Thursday, 11 July 2024 saw us present a unique press event at Jovoy Mayfair, London. And, we’re utterly delighted with the performance by the cast of professional actors and that a great time was had by all who attended.
The event premiered the first-ever staged reading of a script that’s included in our presentation box, in this case the script for Peach's Revenge.
SARAH BAKER is first and foremost about telling stories through the medium of scent. Part of this concept draws on Sarah’s practice as an artist: each presentation box contains an original mini film script created by Sarah Baker Studios telling the story about the fragrance.
The July event at Jovoy Mayfair to celebrate the overwhelming positive response to Peach’s Revenge Extrait de Parfum offered the ideal opportunity to bring one of these scripts—the script for Peach’s Revenge—to life in keeping with Sarah’s artistic practice that takes in film and performance.
We pulled out all the stops, casting professional actors to stage a rehearsed reading of the script and even themed the catering around the notes of the fragrance; white peach Bellinis and exquisite apricot cupcakes from Violet, the East End bakery that has created cakes for royal weddings.
As the invited guests were welcomed with a chilled refreshment, the sense of anticipation was palpable. Everyone was offered a Playbill and scent strips spritzed with Peach’s Revenge by the actors as they mingled with the crowd, heading to the front on a mission. Then the performance began.
The Peach’s Revenge script was created specifically for the fragrance in 2024, the 12th script created by Sarah Baker Studios. It is inspired by Renaissance revenge dramas, reimagined in miniature with a contemporary setting and a nod to TV drama. As with many of the surviving original plays, the romance and Machiavellian mindset of Italy are the pull for this darkly comic tale that plays out in a sun drenched peach orchard in Calabria.
The Peach's Revenge Staged Reading
The dastardly tale of Peach’s Revenge was beautifully presented to the appreciative audience in a staged reading that was heightened by especially created music and sound design.
And what performers they were; actors of the top calibre.
CAST (alphabetical):
Dylan Corbett-Bader as Mauro
Katarina Fuller as Gaia
Joseph Kloska as Narrator
Katie Puckrik as Cressida
PERFUMER: Chris Maurice
DRAMATURG: Ken Pratt
MUSIC: Adam Lieber
RECORDIST: Jacopo Scutti
The Actors (alphabetical)
Dylan Corbett-Bader is a British screen and stage actor, perhaps best known for his recent screen roles in A Haunting in Venice, The Tattooist of Auschwitz and We Were the Lucky Ones. His stage credits, among numerous others, include Common: A Trilogy at the National Theatre Studio and King Lear, directed by Kenneth Branagh. He also worked with Sarah Baker on a previous scented script reading Silent Killer: New Deadly Scent by Impirio Rosso performed at the Institute for Art and Olfaction Experimental Scent Summit V.2.
German-American Katarina Fuller is a recent graduate of East 15 Acting School. Her theatre acting credits include Choosing Children, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and The Antipodes. As an associate director, she has worked on Leaves of Glass and Miss Julie.
Joseph Kloska is a British stage, TV, voice and film actor. His screen credits include Treason, The Crown, Peterloo and The Riot Club. On stage, among numerous roles, he performed in a number of productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company and more recently in a touring production of Richard III. He (and Dylan Corbett-Bader) will appear in a production of King Lear in NYC for the 2024 fall/winter season.
Long based in the UK, American multi-talent Katie Puckrik is widely known for her work as a presenter on ratings-grabbing UK pop and lifestyle TV programmes capturing the zeitgeist. Her other credits as a performer are equally impressive, from dancing with Michael Clark’s avant-garde company to acting in TV sitcom; writing for The Guardian or frequent appearances as a BBC radio presenter and reporter. Furthermore, Katie was one of the pioneers of online fragrance reviewing with her hugely successful Katie Puckrik Smells YouTube channel that effectively defined the genre.
Sarah Baker, Scent and Performance
This project is effectively the evolution of Sarah’s established art practice deploying live performance of scripts or texts.
For example, in 2013 Sarah developed a project Live-Studio-Audience at the National Theatre Studio that used workshopping to culminate in Rocco Rosso Riche: Live at National Theatre Studio, a performance filmed in front of a live studio audience; a darkly comic tale about Luccia Rosso, the ruthless fictional CEO of an equally fictional luxury fashion brand created by Sarah. It marked Sarah’s first use of scent in a performance—the story was a torrid tale about the fictional fashion house Impirio Rosso releasing its first perfume. A subsequent iteration The Silent Killer: New Deadly Scent by Impirio Rosso was created for Institute for Art and Olfaction Experimental Scent Summit V.2 later that year. Live performance has always played an important part in Sarah’s work, whether a rehearsed reading from a Jackie Collins novel or the multimedia soap opera Our Time created during residency at Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, Buffalo, N.Y. (2012).
Special Thanks
Special thanks to François Hénin for supporting our brand and to Sarah Colton for helping me crash the meeting. Special thanks to Orquidea Sanchez and the team at Jovoy Mayfair. Special thanks to Andy, Aleks, Megan, and Evie for working hard behind the scenes.
And, of course, a special thanks to all of you who attended and made it a magical night. Enjoy this gallery of candid photos by photographer Christa Holka.
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