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Rebecca Hurst

Writer, opera maker, workshop facilitator

About

Rebecca Hurst is a writer, opera-maker, and illustrator, and co-founder of the Voicings Collective. Born in East Sussex, and for 13 years a resident of the US, she now lives in Greater Manchester. In 2021 a selection of her poems were published in the Carcanet anthology, New Poetries VIII, and she is the author of a poetry pamphlet, The Fox's Wedding (The Emma Press, 2022).

Rebecca has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Manchester, and an MA in Creative Writing for Personal Development from the University of Sussex. As an undergraduate she attended Smith College, in Massachusetts. She teaches creative writing in museums, schools, and the community.

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Voicings Collective, Rough for Opera, October 2017

Opera Making

In 2014-15, Rebecca was a visiting student on the MA in Opera Making at the Guildhall, working with the composer Oliver Christophe Leith. Their chamber opera, Isabella, premiered on 8 July 2015, with subsequent performances at the Royal Opera House (London) and the Liszt Academy (Budapest).
Other staged works include Tatort: Märchenland (2015), a fairy-tale detective story co-written with Stephen Plaice for the Munich Radio Orchestra, and Robin Hood: an Opera in Three Courses (London, 2019), co-written with Zoe Palmer and in collaboration with the composer Dani Howard. Voicings' digital docu-opera, Walk Out of Yourself, created during the global coronavirus pandemic, was streamed on OperaVision.eu in August 2020.

Forthcoming new work includes The Gardener (23 April 2022), a song cycle written with composer Lucy Armstrong for the Salford Choral Society; The Goodwin Sands (4 July 2022), commissioned by the Deal Festival of Music and Arts, and written with composer Michael Betteridge; Stay as Long as You Like, a choral work about friendship, also written with Michael Betteridge for the Greater Manchester-based choirs The Sunday Boys and Meraki (July 2022); and Looking West (July/August 2022), a cantata written with composer Julian Philips and co-commissioned by the Presteigne Festival, Wales and Yorkshire's Rydale Festival.
The chamber opera, Music and the Brain, inspired by the writing of the neurologist Olivers Sachs, premiered at the Demetz Academy Hall, Reykjavík, in October 2021. Further performances are planned for August 2022, at the Nordic Song Festival, Sweden, and September 2022, at the Tête à Tête opera festival, London.

Rebecca is a founder member of the Voicings Collective: an Arts Council England funded ensemble creating exploratory choral theatre.

Workshops & Residencies

As a workshop facilitator Rebecca has taught adults and young people, working in partnership with schools, museums and universities, as well as within the wider community. She lectures and leads workshops on writing, poetry, fairy tales and folklore, place writing, and creative collaboration. Rebecca has taught poetry workshops at the University of Manchester and was external examiner on the Guildhall College of Music and Drama's MA in Opera Making from 2018-2021. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at the John Rylands Library, Manchester Museum, and Bexhill Museum.

Currently Rebecca is teaching Writing for Wellbeing workshops at the University of Manchester Business School, and for NHS staff through Lime Art Trust.

Contact Rebecca

07729 628427

rlhurst70@gmail.com