Dauntless: Grace O'Malley, Pirate Queen with Debs Newbold

Event information

Award winning storyteller Debs Newbold gleefully delivers the boisterous, remarkable and inspirational story of her hero: Grainne ni Mhaille – Grace O’Malley – legendary Irish clan chief and queen of the sea.

Stowing away aboard her father’s ship aged 8, Grace became a 16th century force of nature. A multilingual, seafaring weapons expert, leader of 2000 men, rebel, politician, kingmaker and slayer, prodigious lover, avenging hero and notorious pirate. Best of all, she was real.

From the west of Ireland to the court of Elizabeth I, from wild youth to even wilder old age, Dauntless is an epic celebration of uproarious storytelling, high drama and one fascinating 16th century feminist. No knights in shining armour need apply.
Debs Newbold is a multi-award winning performance storyteller who creates fresh, playful work that gets deep under the skin.

Debs is one of the UK’s most highly acclaimed storytellers, a passionate and skilled performer with a gift for bringing the epic out of the everyday. She has made and performed work for the Royal Opera House, the BBC, Hay Festival, the RSC and the United Nations as well as Shakespeare's Globe where she has a long association. She also takes her work to theatres, festival stages and community spaces all over the world.

Debs’ work spans myth, legend and new writing and has seen her described as “a master of words and space” (Views From the Gods) and “sublime, a consummate performer” (Sam Lee). Her genre-defying collaborations with renowned director John Wright (Told by an Idiot) have helped re-define contemporary storytelling, resulting in two highly acclaimed shows; the award winning Lost In Blue, and Under Her Skin. Her one-woman re-tellings of Shakespeare’s tragedies have toured internationally and helped create an entire strand of storytelling work within Shakespeare’s Globe, where Debs has trained a whole company of new tellers.