Bloomsbury Festival:
Sounding the Archive: The Emily Penrose Diaries

Ilenia Cipollari weaves archival text with medieval and Mediterranean polyphony to investigate memory, erasure, and the living voice.

Developed during a research residency at the British School at Athens, this performance focuses on the 1887 diaries of Emily Penrose, investigating how women’s voices appear, disappear, and re-surface within institutional histories. Treating the voice as both archive and encounter, the piece is a minimalist, seated reading interwoven with vocal work. Archival fragments are braided together with Corsican and Epirote polyphonies, Italian songs of migration, and 12th-century chant by Hildegard von Bingen. Supported by the grounding drone of a shruti box, this trauma-aware work asks audiences to value presence over polish, creating a temporary commons for shared respiration and listening across time. Emily Penrose was an historian, academic, a principal of three colleges and instrumental in the University of Oxford’s admission of women in the 1920s.
This event is part of Bloomsbury Festival 2026.

Age Recommendation:

All ages. Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult.

Price:

*A £2 venue levy is applied to each ticket purchased. This levy helps to support us in covering the costs of keeping our grade II listed building running and our doors open.*

Supporter £20 • Standard £12 • Living Support £6 • Student £6     (+ £2 venue levy)

Access Information:

This event is in the Main Hall, which is located on the ground floor. The balcony is accessible only by stairs.

All the ground-floor rooms are accessible by wheelchair. Main Hall (street access, step-free), Brockway Room (street access, step-free), Russell Room (street access, shallow ramp), Cafe (street access, step-free). There is also an accessible toilet on the ground floor opposite the Brockway Room.