Lenny Henry Joins Company For The Listening Space

Lenny Henry will join the company of actors taking part in The Listening Space – a special one off performance on 8 Nov, led by actor and theatre-maker Simon McBurney, composer Nitin Sawhney and pianist Cassie Yukawa. Henry will join a group of Britain’s foremost actors including Tom Hollander, Samuel West, Kathryn Hunter and Saskia Reeves in an evening of music and poetry - to help raise £10,000 for the restoration of the Nave in the church at the heart of St. Paul’s Steiner School, Islington.

They are joined by leading violinist Diana Yukawa and musicians Rebecca Allen and Christopher Allen.

With music, poetry and voices they have created an event that employs the numinous space and special atmosphere of the nineteenth-century Nave of St. Paul's Church. It will be an evening of creative quiet that we rarely have the opportunity for, in which the audience is invited to simply listen.

The texts for the evening are drawn from sources as varied as prose writers John Berger, Lydia Davis and Ian MacGilchrist, dramatists Lee Hall and Liz Lochead, poets Raymond Carver and Dylan Thomas as well as this year’s Forward Poetry prize winner, Kei Miller.

Music for the evening includes Bach, Shostakovich and Arvo Part, as well as Nitin Sawhney’s Sunset and other tracks from his 2014 Glanstonbury set.

Simon McBurney said: “Surrounded by more noise - actual, recorded, digital and internal - than at any time in history or prehistory, most of us, including myself, find it hard to hear anything. This evening addresses this need. It is a modest but passionate invitation – in the hall of St Paul’s School - to listen. To poetry, to music, to prose, to create a space, not only within ourselves, but for our children to hear and be heard. Which is what a school should surely be about.”

Design is by Anna Fleischle, with lighting by Paul Anderson, and sound design by Gareth Fry.

As well as providing sustenance for the spirit, the evening will be accompanied by exceptional food and wine provided by La Fromagerie, included within the price of the ticket.

Tickets cost £60 and all profits will go towards the restoration of the Nave of St. Paul’s Church.

St Paul's Steiner School, 1 St Paul's Road, London N1 2QH

8 November at 7.30pm

Bookings 0207 226 4454 or online.