• A Weaver of Words, A Teller of Tales...

Fáilte chuig saol draíochta
an scéalaí Jack Lynch

While an actor gets the story from the words, the storyteller gets the words from the story, recreating the tale anew in the telling. Jack is rooted in the scéalaí tradition as explored by Eamon Kelly and John Campbell, having shared a stage with both. Over the years he has been a regular teller at Irish and international arts and storytelling festivals.

Jack giving a storytelling session at 'The Ark', Dublin

The Story of Mother Holla

Play Video

REVIEWS

IN DUBLIN

Tom Matthews

Jack Lynch continues to demonstrate that he is one of the best storytellers and comic actors that we have.

 

HOTPRESS

Review

A magical word of nods, winks and dry subtle witticisms … the match of anything for sheer imagination and vitality.

IN DUBLIN MAGAZINE

Review

Lynch has been, amongst others things, a master of shaggy-dog storytelling.

hakaya storytelling festival

Last September I returned to perform at the Hakaya Storytelling Festival in Jordan for the 4th time. In 2017 I had been introduced by my Egyptian friend Hassan El Garetly to the Palestinian storyteller and folklorist Hamza Aqrabawi. I immediately warmed to Hamza’s excited dedication to the oral art and to his commitment to folklore collecting in his occupied native community and his questions about all things Irish. Last year we had been billed to share a show in Aqaba. The Jordanian port city of Aqaba lies at the north of the Red Sea, a point where Jordan borders on (and is a stone’s-throw from) Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, three very contentious countries in today’s geopolitics…

Petra, Jordan

The highlight of my latest stint in Jordan was the chance to tell at the ancient site of Petra. I’d visited the ‘Rose City’ that is Petra during some down-time in 2012. 150 miles south of Jordan’s capital, Amman, it’s a UN World Heritage site and voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World (alongside the Taj Mahal and the Great Wall of China). Half built, half carved into towering rock walls of a gorge by the Nabataeans (first mentioned in 647 B.C.), an industrious Arab people who were in control of the frankincense trade routes, this rose-hued city is surrounded by cliff walls containing tombs and funerary vaults. This hidden wonderland was only ‘discovered’ by European explorers in 1812…

BLOG

Interview with Jack Lynch

On May 02, 2024

A version of the following interview appeared in “Storytelling and Theatre” by Michael Wilson (Palgrave Macmillan 2006), a study of contemporary professional storytelling in Britain and Ireland that seeks to situate it within a tradition of popular theatre practice that has its roots in the alternative theatre movement of the late 1960’s.     Jack
+ Read More

Paddy Lowry – An Appreciation

On May 14, 2014

Jack Lynch writes about the late Paddy Lowry (1919 – 2013). It was with great sadness that we heard of the recent passing of our honoured Tradition Bearer, Paddy Lowry. Paddy, from Forlaka, near Kinnitty, was one of the tellers featured in Nuala Hayes’ 2002 DVD Tales at the Crossroads. This was one of the
+ Read More