Inclusive music-led performances for all: Interview with MishMash Productions

How did MishMash come about and what did you hope it would be when you first dreamed up the idea? 

The idea for MishMash came about when my own children were much smaller and I was looking for shows and performances to take them to. Whilst I was blown away by the quality of the theatre and dance on offer, I could never quite find a similar live music offer. So I applied for some research funding from Arts Council England and spent some time visiting and researching theatre, dance and music for children and young audiences. At the end of that period of research, MishMash and our approach of using elements of theatre practice to present live music was born. In terms of my hopes, I suppose I’d never imagined it could blossom quite like it has, I really just hoped to provide magical experiences of live music for new audiences. I think we’ve done that!

What do you think are the key ingredients to creating a performance that captures the imagination of children and young people?

For us, working with Western Classical music brings the added complexity that many of our audiences won’t be used to the sound worlds we have on offer and to counter this we want to create experiences where the audiences feel comfortable and connected to the musicians. We feel strongly that if audiences engage with the musicians and connect with them as human beings then they’re much more likely to embrace the new music we are presenting. For us memorising the music is a key part of that. And whilst it’s not common practice for Western Classical music to be memorised and this presents an additional challenge for the performers, by removing the music stands and giving the musicians the freedom to move around we can really build on that connection with audiences.

We also work closely with theatre directors and designers so that we stage and present our performances in such away that the visual presentation supports the audiences to listen and engage. Audiences often worry that they ‘won’t understand’ classical music and by presenting the music visually we are helping them to navigate around the different parts and instruments.

MishMash creates brand new performances, can you tell us about that process and the different people involved?

Our productions are all different and the process can vary. For example some of our shows, such as ‘Ruby’s Worry’ or ‘Strange Creatures’, are retellings of popular picture books where we are using the music to ‘tell’ the story. Other shows, such as ‘Fishing for Haiku’, start with the music. As musicians we get in a room together and play and listen to music and decide what really excites us and what we want to share, we then will often build a structure or a thread throughout the different pieces to create a kind of narrative to support what is in affect a ‘staged concert’. This was the approach with Fishing for Haiku. Joanna, Suzanne and Sophie (the Director) all suggested pieces of repertoire that they loved and then played around with stories to help them present the music to the audience.

The piece American Haiku by Paul Wiancko is at the centre of ‘Fishing for Haiku’ and has gifted us a wonderful structure for the piece… I won’t give any more away! We always try and bring in the right people to help us finesse our ideas and as well as our wonderful director Sophie Rivlin, we also worked with Designer Bryony McCombie-Smith and Physical Theatre specialist Tom Curzon to realise our aspirations for the piece.