Sounding the Archive: The Emily Penrose Diaries
Sounding the Archive: The Emily Penrose Diaries is a polyphonic gig-theatre performance that turns a young woman's 1887 diary into live song. Created, written and directed by Ilènia Cipollari Ganucci, it comes to Conway Hall for two performances as part of Bloomsbury Festival 2026, on Saturday 17 October at 7pm and Sunday 18 October at 1pm, in collaboration with machinaloci space London.
The work
In November 1886, Emily Penrose arrived in Athens with her family. Her father, the architect Francis Penrose, had just become the first Director of the British School at Athens, and for the next year Emily kept a daily diary of life in the new School and the city around it: calls and dinners, visits to the Acropolis, journeys to Mycenae, Delphi and Penteli. She went on to become one of the great figures of women's higher education, as principal of Bedford College, Royal Holloway and Somerville College, Oxford. Her diary is now held in the archive of the British School at Athens.
Sounding the Archive listens to that diary with the voice. Six singers, joined by flute, violin, and harp, carry Emily's entries off the page and into the room, weaving her words through polyphony, chant and song. The archive becomes something you hear and feel as well as read: a private record of 1887 returned to life as shared, embodied sound.
The work grew from Ilènia's 2024–25 British School at Athens Arts Bursary, and it brings together the threads of her practice: Mediterranean polyphony, medieval chant, archival voice practice and gig theatre.
Ilènia Cipollari Ganucci: creative director, MD, writer and performer
Ilènia leads Sounding the Archive across every part of its making. As creative director, she shapes the concept, staging and overall vision of the work. As writer, she has drawn the text from Emily Penrose's diary, selecting and arranging her entries into a sung and spoken score. As musical director, a role she shares with Oli Kitching, she leads the ensemble's vocal work, building the polyphonic textures that give the diary its voice. And as a performer, she sings at the heart of the ensemble.
The company
Franziska Böhm
Voice, flute
Franziska Böhm (she/her) is a German-born, London-based artist, researcher and librarian, working across dance, music, academia and hospitality. Continuously saying no to prescribed capitalist pathways of life has made her realise her values around slowing down, sensing, trusting and collaboration. This has led her to study and investigate modalities such as Skinner Releasing Technique and other movement practices for their capacity to help us sense into ourselves, each other, the environment and beyond. She is particularly interested in politicised somatics, exploring how we can apply these modalities to intentionally cultivate power in ourselves, in our communities and how doing the repair work can allow us to choose living our lives soulfully and experience collective transformation.
Olivia Carstairs
Voice
Olivia Carstairs grew up in Dorset before moving to London to study at the Royal College of Music. Since graduating, she has performed across opera, concert and choral repertoire.
Her operatic credits include Amelfa in Rimsky-Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel with Orchestra VOX and chorus with Hurn Court Opera La bohème, Don Pasquale, Dido and Aeneas and Acis and Galatea. Olivia was also a vocalist with the Thursford Christmas Spectacular and has performed with the Philharmonia Chorus in The Lord of the Rings at the Royal Albert Hall and Verdi's Requiem at the Royal Festival Hall. Her other credits include Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance with the Boston Park Summer Season and she looks forward to joining Hampstead Garden Opera this autumn for Bellini's La Sonnambula.
Ilènia Cipollari Ganucci
Creative director, musical director, writer, voice
Ilenia Cipollari (she/her) is an Italian-British vocalist, actor and performance-maker working across performance art, theatre and film, with screen credits for Sky and Netflix. From 2023 to 2025 she sang with Idrîsî Ensemble, reviving rare medieval repertoire through music archaeology, and from 2019 to 2024 she performed with the Musarc choir collective. As an associate artist of Song of the Goat Theatre, she collaborated with Corsican polyphonic ensemble A Filetta, Sona Jobarteh and Anna Maria Jopek.
She has performed at Bold Tendencies, London Contemporary Music Festival, Yale Repertory Theatre, Tbilisi International Theatre Festival, Battersea Arts Centre and Edinburgh Fringe. A practice-research doctoral candidate at University of the Arts London, she explores care in performance and live music, and is a trained Intimacy Coordinator. She is the creative director, writer and musical director of Sounding the Archive, which grew from her 2024–25 British School at Athens Arts Bursary.
Kirsty Ferguson-Lewis
Voice
Kirsty Ferguson-Lewis is a singer, composer, producer and performer from London who explores the feminine voice and composition through the lens of mythology. Her most recent achievement is the 2025 contemporary mini-opera Sirena, which she composed, staged and produced for a week-long run at The Glitch in Waterloo and released as her debut album.
Kirsty has performed at the ICA, Café OTO, Lisson Gallery, Vortex Jazz Club, Bold Tendencies, Camden Arts Centre, Sir John Soane's Museum, HCMF, Time of Music Festival (Finland) and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 6 Music, BBC Introducing and Resonance FM. She is also a member of Musarc experimental choir and improvisation ensemble Orchestra New.
Kirsty holds a master's degree with distinction from Goldsmiths, University of London in Music, Creative Practice and a Bachelor of Music from Goldsmiths. She is currently recording her latest work, Echo, for solo voice, piano, violin, flute and electronics, based on the story of Echo and Narcissus from Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Oli Kitching
Musical director, voice
Oli Kitching is a conductor, singer and facilitator whose work is driven by social values and a commitment to cross-genre performance. Oli is Musical Director of Musarc, a leading experimental contemporary choir based in London whose practice encompasses choral forces with performance art and artistic vision. With Musarc, they conducted a debut album of the work of Heleen Van Haegenborgh released by SN Variations and will record another album in early 2027.
Oli is conductor for the Cambiata Girls Choir for London Youth Choirs and returned this year to Bold Tendencies to conduct in Oliver Leith's Garland. Oli is a facilitator for the Irene Taylor Trust leading songwriting projects in prisons. Their facilitation work encompasses collaborations with Tate Britain, The Hallé, RSNO Chorus, English Touring Opera, Northern Baroque and Hoot Creative. Alongside this work, Oli is training in psychotherapy, which shapes a relational approach to music making and leadership.
Olga Orlanda Quinn
Voice, violin
Olga Orlanda Quinn (formerly Olga Kunicka) is a Polish actor, singer, musician and writer. She holds a Master's degree in violin from the Music Academy in Wrocław, Poland, where she also studied singing and drama at the Capitol Music Theatre, before continuing her acting training in London.
She was a member of the acclaimed Song of the Goat Theatre, performing across Europe, the UK, Asia and North America in productions including The Cherry Orchard, Hamlet, King Lear and Return to the Voice. She also performed at major Belgian venues including LOD, Het Paleis and NTGent, and appeared in the television series Roomies.
As a musician, she participated in projects spanning classical, contemporary and folk music, performing with artists including Montserrat Caballé, Andrea Bocelli, José Carreras and Electric Light Orchestra. She also composed and worked as a studio musician for film and theatre, collaborating with Leszek Możdżer and Łukasz Wójcik-Zawierucha. Olga develops original work across acting, writing, producing and composition.
Special guest: Sunday 18 October
Anna McLuckie
Harp, voice
Anna McLuckie is a Scottish singer, songwriter and Clàrsach player. Raised on classical and traditional music, Anna's writing draws on her musical beginnings and also takes influence from her love of popular music and more experimental sounds. Her music sits in a world of contemporary folklore; her songs layered with interweaving harmonies, story-led lyricism and free-form structures.
Creative team
Role
Creative director, writer, musical director
Ilènia Cipollari Ganucci
Musical director
Oli Kitching
Artistic mentor
Carol Mancke
Archival sound
Jowan Collier
Videography and photography
Martina Liberini
Partners
Bloomsbury Festival, Conway Hall
In collaboration with machinaloci space
machinaloci space London is a place for seriously playful research into alternative ways of being, thinking and doing together: through art making, written and spoken word, movement, conversation, sounding, singing, cooking and storytelling.
Its name joins machina, a device, with loci, a place. The space sets out to discover and activate the possibilities of its place, situation and time, and to test forms of exchange that work, as far as possible, outside commercial frameworks.
At its heart is rehearsal: practising, circling back, looping and repeating together until a web of relations grows strong enough to carry ideas into public life. The ensemble rehearses Sounding the Archive at machinaloci space, and the work shares its spirit: made by returning again and again to the same pages until they sing.
Dates and tickets
Saturday 17 October 2026, 7pm
Sunday 18 October 2026, 1pm, with special guest Anna McLuckie
Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL. Part of Bloomsbury Festival 2026.
A free public workshop follows on Saturday 7 November. Details to be announced.
Tickets are available from Conway Hall and Bloomsbury Festival.