Please note that this event will begin at 8pm sharp.

THE DIMBOLA MIKADO
Theatre of Quarantine Online Intermedia Spectacular
by Gilbert, Sullivan & Ergo Phizmiz

Performed by
Anne Jamieson, Lottie Depresstival Bowater, Elvis Herod, David Landau, Zelda Violet Star, Lydia Beardmore, Caterina Robertson, Nayana Dickinson, Talulah Robertson, and Cantando Female Voice Choir.

"To make our new utopia efficient, clean and viable, it is necessary to harbour a culture that is experimental in a fundamental sense."

Join Ergo Phizmiz and Friends in an hallucinogenic, uncategorisable work of intermedia art, which uses Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado as a springboard for investigations and conjectures about art past, present and, most vitally, future. Taking a heads up from the great Polish avant-garde artist Stefan Themerson and his idea of “semantic opera” – opera where the focus is on comprehensions of words, not music – The Dimbola Mikado is an immense patchwork of themes, ideas, possibilities and conversations across the strange lines that tie together our histories.

Originally intended as a theatrical performance and exhibition, to be presented in Dimbola Lodge - former home of Victorian photographic pioneer Julia Margaret Cameron - the Coronavirus lockdown led our erstwhile artistic explorers into reimagining the work in a quarantined world, with all actors performing their parts from their respective isolations. The entirety of the recording, composition and production of this piece took place during the early months of lockdown, in an attempt to create a genuine "Theatre of Quarantine" - not a film, but a unique multimedia artwork related to opera, installation, meme culture, radio, and documentary.