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 performs at The Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray
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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…
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, 2024A 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
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Bawdy Béaloideas
On February 05, 2021Jack Lynch writes: I thought that in lockdown I might attempt to cheer us all up by delving into the always popular subject of bawdy tales. I’ve been returning to the writings of Randolf Vance (1892–1980), a folklorist who collected widely and published 18 books of the oral folklore and folksongs he recorded from adults
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