Since 1987 the Crick Crack Club has worked on identifying and supporting the best Performance Storytellers we can find. We value distinctive personality, strong performance style and intelligent repertoire. We seek out those who can really command a stage and can readily establish the vital rapport between audience and storyteller that lies at the heart of ‘Crick? Crack!’ storytelling.
Chirine El Ansary
Chirine is an Egyptian storyteller currently living and working in England. She trained and worked as an actress and dancer, appearing in many films and theatrical productions in Egypt before creating her first storytelling performance. Since 1996 Chirine has led Storytelling workshops across the globe, participated in numerous festivals and has recorded her stories. She has performed in Europe, USA and across the Arab world, specialising in delicious tellings of episodes from the Arabian Nights and stories drawn from ‘Kalila Wa Dimna’ and the ‘Masnawi of Jalal El-Din Rumi’. In 2005 she premiered her re-telling of the ‘Ben Hilali’ epic, (the first telling by a woman) in London’s Barbican Pit Theatre. During 2004/5 she also completed a Masters Degree in Performance at Goldsmith’s College in London. Chirine is fluent in Arabic, French and English.
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Jan Blake
Jan is one of Britain’s outstanding female storytellers, performing in theatres and festivals the length and breadth of Europe. She was born in Manchester to Jamaican parents. Inspired by recordings of 'Miss Lou' (Louise Bennett) she came to telling stories in 1986. She rapidly gained an international reputation for witty and exhilarating performances. She has a powerful singing voice and can seize any stage. Specialising in folktales from West Africa, North Africa, the Arab world and the Caribbean, her repertoire is full of tales of powerful women and her versions of Ananse’s exploits are definitive. In 2004 she took the American National Storytelling Festival at Jonesborough, Tennessee by storm. She has worked as an artist in residence at various theatres in England, developing particularly close links with the National Theatre (where she is the Consultant on Storytelling), the London Philharmonic Orchestra, The Deptford Albany, the Lyric theatre in Hammersmith and Battersea Arts Centre. She is closely involved with projects that will develop a new generation of British storytellers of African and Caribbean descent.
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Katy Cawkwell
Katy is one of the new generation of storytellers in the UK. She was introduced to storytelling by seeing the Company of Storytellers as a teenager. She started telling, while still studying Classics at Oxford in 1996 (where she also founded and ran an extremely successful storytelling club.) Katy has developed a repertoire of clear and powerful storytelling performances for both adult and family audiences, drawing especially on British and Norse traditions. She has performed in venues right across Britain, from telling a tale of Loki in a burial chamber on Anglesey, to condensing Wagner's entire Ring Cycle to 20 minutes at the Barbican!
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Sally Pomme Clayton
Sally Pomme Clayton has performed for adults and children since 1984 and is a founding member of The Company of Storytellers. From witty folktales to wild romances, she has a huge repertoire of stories drawn from all over the world. Many of her stories feature bold heroines. In 2005 she performed at: Seven Stories Centre for the Children's Book; The British Museum; The Barbican; Edinburgh International Book Festival; Bristol Old Vic; Ilkley Literature Festival, and 11 Downing Street... She regularly works with musicians performing alongside Welsh National Opera, London Sinfonietta, Chamber Domaine and Joglaresa. During 2005 she was a consultant for The British Library's Inside Story project. In 2004 she wrote and performed ‘Rama and Sita – Path of Flames’ with a group of Indian musicians for The Unicorn Children's Theatre, travelling to Sri Lanka to research the story. She was commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and Apples & Snakes to create ‘Lily at the Crossroads’ for WOMAD'04 with musician Janie Armour. And in 2003 they both created ‘The Tales of the Seven Princesses’ for Chichester Festival Theatre. Sally Pomme Clayton's performances combine poetic language, startling imagery and playful humour. She has been a featured artist in many European Storytelling Festivals and toured with The British Council to Spain, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Sweden and Portugal. She lectures on World oral traditions and creative writing at Middlesex University and Birkbeck College.
She has published several books. In 2001 she won a Performing Arts Lab award for playwrighting for young people, writing ‘Stardust’ for The Unicorn Children's Theatre. She was winner of the BBC ‘Write Out Loud’ award in 1997 for new writing for radio.
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The Company of Storytellers
In 1985 Ben Haggarty, Hugh Lupton and Sally Pomme Clayton formed the Company of Storytellers with a view to returning professional storytelling to adult audiences (until that point it had been perceived as an art-form primarily aimed at children).
For twelve years the Company toured Britain, running workshops, performing at Arts Centres and theatres, pioneering Rural Arts Touring, organising festivals, working in education and touring in Northern Europe. They were deeply involved with the National Oracy Project. Their work was instrumental in stimulating not only a national but also an international revival of interest in storytelling, and, through their workshops, they have inspired several subsequent generations of storytellers. Apart from their ‘Ladder to the Moon’ themed programmes of stories – both tailor-made and improvised – their formal performances included ‘The Three Snake Leaves’, an exploration of lesser known Grimm’s stories, commissioned by the South Bank Centre for their German Romantic Festival in 1994, and, in 1997, ‘I Become Part of It’, a conjectural mythology for Mesolithic Britain (commissioned by the Arts Council, Eastern Arts and East Midland Arts).
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Xanthe Gresham
Xanthe has been a full-time storyteller since 1995 collaborating closely with musician, Sherry Robinson, to create many memorable performances such as ‘Cuchulain’, ‘A Key to Eyelids’ and ‘Aphrodite and the Real Red Shoes’. Her style is very distinctive, highly kinaesthetic and delighting in the absurd and preposterous. She has been described as ‘The Aerial Artiste of the spoken word.’
She has worked extensively for The British Museum performing Epics from Iran, Iraq and Ireland, Native American Stories, and Stories for numerous exhibitions such as ‘The Magic of Persia’ and ‘Durer’. She works as a storyteller for Holland Park and The Chelsea Physic Garden and is Lecturer in Storytelling and Drama at the University of East London. She has performed in Festivals, schools and libraries in the UK, Ireland, France, Slovenia, Holland, Switzerland and New Zealand.
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Vergine Gulbenkian
Vergine’s family originate from Turkish Armenia. In 1994 she made a moving documentary film with Richard Eayrs about folk traditions in remote villages devastated by the 1992 earthquake and then devoted her time to studying Armenian oral tradition at Oxford University. She has been telling stories in public since 1993 and in recent years has been increasingly recognised for her very grounded, direct and clean style of telling. Her stories are full of charm and slightly arch humour. Armenian folk songs are an integral part of her performances.
Vergine currently directs a storytelling-based project with refugee and immigrant family learning groups in Oxfordshire. She has recently been combining science education with story, devising performances for the Pitt Rivers, Natural History, and History of Science Museums in Oxford.
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Ben Haggarty
A master of improvisation, Ben Haggarty is internationally respected for his playful and lively performances; for his knowledge of stories and diverse narrative traditions. He is one of the world’s shrewdest directors of storytellers and a much sought after teacher.
Ben has a working repertoire of over 250 folktales, wonder tales, epics and myths, which he tells to all kinds of audiences, in venues that have ranged from caves to the Carnegie Hall. Ben performs solo, with other storytellers, with musicians and other artists, and is one of the founding members of the Company of Storytellers. He has made field-trips to research epic singing traditions in Northern and Central India and in Central Asia. He is the British Council literature department’s special advisor on storytelling.
Ben has created numerous site-specific pieces and worked extensively with major organisations including (in the UK) English Heritage, Shakespeare’s Globe, English National Opera, The Barbican, and many museum’s including The British Museum, the Natural History Museum and the Museum of London. From 1999 – 2001, he was Britain’s first official ‘City Storyteller’, in Gloucester. His performances, including ‘Gilgamesh’, his version of ‘The Companion’ and his work on 'Blacksmith tales', have earned him international renown. Recent commissioned work includes ‘Beauty and the Beast’, ‘The Iron Man Kavad’, and ‘Frankenstein’.
Ben has featured as guest storyteller, representing Britain, in over 45 International Storytelling festivals in 23 countries. Since 2001 he has been the official storyteller for Yo Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble project, devising family concerts combining stories and music for performances to audiences of up to 10,000 people. Ben’s 20 year long commitment to the cause of International Storytelling was recently fêted at La Maison du Conte in Paris, where he devised a show alongside French master storyteller, Abbi Patrix entitled ‘Le Silence Existes’. Ben has been featured on numerous radio programmes and was a researcher and consultant for the selection of the stories for Jim Henson’s ‘Storyteller' series on C4. He was one of three storytellers featured in a 2 hour documentary on the global storytelling revival made by ARTE television in France.
In 2007 Ben was made Honorary Professor of Storytelling at Berlin's University of the Arts. Ben is the founder and Artistic Director of the Crick Crack Club and Project Director of the LCIS.
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Nick Hennessey
Brought up near Alderly Edge in Cheshire, Nick came first to instrumental music before discovering his singing voice through folk song and this led him to storytelling. Inspired by the model of the Celtic bards, he now combines these elements, accompanying himself on harp and whistle to deliver powerful, passionate performances of story and song. In 1999 he began work on performances of the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, and in 2000 became World Champion of Kalavala Rune Singing at the annual Finno-Ugric Festival in Espoo, Finland. His repertoire includes Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English legends and folk-tales.
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Hugh Lupton
Hugh Lupton’s interest in traditional music, in street theatre, in live poetry, and in myth, coupled with a degree in Education, resulted in him becoming a professional storyteller in 1981 (there were perhaps half a dozen in Britain at the time), working largely in schools.
In 1985 he formed the Company of Storytellers with Ben Haggarty and Sally Pomme Clayton, pioneering professional storytelling for adults. Hugh's style of storytelling is very distinctive, focussing on the crafted use of English language. Over the last ten years, Hugh has worked collaboratively with singer and composer Helen Chadwick, with violinist Chris Wood, with percussionist Rick Wilson, and with artist Liz McGowan, widening and challenging the possibilities of the form. His work with Daniel Morden on the Greek epics (The Iliad, the Odyssey and Metamorphoses) has received wide acclaim, and the duo has been awarded the 2005 Classical Association prize for ‘the most significant contribution to the public understanding of the classics’. Hugh Lupton’s annual weeklong workshops on Myth and Landscape (co-run with Eric Maddern) at the Ty Newydd writers centre in North Wales have explored much of the Anglo-Celtic mythological repertoire, and have inspired a generation of tellers.
He has toured Africa and South America for the British Council and regularly performs in Europe and the USA. He has published several collections of folk-tales including the award winning ‘Tales of Wisdom and Wonder’. He has appeared on radio and television (most recently Late Junction on Radio 3, Something Understood on Radio 4, King Arthur on the Discovery Channel and Beowulf for the Open University on BBC 2). He has continued with his involvement in education throughout his career.
In 2005 Hugh Lupton had work commissioned by the National Theatre and BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction. His song ‘One in a Million’ (co-written with Chris Wood) won the BBC 2 folk awards for ‘Original Song of the Year’ 2005.
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Christine Macmahon
Christine is the most recent addition to the Crick Crack Club's roster of regular performers. She is a regular teller at the popular ‘Tales at the Wharf’ Storytelling Club in Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire, which has been running for 11 years. She has a passion for English folktales. Drawing on her Lancashire childhood in the shadow of Pendle Hill (witch country if ever there was!), she combines dark and mysterious tales of strange births, bewitchment and revenge with deep Yorkshire humour to bring a robust approach to storytelling. Christine puts storytelling at the centre of her work with the youth offenders service.
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Pamela Marre
Pamela Marre has worked with stories in performance for over 35 years. She worked in experimental theatre as writer, performer and improviser and in mainstream theatre as a designer before coming to solo Performance Storytelling in 1987. She is primarily influenced by the Jewish storytelling that has been passed on orally, over the tea table, by successive generations of her family. These reflect their experiences coming to London’s East End in the early 1900’s. She has created a truly original form of storytelling, fusing history, folklore and myth with true-life stories to paint vivid portraits of Eastern European Jewish immigrant culture. She is now particularly known for creating programmes that fit a context or discuss a theme and for weaving stories into larger tapestries. She has devised many programmes for the Science Museum on subjects as diverse as ‘Digital technology’ and ‘Identity’, and found stories to accompany pictures and sculptures in galleries such as the Royal Academy and the Tate. She has woven fiction with the factual stories of Captains Cook and Bligh at the National Archive and, as Creative Researcher at the British Library, made a mediaeval text accessible to primary school children in York.
Since 2000 she has been part of the Education team at the Imperial War Museum, working regularly with the Holocaust Exhibition and creating programmes of storytelling on other topics in special exhibitions and events on several sites for all ages, from the very young to the very old.
She has broadcast stories on many BBC and Independent radio stations and has children’s stories and poetry currently available in collections by Scholastic Books, A & C Black, Pan Macmillan and Oxford University Press. Her writing for adults has appeared in a number of London newspapers, Buzz Magazine and the Jewish Quarterly.
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Daniel Morden
Daniel has been telling traditional stories for a living since 1989 and his craft has taken him around the world, from the Arctic to the Pacific to the Caribbean. He has an engaging manner, humorously and compassionately confronting serious existential questions. He works in a huge variety of situations, from educational projects for schools to public performances in arts centres and festivals. He regularly collaborates with the Education Departments of The Barbican Centre and The National Theatre. He has conceived and presented numerous documentaries on storytelling for BBC Radio Wales. His first book, ‘Weird Tales from the Storyteller’ was published in 2003, and his most recent is a children’s picture book, ‘So Hungry!’. His collaborations with Hugh Lupton exploring Greek myth are amongst the best examples of shared storytelling in Britain. Their retelling of The Iliad was awarded The Classical Association Prize in 2005.
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TUUP
Born in Guyana and raised in Acton, West London, Godfrey Duncan - TUUP (The Unorthodox, Unprecedented Preacher) - has been a professional storyteller since 1981, when he joined Ben Haggarty and Daisy Keable to form the West London Storytelling Unit. He is truly an elder of the storytelling revival in Britain. His style of total improvisation, fabulous capacity for mimicry and ear for a wild story is outstanding. He has a deeply sensitive spirit, which means that he can sometimes create very moving spontaneous poetry. He has travelled the world, telling stories all over Europe and in Northern and Southern Africa. He has performed in many countries in Asia and both North and South America in his role as a creative lyricist, poet, percussionist and vocalist with the highly influential dance music collective, Transglobal Underground.
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Cat Weatherill
Cat was born and raised in Liverpool, where her grandmother saw an angel, her uncle fell off the Liver Building and her grandfather donated his shirt buttons to Beatles’ fans. She now lives on the Welsh borders, near Hay on Wye.
Cat studied Drama at Hull University and has been a professional performer ever since. She has worked as an actor and a singer, and she incorporates this training into her storytelling. Cat is a physical teller with a distinctive theatrical style: elegant one moment, grotesque the next! Fast and funny, or bewitchingly still.
Cat performs at storytelling and literature festivals both in the UK and abroad. She has enjoyed many sell-out shows at The Guardian Hay Festival and appeared at the Barbican in London. Her international work includes the prestigious Festival d’Automne in Paris and the Graz Festival of Tales in Austria. She performs in arts centres, theatres, schools, castles, haunted houses, woods and libraries. Cat is a busy storyteller on the National Rural Touring circuit, regularly taking shows to village audiences across the UK.
Cat usually works as a solo performer, but she enjoys collaborating with fellow storytellers. Queen of the Planets, created with Daniel Morden, layers stories within stories. Her playful family show Sir Gawain and the Green Knight features Rob Soldat as the eponymous villain.
On television, Cat has appeared as a guest presenter on ‘Heart of the Country’. On radio she has contributed to Radio 3’s ‘The Verb’ and Radio 4’s popular children’s programme ‘Go4It’. She has also performed live on Radio 4’s ‘Front Row’. Cat works extensively within primary education and especially likes working with infants. Her first children’s novel, ‘Barkbelly’ was published by Puffin, in 2005. The sequel ‘Snowbone’ will follow in 2006, with a third novel, based on the Pied Piper, due for 2007.
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Robin Williamson
Robin Williamson, the composer of some of the most innovative music of the 60s and founder member of the Incredible String Band, has been a pioneering and defining force in contemporary acoustic music. In 1980 he decided to present himself consciously as a storyteller, releasing one of the greatest storytelling tapes of all times, ‘The Fisherman’s Son and the Gruagach of Tricks’ and since then he has become a legendary figure in British storytelling. He delivers his evenings of stories in a unique, seamless style accompanying himself on harp, guitar, whistle and many other instruments. His language is relished and his moods are many: he can play tunes and tell stories to make you weep, laugh, dance... and dream in peace.
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