play for the Edinburgh Festival. And as a film consultant on behalf of The National Centre for Circus Arts in London, devised Victorian slapstick clown routines with and for the actor Daniel Radcliffe.

SIMON FRASER – Simon is the Associate and Musical Director of Absolute Theatre, with whom he has created music for a number of productions, including ‘The Shoemaker’s Wondrous Wife’ by Lorca, an opera using contemporary soap opera themes entitled ‘Opera Soap’ commissioned by Battersea Arts Centre, the UK premiere of ‘Spiel Im Berg’ by the Austrian playwright Felix Mitterer and ‘The Crowgate’, a sung-through piece performed by young people from eight schools in Newham, East London. His career began with the Platypus Theatre Company in the West Midlands; composition credits include ‘The Old Wife’s Tale’ (George Peele), ‘The Interference’ by Tim Rose Price and Steve Dinsdale’s version of Leon Garfield’s story ‘Mr. Corbett’s Ghost’, which Garfield himself described as the best adaptation of any of his books.

Simon has written music for several large-scale productions, including ‘Cry to the Hunt’ for Shared Experience and performed in the Poland Street car park in Soho, the National Youth Theatre’s ‘White City Black Country’, ‘No Surrender’ (Remould Theatre Company Hull) and ‘Possession’, a promenade piece performed at Witley Court in Worcestershire by over eighty young people. Other theatre includes music for ‘Electra’, ‘Spring Awakening’, ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore’, ‘Twelfth Night’, ‘The Rivals’, The Good Person of Szechwan’ and ‘20,000 Leagues Under The Sea’ (Theatre Royal Bath), ‘Aladdin’ (Byre Theatre), ‘Citizenship’ by Mark Ravenhill, , ‘Peter Pan’ and ‘The Man of Mode’ with the Young Actors Theatre, who also this year staged ‘Islington The Opera’, written by Peter Cann and Simon Fraser. He regularly collaborates with the Portuguese company Teatro do Montemuro; credits include ‘Alminhas’, ‘O Canto da Cepa’, ‘Anjo do Montemuro’ and ‘Louco na Serra’.

Other compositions include ‘Paradise Lost’, the first new oratorio to be premiered at the Three Choirs Festival since Saint-Saens in 1913; his orchestral piece ‘At Caerlaverock’ was performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at Kenwood House and in 2011, he produced and composed songs for the audio version of ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ which featured performances by Andy Serkis, Celia Imrie, Simon Callow and Jonathan Pryce.

He is a prolific songwriter and continues to play with various bands in a variety of genres. Instruments: piano, bass guitar, slide guitar, percussion