hugh lupton & nick hennessey
Hugh Lupton and Nick Hennessey tell and sing their way deep into the secret, dappled heart of Sherwood Forest… and the ancient tradition of English dissent. This is a programme that gets to the root of the place that Robin Hood inhabits in our national imagination. Mischievous, poignant, radical…storytelling at its best.
Nick Hennessey is a singer, songwriter and storyteller and a dynamic and passionate performer. With a love for the traditional culture of the British Isles his craft draws together the note, the song and the spoken word into a unique and engaging style. As both a singer and storyteller, his interest is to bring out the song in the story and the story in the song, something that has taken him to West Russia in researching the epic songs of the Finno-Ugric people, and to Finland where he won the 2000 World Championships in ‘runo-laulu’ (epic-singing). He has recorded a story from Kalevala for BBC Radio 4, broadcast in November 2007.
In 2007 Nick was commissioned by the Plymouth Theatre Royal to write “The Crossroads”; a short play based on the ballad Tam Lin for the celebrated Playhouse Festival, which was subsequently performed at Plymouth, York Theatre Royal and Polka Children’s Theatre in London.
He has performed in venues as diverse as village halls, the South Bank and the Albert Hall and extensively at folk clubs and festivals, storytelling festivals and literature festivals throughout the UK. International visits have included Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Canada and two national tours of Japan with a forthcoming return tour to Finland planned for 2008.
Hugh Lupton’s interest in traditional music, in street theatre, in live poetry, and in myth, resulted in him becoming a professional storyteller in 1981 (there were perhaps half a dozen in Britain at the time). In 1985 he formed the Company of Storytellers with Ben Haggarty and Pomme Clayton with a view to taking storytelling to adult audiences. For twelve years the Company toured Britain, running workshops, performing at Arts Centres and theatres, organising festivals, and working in education. Their work was instrumental in stimulating a nation-wide revival of interest in storytelling.
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 described by the Independent as ‘Lucid and haunting… a book to treasure.’ He regularly appears on radio (most recently Late Junction and England in Ribbons on radio 3, Something Understood and Telling the World on radio 4).