Rap storyteller Jack Dean brings his family-friendly Viking show to Bristol

Jack Dean & Company is a disabled-led non-profit organisation, founded in 2020 by Exeter-based rap storyteller, poet and composer Jack Dean with a goal of helping to “tell stories of how things could be”.

In collaboration with multi-genre artists, the company makes work blurring the boundaries of spoken word, animation, original music composition and visual and audio performance.

Following up numerous previous touring shows Grandad and the Machine, Nuketown, Horace and the Yeti and Hero & Leander, Dean is bringing a Viking saga, Vinland, to Bristol’s Wardrobe Theatre on March 11.

The show tells the story of the Vikings’ final voyage to North America, blending real historical events with fantastical and mythical elements, and reimagining the tale of Erik the Red.

Dean shared with Bristol24/7 his enduring fascination with a very contemporary take on historical storytelling.

Vinland – photo: Ben Borley

Do you think we need myths and fables to feel rooted to our own history and culture?

“I suppose it very much depends on the myths, and on the culture. Myth is used colloquially to mean a falsehood, but in its more traditional sense it covers things we often think of as very real. Nations, borders and states are all myths. You cannot observe them empirically, but they live in our collective consciousness as stories we have told ourselves for a long time.

“A lot of my work looks at where myths and history overlap. The Norse sagas are a great example of this: they describe (probably) real dates, places and people, but also are littered with fantastical beasts and ghostly apparitions. For the Vikings, these things were inseparable, but mythmaking also happens with the histories we write today, and is a part of why British history is such an institutional battleground at the moment.

“When you start seeing the myths for what they are, you can get a little more agency in what myths you want to keep and which ones you’re better off without.”

Photo: Ben Borley

What first drew you the Vikings as a site for your own creative inspiration in Vinland?

“I’m always on the lookout for weird, lesser-known tales from history, and that the Vikings went to North America, nearly 500 years before Columbus, and that their expedition went so disastrously wrong, is fascinating to me.

“The Vikings were a terrifying and dominant force in Europe at the time, but to see them in this wild setting, vulnerable and completely out of their element, gives the chance to show them in a new light, and says something unexpectedly powerful about the hubris of colonialism.”

Haki running, from Jack Dean’s Vinland – illustration: Christopher Harrison

How do children and young people respond to spoken word and rap storytelling? Does it help them to absorb stories more readily?

“It helps that this show has animation throughout, meaning there’s a strong and exciting visual anchor to back up everything that’s being described. You could probably follow the whole story without hearing a word spoken. The lyrical storytelling approach we use is probably not for everyone though.

“I grew up on the Redwall books with their dense, poetic and often quite dark storytelling, so I try to make the stuff that nine-year-old me would have wanted to listen to, and hope that it connects with young audiences that have similar nerdy and bookish tendencies. I like to assume our audience can handle a bit of complexity and peril, something I think kids’ theatre shows don’t always have the courage to do.”

Illustration: Christopher Harrison

What most excites you about what you do?

“Friendship. I think when theatre does its job correctly, that’s the main and most important outcome.”

Which other historical periods might you like to delve into in future shows?

“I’m currently working on a show about the Exeter Book, an 11th-century Old English collection of riddles and poems, so I’m on a big Anglo-Saxon kick at the moment, which I suppose is technically the same period but different guys. One day I’d love to do something about the year 1848. If you don’t know about it, trust me, it was an absolute corker.”

Vinland (age recommendation 8+) is at The Wardrobe Theatre on March 11 at 2pm. Tickets are available at www.thewardrobetheatre.com.

Main photo: Christopher Harrison

Read more: Review: The Tap Dancing Mermaid, The Wardrobe Theatre – ‘An utterly enchanting, watery odyssey’

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