Nick Toczek - librettist

“This is my third and most ambitious collaboration with Malcolm Singer. Devising and developing the story, creating and scripting the characters, writing the lyrics and, finally, shaping and honing the whole thing has been challenging and thrilling. I can’t wait to see it in performance!”

Best-selling author, Nick Toczek, is a full-time professional writer and performer who currently works variously as a poet, magician, storyteller, puppeteer, novelist, stand-up comic, radio DJ, political researcher, creative writing tutor, journalist, librettist, advertising copy-writer, and political speech-writer.  He’s published more than three dozen books and has made more than 40,000 public appearances.  His poetry books alone have sold over three-quarters of a million copies.

As a writer in schools, he’s worked with pupils from around 5,000 schools.  He also performs at festivals and family events, in libraries and prisons, on radio and TV, in colleges and residential homes, in pubs, clubs and community centres.

He’s been visiting writer (in schools and the community) in China, France, Indonesia (Borneo, Sumatra, Bali and Java), Egypt, Kuwait, Cyprus, Italy, Malaysia, Singapore and Qatar. During 2010 he’ll be in Russia, Thailand, Jordan and Vietnam. He’s co-written a Babyshambles lyric (with Pete Doherty); has published a musical and a pantomime; recently released a retrospective rock album, and is currently recording a brand new one for release in 2010. For the past ten years, he’s presented his own weekly show on local radio. He’s had a poem used in an award-winning TV advert; was the featured writer in a BAFTA-nominated programme for schools; has recently guested on BBC Radio 7’s Big Toe Radio Show and BBC Radio 4’s Go For It! and on late-night discussion shows on BBC Radio 5. He’s also been employed as a contributing consultant on the BBC’s Digital Curriculum for schools.  He’s also a proliofic rock journalist, currently writing reviews and features for the UK music magazine, R2 (formerly known as Rock’n’Reel),

As well as gigging as a performer–poet and as a close-up and stage magician (for adults and/or for children), he regularly tours with his one-man show for families, Nick Toczek’s Million-Miles-An-Hour Show, which is a blend of his magic, poems, stories, puppets and comedy, with plenty of audience interaction and participation.  For adult audiences, he works as a poet, comic, magician, etc.

In ’98, The Dragons Cantata, composer Malcolm Singer’s setting of some of Nick’s dragon poems, was performed at London’s Royal Albert Hall with a full symphony orchestra and an 800-strong combined schools choir.  Perfect Pitch, their football cantata was premiered at The London Barbican in Jan. ’04.  In December ’05, Golden Apple published Dragons! The Musical, a play-script by Nick set around songs from the cantata. Their latest project, The Jailer’s Tale, is a commissioned political opera being premiered in London at The Arts Depot in Spring 2010, with further performances at The Royal Festival Halls and The Menuhin School in Surrey.

Nick, who’s a non-smoking vegetarian, is married with two children, lives in Bradford and buys far too much on ebay.

“A powerful writer who spins words into images with such seeming ease… He uses language in ways others can never hope to emulate” – U.S. Small Press Review.

“Toczek is bitter, disturbing and political.  His language gets harder and more effective with each publication.” – The Guardian.