A Fondness for Melancholy

The Swanage Folk Festival

A Fringe Event

Julian Harrow and Peter John Cooper

The English folk tradition is shot through with a melancholic strand.  All English speakers experience melancholy because the language itself is melancholic.  It has a natural “dying fall” as Orsino says in Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”.  And besides, it rains a lot here, especially at the seaside where “It’s Filling the drains with disappointment; Relentlessly washing away The fun.”

“A Fondness for Melancholy” is a celebration of this most British of emotions.  Not sad, exactly, but tugging at the heart-strings. And we hope there may be a few rays of sunshine and twinkles of humour amongst the rain drops.

Julian Harrow is a performer, song writer, and artist whose work spans 50 years from clowning to performance art. Over the past decade he has performed solo on a tin can ukulele and with a variety of bands and groups in Southampton. His songs are described as "slightly amusing, world-weary reflections on love and death."

Peter John Cooper has made his career as a playwright, poet and theatre director.  He lived and worked in Swanage for over twenty years before he faded away to Bournemouth.  Peter was associated with the Mowlem (briefly as Manager) and later when he brought summer seasons there, most notably as part of UK tour of Captain Pugwash. A great deal of his poetry is based on his experiences of Swanage and he was well-known through the Swanage poetry scene.

Julian and Peter have worked together on all sorts of wacky projects over the past 50 years, from versions of Mummers Plays, as street theatre performers throughout the Uk and onward into tours of Holland with Attic Theatre.  More recently they teamed up to perform “Life and Death and Everything in Between” a bizarre event with actors and musicians that Peter wrote for the Bournemouth Emerging Arts festival. A studio version is available on line and as a podcast on Peter’s channel.