SoundingThe Archive

The Emily Penrose Diaries

A polyphonic performance

17 October 2026
7pm
18 October 2026
1pm

Conway Hall · London

A polyphonic gig-theatre performance that turns a young woman’s 1887 diary into live song. Created, written and directed by Ilènia Cipollari Ganucci, presented as part of Bloomsbury Festival 2026 in collaboration with machinaloci space London.

About 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 through 1887 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 clàrsach, 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 brings together the threads of her practice: Mediterranean polyphony, medieval chant, archival voice practice and gig theatre.

Ilènia Cipollari Ganucci

Ilènia Cipollari Ganucci is the creative director, writer and musical director of Sounding the Archive, and performs within the ensemble. The work originated during her 2024–25 Arts Bursary at the British School at Athens.

She devised the text from Emily Penrose’s diary and leads the artistic vision of the work, from concept to staging. Alongside Oli Kitching, she directs the music, shaping the polyphonic arrangements with the ensemble, and sings at its centre.

The repertoire

Emily’s words are woven through a programme of songs spanning nine centuries and many languages, from medieval polyphony and sacred chant to traditional songs of the Mediterranean and beyond, alongside contemporary repertoire.

Some are prayers and invocations: a call to open the road ahead, a plea for mercy, a hymn written by a twelfth-century abbess. Others belong to everyday life, with songs of love and longing, of sisters by the sea, of leaving home for somewhere new. Together they mirror Emily’s year in Greece, a time of journeys, discovery and life far from home, gathering voices from many places into one room.

The company

Franziska Böhm
Photo: Louis Rémy

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

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
Photo: Akta Photography

Ilènia Cipollari Ganucci

Creative director · MD · 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

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
Photo: Yiannis Katsaris

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
Photo: Ivan Weiss

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 guestSunday 18 October

Anna McLuckie

Anna McLuckie

Clàrsach · 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.

Cultural consultant

Beatrice Tolúwalopẹ́ Anomah

Beatrice Tolúwalopẹ́ Anomah

Cultural consultant

Beatrice is a reparative justice, anti-black racism and liberation advocate. She is the founder & lead consultant of Radically Rooted, Rooted Spaces Initiative, and a multi-passionate community researcher, youth leader, public speaker, storyteller, creative, poet, cultural dancer, and vocalist.

Her Yoruba heritage and radical resistance to systemic oppression fuels her work centring truth, Black Joy, creative expression & cultural freedom as integral to liberation. She seeks to uncover African stories, ancestral wisdom and knowledge systems, and empower young people with the confidence to envision a better future.

For Sounding the Archive, Beatrice guides the ensemble’s work with a song rooted in the Yoruba tradition: its history, its language and its place in the performance.

Creative team

Creative director, writer, musical directorIlènia Cipollari Ganucci
Musical directorOli Kitching
Cultural consultantBeatrice Tolúwalopẹ́ Anomah
Photography and videoMartina Liberini

Partners

Sounding the Archive is presented in partnership with Bloomsbury Festival, Conway Hall and machinaloci space London.

About 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, Songs We Carry, follows on Saturday 31 October. Details and booking

Tickets · conwayhall.org.uk · bloomsburyfestival.org.uk


Pogdorica, Montenegro, 3-5 September 2026

I’m looking forward to returning to the Toolkit of Care network this September. My new participatory lecture-performance, Breathing Together: Voice, Care, and Collective Attunement, has been selected for the Toolkit of Care Conference: Vectors of Care in Experimental Arts in Podgorica, Montenegro. Building on my ongoing research into voice, care and embodied performance, the work explores collective sounding as a practice of attention, accessibility and relation. I’m also grateful to have been awarded a COST travel grant to support my participation. More info can be found here.

Upcoming: Presenting at Thinking Care Beyond the Visible in Athens

I am thrilled to share that I have been invited to present my work at Thinking Care Beyond the Visible, a 3-day international training school taking place in Athens from 12–14 June 2026. 

My attendance and research presentation are generously supported by a COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) scholarship.

Hosted by the critical arts and politics institute EIGHT/To ΟΧΤΩ , and organized by the international Toolkit of Care network, this intensive brings together a select group of international scholars, artists, and researchers to map out radical, intersectional creative practices of togetherness and care.

Though this is a closed-door training school for selected participants and academics, the outcomes of our presentations, unlearning circles, and co-created drawings and notes will be compiled into a digital, open-source zine published later this year. I am incredibly excited to contribute my work to this collaborative publication, and to bring these international dialogues back into my ongoing creative processes.

Now a Certified Intimacy Coordinator with IPA

I’m pleased to share that I am now a certified Intimacy Coordinator through the Intimacy Professionals Association (IPA). The training has strengthened my practice in consent, communication, choreography, and performer care across intimate processes for live performance and screen. It builds on my wider background as a performer, researcher, and facilitator working across embodiment, voice, and relational care.

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