INDIA'S most fearsome Goddess, Kali, will be brought to life in words and music in the York Theatre Royal Studio tomorrow by performance storyteller Emily Hennessey and British Asian sitarist Sheema Mukherjee at 7.45pm.

Over months and years, Hennessey and Mukherjee have delved deep into the stories that make up the Goddess and now they are ready to share what they have found in a new collaboration that combines the epic, the fairytale, the myth and Indian classical music in a "no-holds-barred introduction to a truly awe-inspiring deity".

Kali is one of the wildest shape-shifters among the many hundreds of Hindu gods. "Depending on who you ask, you might hear her described as a demon slayer, a life saver, a dismembered limb-festooned destroyer, the mother of creation, and the manifestation of time itself, and that's just for starters," says Hennessey. "To many, Kali is the most awesome Goddess there is … and also the most difficult to understand."

Emily Hennessey's work and extensive travels in India have kindled her great love of Hindu mythology. She has travelled more than 10,000 miles across India by train, bus, rattling rickshaw and rickety bicycle.

York Press:

Sitar player Sheema Mukherjee

She has lived and worked with a yak-herding family on the Tibetan plateau, studied Kathakali dance-drama in Kerala and spent several months at the Kattaikkuttu School in Tamil Nadu, learning from the children who perform stories from the Mahabharata through music, dance and song from the age of four.

Hennessey came to storytelling while studying drama and theatre at the University of Kent, where she met storyteller Dr Vayu Naidu. She completed a storytelling apprenticeship with Vayu, later trained with Ben Haggart and had the privilege of training with Indian Pandvani performer Ritu Verma too. Emily has since toured in India with the British Council and performed at the Delhi Storytelling Festival.

Sheema Mukherjee was brought up between Britain and India and studied sitar and Indian classical music under the tutelage of her uncle, the late Pandit Nikhil Banerjee, then with the late Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. She draws on this rich background in her own compositions and collaborations and regularly plays sitar and electric bass for Transglobal Underground.

Tickets for The Crick Crack Club's production of Kali cost £14 on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk