Isobel and Anna Hughes are a folk/spoken word duo whose work comes from trying to remember the things they knew when they were young. The simple things. Like Earth. Like Stories. Like Songs.
Their childhood was a lazy summer vigil in a Suffolk garden, counting apples and waiting for magic. It was there they began to tell each other stories. Because it seemed important, somehow.
Now, years later, in shorter days, they are still telling each other stories. It still seems important.
Their first project together, ‘A Great Fear of Shallow Living’, a storytelling and live music show in collaboration with In Tandem Theatre Company, premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2017, where it was the winner of the Infallibles Award. It has since been revived for the Fireside Festival and a run at Draper Hall in London in 2018.
Supported by Sage Gateshead, Mahogany Opera and Arts Council England, their newer project, A Place to Fall to Pieces, has just completed its UK tour.
Isobel Hughes is a London-based actor and writer. Her theatre credits include: Sherlock Holmes and the Speckled Band (York Treasurers’ House & Ripley Castle), The Importance of Being Earnest (Mansion House York) and The Witness for the Prosecution (York Guildhall and Leeds Council Chambers). She has also performed with The Gate, Theatre 503, New River Studios and Zoo Venues. Isobel is associate producer of Double Yay Productions, writing, developing, and producing scripted comedy for TV and online platforms. Their digital series ‘Nutritiously Nicola’ is now on YouTube and has been featured in Stylist, The Times and on BBC Breakfast.
Isobel trained as an actor at Drama Centre London (alumni include Michael Fassbender, Tom Hardy and Anne Marie Duff), where she fell in love with the simple beauty and raw drama of people’s inner lives. Through the study of Yat Malmgren’s Character Analysis technique she began to create scenarios for a single character on stage, which as her practice progressed became poetic storytelling, rhythmic monologues and surreal dialogue.
Isobel’s performance and writing is influenced heavily by instinct, the primitive things that we all know but have forgotten how to talk about. She is currently most interested in trying to find the sleeping things no one remembers, the magic of the old stories and the constancy of earth, buried beneath our brutal everyday existence.
Anna Hughes is a fiddle player, singer and composer based in Newcastle. She trained at Newcastle University in Folk and Traditional Music, with a year in Finland after being accepted to study at The Sibelius Academy, where she studied with some of the world’s leading folk musicians.
Intrigued by simplicity and beauty, Anna is committed to finding a personal relationship with folk music. Having lived in many places in the UK is intrinsically linked to her connection to traditional music - its ability to create a sense of home and belonging is something she seeks to incorporate into her work.
A founding member of the contemporary folk quartet Balter, Anna is regularly gigging around various UK venues and further afield.
Notable collaborations include her work with North East based neo-classical composer Benjamin Fitzgerald, song based duo Northering, and Holly Clarke, Sage Gateshead’s artist in residence 2019/2020, in collaboration on her headline Sage Two concert.
Other projects and musical collaborations have taken Anna to perform in venues such as Halsway Manor Hothouse Festival, Folklandia music festival, Helsinki/Tallinn and at The Finnish Literature Society, Helsinki.