For fifteen years, storytellers Mick Whysall and Dave Brookes have brought history to life. As The Woolly Tellers, their atmospheric performances whip up scenes of misty cobbled streets, mysterious highwaymen, fen giants and deals with the devil. We met them for a chat prior to their event Dark Tales for Dark Nights at the Fox and Grapes, and heard all about the tricks of their trade...
The best stories are those that you continue thinking about long after, and the first story I ever heard from The Woolly Tellers perform has stuck with me ever since. The evening was called A Very Victorian Murder and centred on the infamous case of William Saville - a local man sentenced for the murder of his family in 1844 - and the disastrous events that occurred after his trial and execution. Having painted a ghostly picture over the topography of the Lace Market, whenever I walk along High Pavement, past Shire Hall or the Cock and Hoop pub, I can’t help but imagine scenes of chaotic carriages and crowds, hungry for a hanging.
Today we are so bombarded with entertainment that it’s easy to forget how long the oral tradition of storytelling has been part of our culture, especially compared to the movies, paperbacks or podcasts that we take for granted. Stories are integral to our understanding of the world; they can drive emotion, causing laughter or shivers; they can shed light on overlooked things, highlight a connection to the land you live on, and narrow the space between the past and present. Whatever the message of a story, the act of telling them has been a trusty antidote to dark nights for centuries.
Mick and Dave, who together comprise The Woolly Tellers, met through The Nottingham Storytellers, a group who gathered at the Trip to Jerusalem to share tales and give advice around the craft. Deciding to work together, the pair realised that, while they enjoyed each other's technique, they came at the art with different approaches. “We don’t create stories the same way, we don’t rehearse the same way, and we definitely don’t perform the same way,” says Mick. “But we work really well together. We’ve been doing it for fifteen years and we haven’t come to blows yet.”
While Mick writes his own material and enjoys making up stories on the spot, Dave is “the scriber of the two”, and often uses traditional tales as a background. “We both use a lot of history. I’m a researcher - I have newspapers going back to the 1800s,” he says. “So once we’ve got something accurate and relevant, we create characters around it. Historical lectures can be a bit flat, but once you start putting human emotion in there, or tying it into a place, that’s when you can start creating tales.”
A decade and a half of spinning yarns later, The Woolly Tellers’ events include a range of themes, from local history, folklore and romance, to tales inspired by their upbringings, family memories or anecdotes from in-and-around Nottingham. Of the stories told at Dark Tales For Dark Nights, we are treated to some that take place just streets away from the pub we are in. Mick gives a short and poignant glimpse of his first kiss, on a cold night in mid-century Sneinton with a girl he’d never meet again, a memory with a universal softness that most can understand.
Was it true to life? Well, as Mick points out, a lot of what we think we know is rooted in fiction. “The person who has made us understand the Victorian world most is Dickens, and it’s all fiction. Fiction hits you hard and makes you care about the people,” he explains. “Real life is chaotic or boring - it doesn’t follow a clear sequence. So, if you've got a truth that you want to get across to an audience, you should construct something logical and understandable. You have to fictionalise a basic truth and then layer two or three truths on top of the other.”
It begins to feel as if time must have shifted outside of the pub. The pictures of a long gone era are painted so well that the cobbled passages and tightly packed tenements of Narrow Marsh must surely have re-emerged into our present
As the Dark Tales roll on, and the stories progress, it begins to feel as if time must have shifted outside of the pub. The pictures of a long gone era are painted so well that the cobbled passages and tightly packed tenements of Narrow Marsh must surely have re-emerged into our present. I can see women in draughty parlours finishing lacework by dusk and debt collectors’ faces shadowed by firelight in timeworn taverns. While many of their tales lean towards a darker nature, The Woolly Tellers’ stories are weaved with an understanding for the people from all walks of life, often with moments of humour and empathy.
Our conversation moves from these historic portraits of everyday people to how stories, folklore and traditions from different cultures have merged over the centuries. Their upcoming performance Christmas Tales takes a look into the spirit of the festive season, from the traditionally nostalgic to the association with Pagan festivals such as Saturnalia. Mick, who is a great lover of Christmas, assures me the tales are somewhat cheerier than their regular storytelling nights but no less compelling.
Whether heartwarming or harrowing, history is the centrepiece of each Woolly Tellers performance. I ask them what else they have coming up. “We’re working on something about resurrectionists - body snatchers,” Dave says. “It’s in the early stages, but we’ve got the bones of it.” I’m given a brief but detailed description of Nottingham’s own grim history of the practice, and once again I think that familiar spaces I often wander by will now be shrouded in stories of the past.
Christmas Tales takes place at The Fox & Grapes from 6.30pm on Sunday 8 December. Tickets are £10, including a hot buffet.
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