Blurring the boundaries of what a concert is, distinctive medieval group The Telling brings you intimate “concert-theatre” pieces to transport you back to the Middle Ages through ballads, music, poetry and story-telling.

The Telling has a growing reputation for intimate, staged concerts to bring medieval music off the page and reach wider audiences. We create a different concert experience, combining ballads and upbeat instrumental dances with narrative, readings or film. We often perform some numbers while moving around the audience and using lighting and/or candlelight.

A new show charts the secret life and love of the instinctively creative Countess Beatriz of Dia, as she channels dark personal experiences into impassioned song.

Clare Norburn & Ariane Prüssner voices / Joy Smith harp, percussion / Giles Lewin medieval fiddle / With Anna Demetriou as Beatriz / Nicholas Renton director /Natalie Rowland Lighting Designer

Friday 30 August –  19.30
Opus Theatre – 24 Cambridge Road – Hastings TN34 1D (Opposite ESK)
Tickets: £15, students £10, available below and at the door.

Michael Pennington, co-founder of the English Shakespeare Company, gives an astounding one-man performance, bringing the Bard of Stratford to life.

Michael Pennington is an Honorary Associate Artist of the RSC and co-founded the English Shakespeare Company with Michael Bogdanov. As well as many of the great classical parts (most recently King Lear in New York and the UK), he has appeared in leading roles in the plays of Ibsen, Chekhov and Pinter, John Osborne, Eduardo de Filippo, Howard Brenton, Tom Stoppard, Peter Shaffer, Alan Bennett, Joe Orton and David Mamet among others. Theatre includes: title roles in Hamlet, Timon of Athens and Hippolytus,  Berowne in Love’s Labour’s Lost, Angelo in Measure for Measure (RSC); Coriolanus, Macbeth, Richard II, Henry V and Leontes in The Winter’s Tale (ESC);Collaboration, Taking Sides, Archie Rice in The Entertainer, Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment (West End); Fabio in The Syndicate, Antony in Antony and Cleopatra, Solness in The Master Builder; Strider, Venice Preserv’d; and his solo shows Anton Chekhov and Sweet William (on Shakespeare).  In 2017 Michael Pennington was Dogsborough in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht at the Donmar Warehouse, and most recently played Isaak Jacobi in Fanny & Alexander at The Old Vic. Films include: Churchill at War, The Iron Lady. Television includes: Oedipus in Oedipus the King, Holmes in The Return of Sherlock Holmes, Endeavour.

Saturday 31 August –  19.30 to 22.30
Opus Theatre – 24 Cambridge Road – Hastings TN34 1DJ (opposite ESK)
Tickets: £15, students £10, available below and at the door.

Michael Pennington, co-founder of the English Shakespeare Company, gives an astounding one-man performance, bringing the Bard of Stratford to life.

Michael Pennington is an Honorary Associate Artist of the RSC and co-founded the English Shakespeare Company with Michael Bogdanov. As well as many of the great classical parts (most recently King Lear in New York and the UK), he has appeared in leading roles in the plays of Ibsen, Chekhov and Pinter, John Osborne, Eduardo de Filippo, Howard Brenton, Tom Stoppard, Peter Shaffer, Alan Bennett, Joe Orton and David Mamet among others. Theatre includes: title roles in Hamlet, Timon of Athens and Hippolytus,  Berowne in Love’s Labour’s Lost, Angelo in Measure for Measure (RSC); Coriolanus, Macbeth, Richard II, Henry V and Leontes in The Winter’s Tale (ESC);Collaboration, Taking Sides, Archie Rice in The Entertainer, Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment (West End); Fabio in The Syndicate, Antony in Antony and Cleopatra, Solness in The Master Builder; Strider, Venice Preserv’d; and his solo shows Anton Chekhov and Sweet William (on Shakespeare).  In 2017 Michael Pennington was Dogsborough in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht at the Donmar Warehouse, and most recently played Isaak Jacobi in Fanny & Alexander at The Old Vic. Films include: Churchill at War, The Iron Lady. Television includes: Oedipus in Oedipus the King, Holmes in The Return of Sherlock Holmes, Endeavour.

Saturday 31 August –  19.30 to 22.30
Opus Theatre – 24 Cambridge Road – Hastings TN34 1DJ (opposite ESK)
Tickets: £15, students £10, available below and at the door.