Owning Our Voices: Vocal Discovery in the Wolfsohn-Hart Tradition 9780367133221, 9780367133214, 9780429025877

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OWNING OUR VOICES

Owning Our Voices offers a unique, first-hand account of working within the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition of extended voice work by Margaret Pikes, an acclaimed voice teacher and founder member of the Roy Hart Theatre. This dynamic publication fuses Pikes’ personal account of her own vocal journey as a woman within this, at times, male-dominated tradition, alongside an overview of her particular pedagogical approach to voice work, and is accompanied by digital footage of Pikes at work in the studio with artist-collaborators and written descriptions of scenarios for teaching. For the first time, Margaret Pikes’ uniquely holistic approach to developing the expressive voice through sounding, speech, song and movement has been documented in text and on film, offering readers an introduction to both the philosophy and the practice of Wolfsohn-Hart voice work. Owning Our Voices is a vital book for scholars and students of voice studies and practitioners of vocal performance: it represents a synthesis of a life’s work exploring the expressive potential of the human voice, illuminating an important lineage of vocal training, which remains influential to this day. Margaret Pikes is a founding member of the Roy Hart Theatre who trained with Roy Hart and participated in all of the Roy Hart Theatre’s early experimental performances. She has been teaching  the Wolfsohn-Hart approach to vocal expression internationally for more than 50 years and regularly leads workshops in the UK, France and Germany. Patrick Campbell is Senior Lecturer in Drama and Contemporary Performance at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is a core member of Cross Pollination, an expanded, nomadic laboratory for the dialogue in-between practices, and is Associate Editor of the Brazilian Journal on Presence Studies.

Routledge Voice Studies Series editors: Konstantinos Thomaidis and Ben MacPherson

The Routledge Voice Studies series offers a platform for rigorous discussion of voice across disciplines, practices and areas of interest. This series aims to facilitate the dissemination and cross-fertilisation of voice-related research to effectively generate new knowledge and fresh critical insights on voice, vocality and voicing. Composing for Voice A Guide for Composers, Singers, and Teachers Paul Barker Voice Studies Critical Approaches to Process, Performance and Experience Konstantinos Thomaidis and Ben Macpherson Training Actors’ Voices Towards an Intercultural/Interdisciplinary Approach Tara McAllister-Viel The Performative Power of Vocality Virginie Magnat Beethoven and the Lyric Impulse Essays on Beethoven Song Amanda Glauert Somatic Voices in Performance Research and Beyond Christina Kapadocha Owning Our Voices Vocal Discovery in the Wolfsohn-Hart Tradition Margaret Pikes and Patrick Campbell www.routledge.com/Routledge-Voice-Studies/book-series/RVS The Routledge Voice Studies series website can be found here: www.routledge textbooks.com/textbooks/routledgevoicestudies/

OWNING OUR VOICES Vocal Discovery in the WolfsohnHart Tradition

Margaret Pikes and Patrick Campbell

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Margaret Pikes and Patrick Campbell The right of Margaret Pikes and Patrick Campbell to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Pikes, Margaret, author. | Campbell, Patrick, author. Title: Owning our voices : vocal discovery in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition / Margaret Pikes and Patrick Campbell. Description: New York : Taylor & Francis, 2021. | Series: Routledge voice studies | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020038050 (print) | LCCN 2020038051 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367133221 (paperback) | ISBN 9780367133214 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429025877 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Acting. | Voice culture. | Wolfsohn, Alfred, 1896–1962. | Hart, Roy, 1926–1975. | Singing—Instruction and study. Classification: LCC PN2071.S65 P55 2021 (print) | LCC PN2071.S65 (ebook) | DDC 792.082—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038050 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038051 ISBN: 978-0-367-13321-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-13322-1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-02587-7 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC Visit the companion website: www.routledge.com/cw/pikes

Dedicated to Peter Hein, ‘Jede Jek is anders.’

CONTENTS

List of figures Acknowledgements Series foreword Prologue Introduction Patrick Campbell PART 1

Why ‘owning our voices’? Margaret Pikes Feminist approaches to autobiography – a preface to Part 1 Patrick Campbell 1 Early life Margaret Pikes 2 A conscious family: voice work at The Studio and Abraxas Club with Roy Hart Margaret Pikes 3 The private becomes public Margaret Pikes

x xi xiii xv 1

15 17 22

31 46

viii Contents

  4 Life after death: Malérargues Margaret Pikes

54

  5 Leaving Malérargues and growing independence Margaret Pikes

67

  6 Some reflections Margaret Pikes

76

PART 2

Methodology93 Margaret Pikes

Preface to methodology Patrick Campbell



The pre-verbal voice – a preface Patrick Campbell

95 102

  7 The pre-verbal voice Margaret Pikes

106



117

Freeing the voice – a preface Patrick Campbell

  8 Freeing the voice Margaret Pikes

121



131

The role of the teacher – a preface Patrick Campbell

  9 The role of the teacher Margaret Pikes

135



141

Connecting head to body – a preface Patrick Campbell

10 Connecting head to body – the importance of movement Margaret Pikes

145

Contents  ix



Group work – a preface Patrick Campbell

154

11 Group work Margaret Pikes

157



165

Working with song – a preface Patrick Campbell

12 Working with song Margaret Pikes

169



174

Conclusion: Owning our voices – a pluriphony Patrick Campbell

Epilogue: a dialogue 196 Index197

FIGURES

6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5

Margaret Pikes, first year at grammar school  Vivienne Young and Roy Hart (1974) Roy Hart in rehearsal at the Abraxas Club (circa 1969) Roy Hart Theatre: And (1972) ‘The Magic Chord’ Roy Hart Theatre: And (1972) ‘Beauty and the Beast’ with Vivienne Young centre stage 6.6 Roy Hart Theatre La Tempête (1976). Playing the three goddesses centre stage (from left to right: Pascale Ben, Liza Mayer and Margaret Pikes) 6.7 Postcard from Samuel Beckett to Boris Moore with congratulations for Beckett de Trois Côtés (1986)  6.8 Envelope with Beckett’s handwriting (1986) 6.9 Margaret Pikes in Canto General (1983) 6.10 Margaret Pikes in Voyages (1992) 6.11 Margaret Pikes in Lomé singing with Anima (1998) 6.12 Margaret Pikes teaching a group (2017)

87 87 88 88 89

89 90 90 91 91 92 92

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to thank Noah Pikes for all his work documenting the history of the Roy Hart Theatre in his book DARK VOICES: The Genesis of Roy Hart Theatre (now available in its third edition.) We would also like to thank the contributing artists Neil Paris, Kate Hilder, Sam Frankie Fox and Yuri Birte Anderson, who so generously and creatively participated in the filmed footage that accompanies this publication. Many thanks also to Sam Heitzman and Evan Wilson for their professional and sensitive work on the filming. We are very grateful to Manchester Metropolitan University for their financial support not only with this recording but for the overall project of this book. We would especially like to thank Amanda Ravetz, Jane Turner and John Deeney, colleagues at Manchester Metropolitan University, for their input and guidance. We would like to express our appreciation for interviews accorded to Dr Campbell by Jean-Yves Pénafiel, Michael Keegan Dolan, Carran Waterfield as well as by Neil Paris, Kate Hilder, Sam Frankie Fox and Yuri Birte Anderson. Their insights and responses were extremely helpful and enriching. Thanks also to Eleanor Buchan for her hard work on transcribing the early conversations between the authors which contributed importantly to the autobiographical section. We would like to express our thanks to Ivan Midderigh, David Goldsworthy and Richard Bruston for the photos they have contributed from their archives. Many more photos of the history of Roy Hart Theatre can be found on www. royharttheatrephotographicarchives.com/. We are extremely appreciative for the considered, thoughtful critical feedback that we have consistently received from series editors Konstantinos Thomaidis and Ben Macpherson. Thanks also to Zoë Forbes for all her support during the preparation of this book.

xii Acknowledgements

Margaret would also like to thank Sylvia Enfield and Jonathan Hart for their conversations about the past and for their continuing friendships. She also wishes to express her thanks to Dave Burke for their consistently supportive conversations. Thanks also for the ongoing support and friendship of Brigitte Petithory and Anne-Marie Raybaut, the pillars of Margaret’s professional association founded in France in 2015. www.associationvoixroyhart.com. Finally, Margaret wishes to thank all her students over the years for their work together.

SERIES FOREWORD

The claim that voice is everywhere might be a truism. Voice is predominant in interpersonal and technologically mediated communications and features prominently in discussions of identity, psychological development and language acquisition. From theatrical performance to avant-garde or operatic singing, voice also offers aesthetic pleasure and, as is the case with rhetoric or journalism, it facilitates or imposes messages, arguments and beliefs. Voice is also a powerful metaphor. Feminist scholars have championed the female voice, cultural studies has lent an attentive ear to subaltern voices and the voice of the people is central to debates around politics, media, activism and religion. In the arts, voice is not merely an instrument to be perfected or enjoyed. Notions of the artist’s voice or, occasionally, the author’s voice permeate relevant discourses. Non-human or posthuman voices invite us to listen to animal voices, interactive voice recognition systems and vocal synthesis effected in robotics labs. But how does one account for such plurality and multiplicity? How is voice to be discussed from a scholarly perspective? How might we move beyond bifurcated concepts of the voice in performance studies, for example? The first, but decisive, step would be to create platforms for rigorous discussion of voice across disciplines, practices and areas of interest. The Routledge Voice Studies series offers precisely such a platform. In the past few years, attention given to voice has shifted from sporadic publications in disparate areas of inquiry to the epicenter of discourses in a variety of overlapping disciplines. This series aspires to facilitate the dissemination and cross-fertilization of voice-related research and effectively generate new knowledge and fresh critical insights on voice, vocality and voicing. To that end, we are delighted to include in the series of publications a variety of formats. We are equally interested in monographs, themed edited collections, student-focused anthologies and sourcebooks, revised and expanded editions of classic texts, and inter-medial and multimedial outputs. Our hope is that these

xiv

Series foreword

varied structures will attract both practitioners and scholars as contributors, and find a readership among established and emergent researchers, students and artists. We understand voice studies as a shifting landscape of questions and concerns, as a proliferative interdiscipline. Building on current initiatives, we wish to expand and capitalize on the productive debates taking place in the areas of music, theatre and performance studies, as well as cultural studies, ethnomusicology, sound studies, acoustics and acoustemology. Yet, we are equally as keen on extending an invitation to inputs from psychology, fine art, poetics and orality studies, linguistics, media and film studies, robotics and artificial intelligence, history and philosophy, translation and adaptation studies, among others. Spearheaded by the discussions across disciplines and cultures hosted in its inaugural publication, the edited collection Voice Studies: Critical Approaches to Process, Performance and Experience, this book series listens out for new spaces in which voice can reverberate with revitalized vigor. We hope you enjoy this fascinating journey with us. Series editors: Dr Konstantinos Thomaidis and Dr Ben Macpherson

PROLOGUE

Margaret Pikes

Source: © Ivan Midderigh.

Some years ago now, the thought began to echo in my mind (like the famous song), of how often we fail to be truly aware of things of value till they are gone. On this theme, I began to wonder how the voice work which I have developed, following the work of Alfred Wolfsohn and Roy Hart, can continue its journey down the generations. Students often asked me the same question and I sometimes spoke of writing about it. I very much admired my brother Noah’s dedication to producing his well-researched and original book Dark Voices: The Genesis of Roy Hart Theatre ([1999] 2004; 2019). I felt that, for myself, I wanted to write about my own work and how I came to it, especially as a woman. The time for me to realise my project began in 2013 when Dr Patrick Campbell invited me to give a keynote speech for a Symposium organised by the Psyche in the Arts Network entitled ‘Creative Encounters: Arts as Culture/Arts as Therapy,’ at the University of Northampton (UK). After this we began to discuss the possibility

xvi

Prologue

of writing a book together about my work. The subsequent collaboration with him on the actual realisation of this book has been an enriching and inspiring journey. As a teenager, Dr Campbell had already been an enthusiastic member of a Georgian choir led by my old colleague and friend, Venice Manley. He then participated in a workshop with my brother in Brazil, before working with me for several years in London. His practical experience of the Wolfsohn-Hart vocal exploration and also of other physiovocal performance disciplines was vital in our collaboration on this book, nourishing his ability to articulate the sometimes-complex issues that surround the nature and history of my voice work. Dr Campbell’s input as a gay man has, I believe, complemented my feminist perspective with a nuanced, intersectional understanding which it has been very important for me to include. I should also mention how his limitless patience and sense of humour have often succeeded in cutting through my more stubborn expressive blockages. One of the biggest challenges for me in writing this book has been to disentangle the deep value of the work which lies at the centre of the Wolfsohn-Hart vocal tradition, from the sometimes-adverse influence of the personalities of its founders. While it is clear that all leaders have a shadow side, it is also true that these less laudable aspects of their personalities often contribute to their success. For example, without his apparently innate tendency to go to extremes, would Hart have achieved the influence that he did? His childhood friend Charles Enfield told me how Hart frightened him when, as children sledging together in South Africa, Hart never wanted to slow down as they accelerated dangerously down the slope. Hart was a risk-taker who was very angry with me when I spoke to him about my wish for security, answering emphatically that there is none! So, I have tried to navigate a way through my criticisms of the damage caused by some aspects of Wolfsohn’s and Hart’s way of teaching and my respect for their dedication and generosity. My own subjectivity will also of course play a role in this.

Reference Pikes, Noah (2004) DARK VOICES: The Genesis of Roy Hart Theatre Vol. 1. New Orleans: Spring Journal Books.

INTRODUCTION Patrick Campbell

What does it take to do this work? A wish to go deeper. A wish to break through your habitual idea of who you are, which in your case had become very much identified with strength and power, vocally. I encouraged you to express real feeling and not to act it. You will probably be working on that your whole life! Maintaining that connection to something authentic. (Pikes 2019a)

As a long-term trainee of Margaret Pikes, her voice and words still echo in my mind as I turn to write this introduction. I have been privileged to be able to study with Pikes for over a decade now, participating in vocal workshops held in the UK and France, and engaging in a closed voice research group in London, which ran from 2012 to 2014.1 A master practitioner and teacher with over 50 years’ experience working in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition of extended vocal exploration, Pikes was a founder member of the acclaimed Roy Hart Theatre (RHT), and has worked across Europe and Latin America for decades, teaching generations of artists, performers, scholars and therapeutic practitioners to connect on a deep, visceral level with the dynamic sources of their own voices.2 During the praxis, whether sounding myself or observing the work of others in the space, Pikes’ teaching would always lead to significant creative breakthroughs, as hitherto undiscovered qualities were unveiled in the voices of the individuals under her tutelage. I was always impressed by Pikes’ attentive listening, by her ability to be absolutely present in the moment as she playfully challenged her students to let go of daily tensions, blocks and inhibitions in order to reveal through their voices the many characters inhabiting their bodies and souls. During workshops and lessons, I heard angelic melodies, wounded howls, child-like cries and vocal ranges extending from deep basses to high sopranos. Importantly, these deeply embodied sounds were always channelled through a rigorous attention to pitch and vocal source,

2 Introduction

maintained at all times by Pikes as she accompanied students on the piano – an essential companion on the individual and collective vocal journey. Alterity was a key aspect of the work, and the ability to listen to the other and remain aware of what was taking place in the space during a voice lesson essential. Witnessing the voice work, I was faced with the other in all her vulnerability as a passionate subject, a whirl of desires and forces. The end result of this experience was that, at times, the other could seem more-than-human, almost holy in her fragility and openness. As an invisible, yet audible and palpable psychophysical extension of the self, the voice offered a window into the subjective inner world of the other. I was touched by the humanity of the voices in the room, with their breaks and sudden leaps, their light and shadows. I felt the trace of the drives in the shifts of timbre, rhythm, pitch and volume. Through Pikes’ praxis, the voice – both my own and that of my colleagues – was transformed at times into something akin to an x-ray of the individual’s inner life. Voicing became the red thread that connected all those in the room to a common humanity. Over time and through repetition, this subjective work on vocal expression, allied with an objective emphasis on musicality, could also lead to impressive aesthetic results; colleagues in the closed work group in particular were eventually able to master much of the vocal colour and range they had uncovered through the training, and harness this consciously into their expressive repertoire as actors, performers and singers.

Alfred Wolfsohn The roots of Wolfsohn-Hart voice work can be traced back to one young man’s lived experience of the violence that erupted across Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, when, as Arendt (1979: 3) has suggested, ‘[t]he subterranean stream of Western history finally came to the surface and usurped the dignity of our tradition’ manifesting itself in two World Wars and the horrors of the Holocaust. Alfred Wolfsohn’s response to the trauma he suffered, first of all as a German soldier fighting in the trenches of World War I, and once again as a Jewish citizen fleeing from Nazi Germany during World War II, would indelibly shape the holistic vocal practice he initiated. Born in 1896 into a Russian-Jewish family living in Berlin, Wolfsohn was conscripted to fight in the German army in World War I at 18 years of age. He served as a stretcher-bearer from 1914 until he suffered a near-death experience in 1917, during the Third Battle of Arras, in France. It was this early confrontation with death, violence and inhumanity that would indelibly mark young Wolfsohn’s psyche and set him off on a path of creative redemption through voice work. His account of the trauma he suffered whilst incapacitated in the trenches during World War I is harrowing: The hours pass. The firing is getting stronger and my peril greater. I pray to God but he doesn’t help me. From somewhere I hear a voice incessantly

Introduction  3

calling: ‘Help! Comrade. Help! Comrade.’ I close my eyes, shaking with terror, thinking, ‘How can a voice utter such a sound?’ I fought a terrible struggle within myself: should I try to crawl to him or not? I did not. Grenades whistle, a voice implores, I curse God, I hear his scornful laughter in infinite space, the earth is ripped open, the sky is a fiendish backdrop, realm between being alive – only just – and dying. What continues are the automatic movements of my body, that is all; and the unceasing questions: ‘WHY? FOR WHAT?’ (Wolfsohn in Pikes 2004: 32; original emphasis) On the battlefields of World War I, Wolfsohn, a deeply religious man, lost his belief in God, his conviction in man’s innate humanity and his very sanity. Pulled alive at the end of the battle from a pile of corpses, he contracted tuberculosis, suffered severe shell shock, and was committed to a sanatorium. It was here that Wolfsohn was able to partake in singing lessons; a keen singer in his youth, it was when Wolfsohn’s conventional singing teacher allowed him to cry out in agony and give voice to the screams he had heard in the trenches that he began a slow process of recovery which coincided with his discovery of what he would later term the unchained voice – the vocal range in all its affective richness and ferocity (Pikes 2004: 37). After World War I, Wolfsohn began to give voice lessons in Germany to classical singers with vocal problems. Drawing on his own experience, he held a deep belief that vocal difficulties were related to psychic traumas, and developed a uniquely cathartic approach to singing lessons that had great results. It was at this time, during the 1930s, that Wolfsohn researched into Jungian depth psychology, and discovered a number of synchronistic resonances with his own empirical findings in the field of voice work.3 In 1939, Wolfsohn was forced to flee from Nazi Germany, and arrived in Britain thanks to the help of his former student Alice Croner. After losing his beloved elder sister, who was killed in Auschwitz during the war, he returned once more to active duty, fighting for the British Pioneer Corps in France. It was here that Wolfsohn met James Johnson, a chartered accountant who, after the war, set him up in a small studio in Golders Green, where he went on to develop his voice teaching (ibid.: 43). In post-1945 London, Wolfsohn’s voice teaching began to take on momentum. By 1949, Wolfsohn had a cohort of virtuoso students, including a young Roy Hart and key pupils such as Marita Günther,4 Sheila Braggins5 and the Johnson sisters,6 who were capable of emitting an incredibly evocative range of vocal qualities and tessituras that differed from the vocal categorization and aesthetics of classical opera. Over this period, inspired in part by Jungian depth psychology, Wolfsohn encouraged his pupils to connect to both animus and anima, ‘contrasexual’ psychosomatic archetypes which Wolfsohn believed were manifest physiologically in the voice through the bass/contralto and contra-tenor/soprano range.7 Under Wolfsohn’s tutelage, students developed vocal ranges spanning the octaves of the piano. They also began to explore the so-called broken voice – dissonant vocal qualities that corresponded for Wolfsohn with Jung’s notion of the shadow. For Wolfsohn, these

4 Introduction

new vocal qualities represented the ‘voice of the future,’ and the ideal of an eightoctave voice became a central tenet of his teaching (ibid.: 51). In pragmatic terms, lessons with Wolfsohn were always distinctive, shifting in accordance with the needs of the unique individual before him. For Wolfsohn, teaching voice was akin to teaching life itself, and the line between pedagogic session and personal relationship blurred. Singing was an act of love and teaching a covenant that had to be entered into with the student. As Braggins suggests: [I]t is important to remember that Alfred Wolfsohn was breaking old concepts, experimenting with the limitations of the personality in relation to the voice, working with the extension of range, the ability to express emotion, to understand oneself with the ability to stand naked. . . . It was overwhelmingly exciting when suddenly, from a broken sound, the voice would split shooting two octaves higher into a clear, beautiful note that felt truly like a new ‘you.’ At this moment there was a real feeling of liberation and joy of self-discovery, you wanted to repeat these sounds over and over to make sure they were still there. They were in fact like a new language, a new ability to express in a previously unimaginable manner. (Braggins 2005: online) Wolfsohn was a master teacher, and former pupils of his such as Günther praised the enormous levels of concentration, intensity and generosity that he would dedicate to his students and vice versa (Günther 1960). For Wolfsohn, singing was a process of gnosis, a vehicle for probing the psyche, integrating the personality and broadening consciousness. Wolfsohn’s approach was inclusive; he did not work with virtuoso performers alone, and believed that everyone had an innate connection to song and musicality. He was also very aware of the deeply embodied effort required to unleash the eight-octave voice. For Wolfsohn, connecting to the self through an exploration of this expanded vocal range was a healing process for the person sounding. Conversely, the voice teacher had an immense responsibility to his or her pupil; the voice work was a ‘vocation,’ and the voice teacher was considered ‘the guardian and representative of creative life’ (Wolfsohn in Pikes 2004: 38). In 1956, the results of Wolfsohn’s new techniques were presented on the LP Vox Humana – Alfred Wolfsohn’s Experiments in Extension of Human Vocal Range, which included Wolfsohn’s pupil Jenny Johnson’s incredible singing voice, which spanned over four octaves. This recording brought Wolfsohn to the attention of a wider range of scholars and experts in the field of voice. Advocates of the Wolfsohn approach to voice included Julian and Aldous Huxley and Dr Paul Moses, Associate Clinical Professor in Charge of Speech and Voice at Stanford University. In the 1950s, Professor Luchsinger of the Zürich Otolaryngological Clinic carried out a number of examinations on Jenny Johnson’s voice and larynx. Tests confirmed that the physiological functioning of her larynx was perfectly healthy and that her voice could reach a range of over five octaves (Pikes 2004: 52).

Introduction  5

Wolfsohn died of complications related to his tuberculosis on 5 February 1962. His passing paved the way for his pupil, Roy Hart, to take the helm of the teaching practice Wolfsohn had developed. By this point, Hart was a master vocal practitioner himself, having fully developed his own unchained voice with all its expressive potential. He thus embodied Wolfsohn’s ideal, and importantly took the voice work in an important new direction, through his passion for theatre.

Roy Hart Hart was born in South Africa in 1926 to Polish-Lithuanian parents of Jewish descent. After studying English, the history of music, philosophy and psychology at the University of Johannesburg in Witwatersrand, he travelled to England to take up a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA). On arrival in London, Hart was almost immediately introduced to Alfred Wolfsohn, and began singing lessons. Increasingly disillusioned with RADA, despite being considered a promising young actor, Hart left before completing his studies, and dedicated himself exclusively to Wolfsohn’s voice work. As Hart explains: The ability to hold fast with the whole body in vocal production can, with correct training, develop an ability to hold fast in complex real-life situations. Because I had learned to hold myself in sound, I found I was able to hold others as a leader in concentration. (Hart 1967) A natural and charismatic leader, with a deep, experiential understanding of the voice work, Hart was not only able to take over Wolfsohn’s singing lessons, he also amalgamated the German master teacher’s pupils into a coherent organisation: the Roy Hart Speakers/Singers, which would become known as the Roy Hart Theatre (RHT) from 1969 onwards, a group that had considerable international success, devising a number of ground breaking performances that showcased the unchained voice.8 Under Hart’s guidance, there was a shift in emphasis in the work from cathartic release to theatrical performance. He brought in a greater level of physical training than Wolfsohn had (several members of the RHT were dance practitioners, and movement sessions became a central aspect of the practice), and also generated a true communitarian identity amongst group members. Hart’s aspirations were utopian: in complete synchronicity with the times, the RHT increasingly became a countercultural group, a community of practice united in the 1960s and early 1970s by the tenets that had underscored Wolfsohn’s work on the voice as a path towards personal individuation.9 The notion of living more consciously was a key aspect of life in the RHT, and many ritualised encounters within the group served to promote this, and to develop a heightened sense of listening, which could aid the voice work. The group

6 Introduction

members all took part in thrice-weekly meetings called Rivers, during which dreams were analysed, personal problems discussed, and the minutiae of behaviour critically examined. Self-observation and ‘carefulness’ – acting in a mindful way at all times with others, drawing on all of one’s integrity and artistic sensibility – were enforced as part of the culture of the community. Hart spoke of ‘auras,’ and could be publicly scathing to individuals deemed to have a negative one. According to Noah Pikes: In Roy’s world you could be judged according to your ‘aura.’ For Roy ‘aura’ was a word which referred to the elements in and surrounding a person constellated in a particular moment and included dream images, a look on the face, tones of voice, gesture, and behaviour. A member of the group could be loved or hated, encouraged or discouraged, affirmed or denied based on what his or her ‘aura’ was at the time. No action was psychologically safe. . . . One particularly dreaded ‘negative constellation’ which might take over one’s psyche, was referred to as ‘The Queen of the Night,’ the vengeance seeking figure in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, referred to more colloquially within the group as ‘a bitch.’ Freeing oneself from her power was an ongoing effort for many of us. (2004: 112) Interestingly, a negative psychic mood was thus gendered, and this abject feminine disposition was the source of great consternation. Within the group, language was another key concern and words that were deemed to be negative sounding were rebaptised: for example, ‘a cold’ was called ‘a warm,’ committees became ‘Life-Fields,’ and to spend a night with someone was to ‘share a pillow’ with them. To sleep with one another, RHT members had to ask publicly for permission and gain the blessing of the entire group. Whilst homosexual relationships were tolerated by the early 1970s, having children was prohibited, as giving birth to the eight-octave voice and engendering artistry through vocal exploration were to be the major concerns of all involved. According to Noah Pikes: Roy’s view was that there should be no offstage behaviour because there is no ‘off-stage.’ Roy’s attacks were another part of his ‘care-full-ness.’ He wrote: ‘My attacks on you are designed to bring you back to that point at your life at which you stopped growing.’ (ibid.: 120) Whilst on the one hand, these measures served to create a sense of group identity and thus maintain the cohesion and micro-political efficacy of the RHT community, the negative fallout of constant psychological attack and an imposed disciplinary regime, bordering on the totalitarian, had a number of negative consequences for group members. In spring 1973, Hart informed the group that he and those that chose to join him were leaving London for Europe. In 1974, most of the members began to

Introduction  7

move to Malérargues, a chateau about 60 kilometres north-west of Montpellier. On 18 May 1975, Roy Hart, Dorothy Hart and RHT member Vivienne Young tragically died in a car crash in Southern France. Paul Silber, another member of the group travelling with Young and the Harts, was the only survivor. The RHT was now leaderless. A new phase in the group’s history had begun.

Wolfsohn-Hart voice work: feminist considerations There is a dialectic in the history of the RHT between an acceptance of the feminine as a key aspect of the vocal work on the one hand, and a rejection of ‘the Queen of the Night’ archetype, on the other. As mentioned previously, there was a lingering sense within the RHT community that assertive female energy, could be interpreted as being similar to the archetype of the Queen of the Night, and therefore negative. An interesting comparison can be drawn here with Abbate’s analysis of Mozart’s famous operatic figure: I would read the aria . . . as oscillating between drama – the angry tirade by the character – and voice-object that comes to the fore precisely in the melismatic vocalises, for the melismas, by splitting words (‘nimmermehr,’ ‘Bande’) and separating syllable from syllable, destroy language. So the Queen, by killing language, also kills plot, and herself as a character. She suddenly becomes not a character-presence but an irrational nonbeing, terrifying because the locus of voice is now not a character, not human, and somehow not present. (Abbate 1991: 10) The resonance here between the tendency to align female assertiveness and power with the Queen of the Night within the RHT, and the terrifying ‘irrational nonbeing’ identified by Abbate in her reading of Mozart’s character-as-voice-object, is disturbing.10 It is almost as if the emotional potency represented by the Queen of the Night, with her high, gendered, non-verbal vocal extension, was elevated within the RHT to the status of raw archetype, overwhelming and dangerous. Moreover, the fear of this particular feminine vocal energy and its connection to female power seems to somehow be related to a gynaecological fear of the female body. Hart’s refusal of babies in the group can be read as a rejection of the female body and its reproductive potential. The reality of fleshy, female fecundity as one possible potentiality of femininity and womanhood seems to have been much more problematic within the RHT of the 1960s and early 1970s than the idealised notion of integrating the anima and the feminine within the extended voice. Thus, it is hardly surprising that the trope of motherhood, which Cixous (1975) foregrounds as a key aspect of the restorative potential of écriture feminine – which, she suggests, is written in the ‘white ink’ of nurturing mother’s milk (ibid.: 251) – is also a recurring theme in Margaret Pikes’ discourse. As shall become apparent over the course of Part 1 of this book, embracing motherhood was for Pikes a concrete means of countering the way in which, historically, Hart had been able to influence

8 Introduction

the reproductive rights of female members of the RHT. Pikes’ personal journey beyond the confines of Malérargues reveals that individuation entails a deep-seated need to ‘give birth’ and to nurture on a number of different levels, and a closed community cannot necessarily always accommodate this. Pikes’ life story is thus intimately tied up with the political valence of Wolfsohn-Hart voice work as a living tradition today. The whole issue of ownership also becomes key when analysing this writing from a feminist perspective. What does it mean to ‘own’ one’s voice, as the title of the book suggests? As a verb, ‘to own’ has connotations of possession and acquisition (to own something); acknowledgement or admission (to own up to something); whilst as an adjective it can act as an intensifier indicating possession of an object (one’s own voice); or sole agency of an action (to do something on one’s own). If, as Lévi-Strauss suggests, exogamy and language are interlinked and ‘[t]he emergence of symbolic thought must have required that women, like words, should be things that were exchanged’ (1969: 496), then a woman taking possession of her own voice and acknowledging her inherent agency contributes – on a micropolitical level – to a broader redressing of the patriarchal economy underscoring the very foundations of culture and society. As Cavarero has suggested: The phonic emission exalted by the song, the voice that sends itself into the air and makes the throat vibrate, has a revelatory function. Or better, more than revealing, it communicates. What it communicates is precisely the true, vital, and perceptible uniqueness of the one who emits it. (Cavarero 2005: 5) The uniqueness of the voice and the primacy of its internalization and connection to the viscera and the breath has for Cavarero both metaphysical and political implications. Importantly, it destabilises the centrality of that which Derrida has termed phallogocentrism – the privileging of the masculine in the construction of meaning, which has haunted Western philosophy since Plato. It also means that the grain of the voice (Barthes 1977) – the way in which the voice lies in each individual body and reflects this embodiment – offers the subject a unique agency and presence beyond (masculinist) signification. The unique materiality of the subjective voice, in fact, challenges binary concepts of vocal potentiality (such as ‘male’ voices versus ‘female’ voices), and accounts for the ways in which the individual voice is shaped by multiple grounds of intersectional identity, encompassing gender, race, ethnicity and class (Thomaidis 2017: 47). A belief in the pulsional uniqueness of each voice lies at the heart of the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition, and Pikes’ practice in particular radically counters any deep-seated notion of the voice as mere ancillary of signification.11 The practice allows for an exploration of the many physical and psychological connections between the dynamic sources of vocalisation. Pikes thus enables her students to own their voices, in all their complexity, power and fragility.12 It is interesting from a feminist perspective that Pikes has chosen to foreground a filiation to Wolfsohn and Hart – the proper names that loom large over the practice

Introduction  9

they initiated – in the title to her book. Rather than recourse to a legitimizing patrilineal decent, however, Pikes’ gesture is more a reflection of a deep generosity and appreciation of the contribution that these remarkable men made to vocal development. As suggested earlier, Pikes is wary of the residual patriarchal ideologies haunting the history of Wolfsohn-Hart voice work; through her own channelling of this practice, she consciously redresses this issue, and brings that awareness to her work with others. In a recent publication, for example, Pikes promotes tenderness as a key aspect of vocal production, contrasting this to the more aggressive approaches frequently developed by male practitioners. She suggests that: [T]he psychological and somatic research work of reconnecting the voice to the body involves evoking many more emotions, including, vitally, tenderness, grief and joy. These ‘feelings’ give us sensory connections deep within our bodies which are as effective as anger in opening doorways into the powerful and wild world of vocal discovery, including singing. (Pikes 2019b: 459) Pikes’ attention to vocal tenderness is an important part of her contribution to the vocal tradition established by Wolfsohn and Hart. This, along with her focus on song work and musicality, sets her apart from many of her contemporaries from the RHT, who often foreground the innate strength and immediate sonorous impact of the extended voice in their work and teaching. There is, of course, another male voice ghosting this book – my own. This writing is also fruit of an ongoing scholarly and praxical collaboration between Pikes and myself. As a queer male scholar, I am wary of the dynamics between an écriture feminine and how this sits in juxtaposition to a more ‘scholarly’ framing of the female artist’s discourse and tekné by the male academic (even if he has a lived experience of the practice as a student). Pikes and I would maintain, however, that there is a productive tension underscoring our collaboration. We acknowledge the different registers of our voices and writing, and strive to find productive ways of dealing with the potential complexities of this polyphonic, collaborative authorial approach. Importantly, the monograph as a whole challenges and expands upon notions of training legacy and lineage, thus it is fitting that, as Pikes’ student, I add my voice as a scholar-practitioner firmly, but not exclusively, rooted in this work. Above all, however, as a pupil of Pikes’ who has benefitted from her generosity, skill and expert knowledge as a master vocal practitioner, I hope that my contribution can further illuminate her own discourse, which is by far the most valuable aspect of this book.

Owning our voices: the book There exists quite a wide array of primary and secondary bibliographic sources on Wolfsohn-Hart voice work, although many publications are either out of print or difficult to source. Alfred Wolfsohn, the founder of this tradition, wrote

10 Introduction

a number of unpublished manuscripts charting his own vocal discoveries and the development of his praxis from a historical and philosophical perspective. These include Orpheus, or the way to a mask ([1938] 2012); Die Brücke (1947), The Problem of Limitations (1958), and The Biography of an Idea. London 1943–1960 (1960). Wolfsohn’s original German manuscripts are currently housed at the Berlin Jewish Museum, whilst English translations of these texts are available for consultation at the Roy Hart Theatre Archives in Malérargues, France. A less prolific writer than his teacher, Wolfsohn’s student and creative heir Roy Hart nevertheless also left a number of eloquent accounts of his approach to voice work, and a range of papers and interviews given by Hart are available for consultation on the Roy Hart Theatre Archives’ digital site (www.roy-hart.com/rhwritings.htm). This site also houses important accounts given by Wolfsohn’s former students Sheila Braggins and Marita Günther (who also worked with the RHT). Students of Wolfsohn’s and members of the RHT have also published valuable books based on historiographical research and recourse to their own lived experience of the practice. Prime examples include Sheila Braggins (2012) and Noah Pikes [1999] (2004; 2019). Other former RHT members, such as Enrique Pardo, Orlanda Cook and Nadine George, have also systematised their own vocal methodologies in practice and in print, drawing either explicitly or tacitly on their experiences in London and Malérargues. From a pragmatic perspective, however, it is precisely the braided format of this present publication that makes it particularly unique and useful. This publication is the first of its kind to elucidate Wolfsohn-Hart voice work through a fusion of autobiographical account of a founder member of the RHT with descriptions of exercises framed by critical prefaces and illuminated by digital footage. This specific critical approach to the documentation and dissemination of performance practice traces its roots back to deliberations in academia relating to the field of Practice as Research (PaR). Debates around documentation stemmed from attempts to respond to the ‘evanescence of performance’, and its perceived ontological status ‘outside of judgment’, given the ‘incompossibilities [. . .] that mark performance’s distinctive work in the academy’ (Jones in Allegue et al. 2009: 24–30). Whilst the written word alone was considered to congeal practice in a particular signifying regime devoid of the slipperiness of ‘doing,’ ‘[d]igital technologies have been cast as interstitial nodes that sit between the practices of art and writing and act as a bridge.’ (Piccini and Rye in Allegue et al. 2009: 36). Thus, although the difficulties of ever capturing the ‘liveness’ of performance through its documentation have been exhaustively explored, multimedia approaches fusing text and digital footage are nevertheless considered a more multifaceted way of capturing something of the semiotic and affective polyphony of performance craft.13 The express aim of this publication is thus to reflect on both the pragmatic utility and the ontic ramifications of Wolfsohn-Hart voice work, which was always as much an ethos, a way of being-in-the-world, a creative response to existential questions, as it was a performative practice. The complexity of the Wolfsohn-Hart approach to voice informs the decision here to braid autobiographical account

Introduction  11

with critical reflection, written exegesis of practice with digital footage of the vocal work itself. In terms of content, the first part of the book offers an autobiographical, reflective account of Pikes’ own journey as a woman and as a vocal practitioner. In the initial section of this vocal memoire, she reflects on her childhood and adolescence in the context of the social shifts in 1950s Britain and the changing status of women in the mid-twentieth century. She goes on to critically reflect on her initial encounter with the Wolfsohn-Hart methodology through regular ‘singing’ lessons in London with Hart himself, allowing for an initial description of the individual and group work practised by Hart at the time with his growing number of students. Pikes fleshes out existing historiographical accounts of the RHT through her own recollections of her transition from singer within the protected therapeutic space of the studio environment to becoming a performer on the international stage. During this period, Pikes also began to develop her own personal approach to pedagogy, and started to give individual lessons and group workshops. Thus, the origins of her particular approach to voice work in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition will be identified here. There exists little literature on the activities and evolution of the group directly after Roy Hart’s death in 1975. Pikes draws this out by exploring the shifting hierarchies, emerging tensions but also opportunities for creative freedom and personal growth during this period. She reflects on her own growing empowerment as a practitioner, touring in Latin America and performing as a soloist across the world in Mikis Theodorakis’ renowned Canto General (1982–1986) and in the Roy Hart Theatre’s The Tempest (1976), De Vive Voix (1979), Music for Marsyas (1982) and Beckett de Trois Côtés (1983), which all toured internationally. In this section, Pikes also focuses on the factors that led her to leave the community at Malérargues and begin a new chapter in her life as an independent artist and voice teacher. Touching on the work she developed in the Royal Conservatories of Liège and Brussels, she reveals her personal journey as a mother, charting the adoption of her son, and her subsequent move to Togo, West Africa, where she worked in the 1990s with jazz trio Anima and the musician and singer Joe Coo, recording and touring whilst developing a renewed relationship to her craft as a singer. She also focuses on her professional activities subsequent to her return to the UK in 2001, reflecting on her fruitful collaboration with European ensembles such as Fabulous Beast and KILN ensemble, as well as her consolidated practice as a master voice teacher, working in the UK and across the continent. In the second part of the book, Pikes reflects on her own pedagogical praxis. Each chapter begins with a succinct critical preface, written by me, which focuses on a key principle underpinning Pikes’ approach to Wolfsohn-Hart voice work. In the concluding chapter, I draw attention to examples of performers who have studied with Pikes and channelled her practice into their teaching and performance work. These artists include Kate Hilder (Republic of Ireland), Neil Paris (UK), Sam Frankie Fox (UK), Yuri Birte Anderson (Switzerland/Germany), Jean Yves Pénafiel (France), Michael Keegan Dolan (Republic of Ireland) and Carran Waterfield (UK). Thus, just as Pikes’ immersion within the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition has

12 Introduction

allowed her to own her own voice, her continued teaching and pedagogic activities have enabled other artists on their journeys of vocal discovery as they move towards owning their own voices. Finally, descriptions of Pikes’ work are accompanied by digital footage of students in process, working in a group context and during individual classes with Pikes. This footage is available online via the Routledge Voice Studies digital platform.

Notes 1 Sessions took place at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts in Wandsworth, South London. Participants included Nicola Collett, Sam Frankie Fox, Kate Hilder, Jan Lee, Kate Montague, Neil Paris and John Wild. 2 Although aware of the androcentric connotations of the word ‘master,’ it is used within the context of this book in terms of the mastery of a skill or a craft, and thus is not intentionally gendered as such. The term ‘master teacher’ has been adopted by many of the founding members of the Roy Hart Theatre over recent years, due in part to its wider currency within the performing arts. Teaching has always been a fundamental part of the Wolfsohn-Hart praxis, and being a voice teacher was as important as being a vocaliser oneself. Thus, we use the term ‘voice teacher’ throughout this book, rather than voice expert/pedagogue/coach, which are terms that have not been employed by members of the Roy Hart Theatre with the same frequency, and hence do not hold the same currency within this particular vocal tradition. 3 For more information on Wolfsohn’s dialogue with Jung, consult Pikes, Noah (2004) DARK VOICES: The Genesis of Roy Hart Theatre Vol. 1. New Orleans: Spring Journal Books, pp. 54–62. 4 Marita Günther (born in Leipzig Germany, 1928 – died 2002), was a founder member of Roy Hart Theatre who had also studied for many years with Wolfsohn. She worked dedicatedly on translating Wolfsohn’s manuscripts and was a very well-respected teacher. 5 Sheila Braggins (born in 1928 – died 2014) was a pupil of Alfred Wolfsohn’s for 15 years. She is the author of The Mystery Behind the Voice (2012) which focuses on Wolfsohn’s life and praxis. 6 Jill Johnson and her younger sister Jenny Johnson were students of Alfred Wolfsohn’s in London in the 1950s. They were the daughters of Jack Johnson, a colleague of Wolfsohn’s during World War II, who helped him to set up a studio in London. Under Wolfsohn's tutelage, Jenny Johnson developed a vocal range of almost six octaves, which can be heard on the Vox Humana recording (1955). Jenny Johnson broke away from Wolfsohn in 1959, and then lost contact with the wider Wolfsohn-Hart community. 7 For discussions of voice and gender in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition, please refer to Part 2, Chapter 8: ‘Freeing the voice.’ 8 For a detailed discussion of RHT performances, see Pikes, Noah (2004) DARK VOICES: The Genesis of Roy Hart Theatre Vol. 1. New Orleans: Spring Journal Books, Chapters 4 and 5. 9 For a discussion of the Jungian concept of individuation in relation to Wolfsohn-Hart voice, see Part 2, Chapter 8: ‘Freeing the voice.’ 10 For less androcentric, more nuanced readings of the Queen of the Night figure that do not articulate her as an irrational being, see Cavarero Adriana. (2005) For More Than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression, trans. P. A. Kottman, Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp.  123–130 and Thomaidis, Konstantinos (2017) Theatre and Voice. London: Red Globe Press, pp. 32–44. 11 The term ‘pulsional’ is employed here in a post-Lacanian sense to refer to the Freudian notion of the drives, understood as forces in the human psyche linked to life and sexual

Introduction  13

procreation (i.e. the libido) or repetition, entropy and death (i.e. the death drive). See Lacan, Jacques (1966) Écrits. Paris: Seuil, p. 848. 12 See Part 2, Chapter 8: ‘Freeing the voice,’ for Pikes’ discussion of vocal singularity and intersectionality in relation to her work. 13 See Allegue et al. (2009) Practice-as-Research in Performance and Screen. London: Palgrave-Macmillan.

References Abbate, Carolyn (1991) Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Allegue, Ludivine, Jones, Simon, Kershaw, Baz and Piccini (2009) Practice-as-Research in Performance and Screen. London: Palgrave-Macmillan. Arendt, Hannah (1979) The Origins of Totalitarianism. London: Harcourt Brace & Company. Barthes, Roland (1977) Image Music Text. London: Fontana Press. Braggins, Sheila (2005) ‘The Way Alfred Wolfsohn Taught: Second Lecture Given by Sheila Braggins at Myths of the Voice Festival, Pan Summer University.’ [Online] Available at https://kefasberlin.se/articles-artiklar/the-way-alfred-wolfsohn-taught.html [Accessed on 30 June 2020]. Braggins, Sheila (2012) A Biography of Alfred Wolfsohn: The Mystery Behind the Voice. London: Oberon. Cavarero, Adriana (2005) For More Than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression (trans. P. A. Kottman). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Cixous, Hélène (1975) The Laugh of the Medusa. Brooklyn: Pétroleuse Press. Günther, Marita (1960) ‘Marita’s English Preface to Alfred Wolfsohn’s “The Human Voice”.’ [Online] Available at www.roy-hart.com/marita1.htm [Accessed on 8 September 2017]. Hart, Roy (1967) ‘How a Voice Gave Me a Conscience.’ [Online] Available at www.royhart.com/hvgmc.htm. [Accessed on 9 September 2017] Jones, Simnon (2009) ‘The Courage of Complementarity: Practice-as-Research as a Paradigm Shift in Performance Studies.’ Allegue, Ludivine, Jones, Simon, Kershaw, Baz and Piccini (eds.) Practice-as-Research in Performance and Screen. London: Palgrave-Macmillan, pp. 19–32. Lacan, Jacques (1966) Écrits. Paris: Seuil. Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1969) The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Boston: Beacon Press. Piccini, Angela and Rye, Caroline (2009) ‘Of Fevered Archives and the Quest for Total Documentation.’ Allegue, Ludivine, Jones, Simon, Kershaw, Baz and Piccini (eds.) Practice-as-Research in Performance and Screen. London: Palgrave-Macmillan, pp. 34–49. Pikes, Margaret (2019a) Interview with Margaret Pikes. Conducted by Patrick Campbell, Montagnac, France, 30 August. Pikes, Margaret (2019b) ‘Tenderness as Strength in Vocal Development.’ Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 459–460. Pikes, Noah [1999] (2004; 2019) DARK VOICES: The Genesis of Roy Hart Theatre Vol. 1. New Orleans: Spring Journal Books. Thomaidis, Konstantinos (2017) Theatre and Voice. London: Red Globe Press. Wolfsohn, Alfred ([1938] 2012) Orpheus, or the Way to a Mask (trans. Marita Günther; ed. Jay Livernois). Woodstock: Abraxas Publishing. Wolfsohn, Alfred (1947) Die Brücke. Unpublished manuscript. Copies held in the Roy Hart Theatre archives in Malérargues, France; the Leo Baeck Centre at the Berlin Jewish Museum and in the Joods Historisch Museum, Amsterdam.

14 Introduction

Wolfsohn, Alfred (1956) Vox Humana: Alfred Wolfsohn’s Experiments in Extension of Human Vocal Range. New York: Smithsonian Folkways Records. Wolfsohn, Alfred (1958)  The Problem of Limitations (Manuscript) (trans. Kaya Anderson). Repository: Roy Hart Theatre Archives, Malérargues, France. Wolfsohn, Alfred (1960) The Biography of an Idea. London 1943–1960 (Manuscript) (trans. Marita Günther). Repository: Roy Hart Theatre Archives, Malérargues, France.

PART 1

Why ‘owning our voices’? Margaret Pikes

What does it mean to own something? While something can be in your possession, true ownership involves recognition that you have responsibility for it, and this implies a certain level of maturity. As the proud owner of a house or a car you are legally obliged to insure it, as a way of establishing your responsibility. The utility, or luxury even, of enjoying these possessions comes with answerability. Our voices belong to us from birth, but it takes many years, maybe a lifetime, to build the connection between the baby’s ability to unconsciously express an extraordinary range of vocal sounds and the true ownership of that range. This building is the process of developing consciousness, of working towards understanding who one is, to which exploring the human voice following the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition can contribute enormously. So, I begin my account of the way that I teach in that tradition with an overview of my personal and ongoing journey towards this goal, because as well as my own vocal practice, inevitably my life experience contributes vitally to the way that I teach, just as will be the case for any teacher of the Wolfsohn-Hart approach to vocal development. The reasons for this, specifically when following the Wolfsohn-Hart approach, will become clear at the end of Part 1 of this book.

FEMINIST APPROACHES TO AUTOBIOGRAPHY – A PREFACE TO PART 1 Patrick Campbell

From the 1960s onwards, feminism has become increasingly interested in, and influenced by, autobiography. In turn, thanks to feminist theory’s shift from the 1970s onwards towards poststructuralist and materialist conceptual frameworks, scholarly conceptualisations of autobiography have broadened, and rather than being considered solely as a literary genre, today autobiography is understood as a wider cultural practice that involves a range of contemporary forms of self-exposition, knowledge-sharing and being-in-the-world. Autobiographical forms have definitively transcended the literary cannon, and now inform an array of communicative social strategies, ranging from professional résumés to blog entries and social media posts. In many ways, rather than the privileged pursuit of a prestigious elite, autobiography is increasingly ubiquitous in today’s mediatised, globalised world, and is not only driven by a need for self-expression, but by market forces, bureaucracy and technological innovation as well. Traditionally, the ideal autobiographer was white, western and male, of considerable social standing. Autobiography, in turn, served to reify a unified, transcendent, male subjectivity, untroubled by issues of gender, class, sexuality or race whilst possessed of (a putative) self-presence and agency. Importantly, autobiography has historically been as characterised by those who were not given a voice as by the chosen few deemed worthy enough of public interest. Hence, feminist theory’s appropriation of autobiography problematised and unsettled the genre. The feminist movement has traditionally been interested in the autobiographical due to a need to link the ‘personal’ to the ‘political’ whilst platforming the experiences of women as a vital epistemic field. A growing awareness of the complexities of gendered subjectivities opened the way for a consideration of the more fragmented, relational senses of self that many women have been conditioned to develop, due to the oppressive, unequal structures of power pervading androcentric, patriarchal societies (Cosslett et al. 2000: 1–23).

18  Part 1

Thus, feminist-inflected autobiographies (also termed life-writings or personal narratives) have political potential. As Mark Zuss suggests: Life-writings provide contexts to question the limits of unquestioned accounts of the construction of subjects. They provide an opportunity to challenge celebrations and claims by uncritical proponents of constructivist and identity politics alike to authenticity, stable self-presence and genuine experience untrammelled by discourse, desire and power. (Zuss 1997: 657) This is the case of Pikes’ autobiographical account of her journey through becoming a vocal practitioner working within the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition. Pikes’ discourse is saturated with the relational knowledges honed and developed through her training with Roy Hart in the 1960s within the setting of The Studio (the closed community of vocal explorers that Hart inherited and nurtured after Wolfsohn’s death); her experience as a core member of the RHT and her five-decadelong career as a master voice teacher. However, importantly, her authorial voice in this section of the book is also informed by what came both before and after she left the RHT community and Malérargues: her life as a working-class British woman growing up in the wake of what Marwick (1998) has termed the ‘long 1960s’ (the period spanning from 1958 to 1974 during which western society experienced seismic cultural shifts, including the rise of feminism and the sexual revolution); her experience as a single mother in France who had adopted a child from Burkina Faso in the 1990s; the six years she spent in Togo in Africa; and her long career as an independent voice teacher and artist. Thus, her reflective life-writing importantly questions the dominant ideologies that continued to pervade and steer the internal structure of the RHT, both under Hart’s guidance and after his death, which, as Pikes argues, meant that women were not treated as equals within the artistic community. In analysing her trajectory through the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition, Pikes inevitably finds herself reconsidering and deconstructing her relationship with Hart, the man who both taught her how to develop her expressive voice and took away her agency. In many ways, this resonates with Judith Butler’s exploration of intersubjectivity and its link to autobiography. As Linda Anderson suggests, paraphrasing Butler: ‘I cannot muster the “we” except by finding the way in which I am tied to “you.”’ And that relation, impossible to fix or reify as ‘relationality,’ also undoes the subject, makes her other. ‘We are not only constituted by our relations,’ as Butler states; we are also ‘dispossessed by them as well.’ (Anderson 2006: 127) Tied by a deep-seated emotional connection to the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition (her ‘professional culture,’ to paraphrase Eugenio Barba [1999]), Pikes was also dispossessed in many ways by the domineering nature of Hart’s leadership style. Thus, her autobiography allows her to work through this complex relationship on the

Feminist approaches to autobiography  19

written page. Whilst challenging and provocative, this written critique is not, however, dismissive of the many ways in which Wolfsohn and Hart’s contributions to vocal exploration and expression were richly ground-breaking, pioneering and liberating. Rather, the reader is confronted with the inherent contradictions of a small group culture forged in a moment of historical transformation and transition. Whilst Hart’s holistic approach to voice, his espousal of an extended vocal range that challenged gender norms and his communal aspirations all resonated with the countercultural tendencies and increasing liberalism of the time, his ability to dictate group members’ lifestyles, including their relationships and procreative rights, was ultimately damaging, and a source of frustration for Pikes. Pikes has expunged this charismatic, dictatorial approach to voice work from her own practice as a voice teacher, whilst cultivating and promoting the restorative, creative aspects of the Wolfsohn-Hart practice through her continuous work with generations of students. The relational nature of Pikes’ account of her time at The Studio and the RHT also brings to the fore a number of other key female members of the group, in particular her best friend and confidante, Vivienne Young. Thus, together with Pikes’ account of her own experiences, the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition is rearticulated from a feminine perspective. This is an important feminist gesture; the polyphonic nature of Pikes’ personal narrative counters other, more strictly historiographic accounts of the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition that have chosen to foreground the life and work of the vocal practice’s male pioneers. Pikes’ account also offers valuable insight into the activities of the RHT in Malérargues after Hart’s death in 1975. Little has been written about this period of the group’s activities, and thus Pikes’ writing here makes a unique historiographical contribution to the field. Social class is another important issue, touched on at several points throughout the autobiography. From the school children who teased Pikes for her strong Hampshire accent at grammar school to the ways in which the RHT was primarily upper-middle class in terms of both membership and aspirations, the materiality of working class experience is articulated by Pikes as both a grounding force and, at times, as a prison from which she has been able to escape through the voice work itself. To a certain extent, Pikes’ mistrust in Hart’s global vocal project stemmed from the ways in which she felt alienated by his very spoken voice, with its heavy RP1 accent and actorly emphases. On the one hand, Pikes’ narrative emphasises the complex intersectionality (in this case, between gender and class) that shape women’s experiences in a different way from men’s, due to the androcentric structures of power pervading society. On the other, her sense of Hart and other upper-middle class members of the group as somehow indelibly ‘other’ to her, is used tactically as a sounding board off of which she can define her own identity as an artist from a working-class background operating within the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition. Miller (1991) points to a long tradition of alterity underpinning (feminist) autobiography, which stands in stark contrast to a generalised preoccupation with the primacy of the self, especially in the West. This complex play of alterity underscores the ways in which Pikes has negotiated her relationship to the Wolfsohn-Hart approach to vocal exploration and expression, as will become apparent over the following pages.

20  Part 1

The register of the upcoming autobiographical section is not densely theoretical or narrowly methodological in nature: the writing style Pikes adopts for this part of the book is, rather, literary, bordering on the conversational or conspiratorial at times. This too, however, is a deliberate, considered strategy with a genealogy that can be traced back to feminist textual production. By articulating her life-writing through a register more akin to orality, Pikes foregrounds a link between personal narrative and voice, the guiding principal of the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition of practice, in which the crafting of identity and the development of the human voice form a continuum. The link to orality also hints at a connection between Pikes’ autobiography and a long line of feminist oral historians (such as Carroll [1976] and Roberts [1984], amongst others) who have attempted to recover women’s lost voices and hidden histories whilst developing politicised methodologies and approaches to writing that privilege the cadences of everyday speech (Cosslett et al. 2000). Moreover, there is a link here to feminist traditions of personalist criticism, and earlier attempts to connect theorisation to lived experience through a more direct, daily register of writing, as pioneered by Jane Tompkins in the early 1990s (Tompkins 1991). As Pikes explained during a conversation, ‘I wasn’t in love with Roy and I had questions about it all’ (Pikes 2019). By maintaining a critical distance whilst continuing to champion experiential work on the potential of the extended human voice, Pikes tempers rigour with a duty of care to the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition. Her critical examination of both the material factors shaping the RHT and her own unique development as a voice teacher and vocal practitioner are illuminating and thought-provoking, offering an essential historiographical framework for the more directly pedagogical considerations that comprise the second part of this publication.

Note 1 RP stands for Received Pronunciation, indicating the accent traditionally regarded as the hegemonic standard for British English. It is often associated with the upper classes.

References Anderson, Linda (2006) ‘Autobiography and the Feminist Subject.’ Rooney, Ellen (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Literary Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 119–135. Barba, Eugenio (1999) Theatre: Solitude, Craft, Revolt (trans. Judy Barba; ed. Masgrau, Luís). Aberystwyth: Black Mountain Press. Carroll, Berenice A. (ed.) (1976) Liberating Women’s History. Theoretical and Critical Essays. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Cosslett, Tess, Lury, Celia and Summerfield, Penny (eds.) (2000) Feminism & Autobiography: Texts, Theories, Methods. London: Routledge. Marwick, Arthur (1998) The Sixties: Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, c.1958–c.1974. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Feminist approaches to autobiography  21

Miller, Nancy (1991) Getting Personal: Feminist Occasions and Other Autobiographical Acts. London: Routledge. Pikes, Margaret (2019) Interview with Margaret Pikes. Conducted by Patrick Campbell, Montagnac, France, 30 August. Roberts, Elizabeth (1984) A Woman’s Place, An Oral History of Working-class Women 1890– 1940. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Tompkins, J. (1991) ‘Me and My Shadow.’ Warhol, Robyn R. and Herndl, Dianne P. (eds.) Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Zuss, Mark (1997) ‘Contesting Representations: Life-Writings and Subjectivity in Postmodern and Feminist Autobiography.’ Theory and Psychology, Vol. 7, No. 5, pp. 653–673.

1 EARLY LIFE Margaret Pikes

Childhood Did my mother sing? I do remember that her speaking voice was thin and somehow full of repressed energy in a way that was ugly and hard to hear. I don’t recall that she had a problem to sing the old popular songs that occasionally we sang together with my father on guitar. She could play the piano surprisingly well, sometimes filling our meagre living room with a softness and longing as she performed one of the two Chopin Nocturnes she had learnt. To my child’s ears, this music seemed magical. My father had played rhythm guitar in the early days in a little dance band. After my mother objected to this, he practised jazz standards at home, but his efforts to sing the melodies came out as a strangled tenor, as if he were too embarrassed to really let his voice out. So usually he whistled as he played more relaxed children’s songs for us. They were often funny, including one where he would push his false front teeth out and we would fall about with laughter. For as long as I can remember, I sang. From before I could speak, I would stand in my cot, holding onto the sides whilst singing the tunes of nursery rhymes. Later, by about eight or nine years old, I had developed a repertoire of songs with which I sang myself to sleep at night in bed. In my early teens, I would go with a friend deep into the woods opposite our home, to a mound which covered an old charcoal burner’s small dark cave. Standing in this secret place we had a kind of ritual in which we sang out to the trees as loudly as we could, imitating opera singers and revelling in the energy that this sounding created. Later, in my final years at school I was the blonde, long-haired female member of a folk quartet. Singing became my escape route from the tensions in the household, especially from my mother’s angry, frustrated dominance. It was like a bridge out of the confinement of our small working-class family’s restrictions into a richer, more harmonious personal

Early life  23

space. Singing supported me as a child by answering an emotional, almost existential need for self-expression and this was also a part of what eventually attracted me to the voice work with Roy Hart. Like many underprivileged working-class people born in England between the two World Wars, both my parents had a hard time as children. My mother, one of five children, was obliged to leave school at the age of 12 to earn money as a dressmaker to contribute to her family’s income. Earlier, as a child, she had been given away to a childless aunt and uncle and was only returned to her parents when she became unrelentingly grief stricken. My father was ‘born out of wedlock’ and caught pneumonia as a baby while in foster care. After then being taken in and raised by his mother’s sister, he was able to serve an apprenticeship and qualify as a precision engineer but was nevertheless always ashamed of his ‘illegitimacy.’ So, my father, given away in shame at birth and my mother, treated as a disposable family member, were both inevitably and profoundly shaped as adults by these early life experiences. Though both my parents were musical they were also disadvantaged, in the same way as many working-class people of their generation, by a lack of familiarity with the language of feeling and self-expression. I have no memory of anyone ever talking about love at home. There were no hugs or physical expressions of affection when I was a child and I don’t think this was especially unusual amongst British working-class families at that point in time. But there was sometimes laughter (especially when we listened to The Goon Show, on the radio), and my brother and I were well fed and clothed and always received small presents at Christmas and on birthdays.1 It felt normal. There was no television, only light entertainment on the radio and neither of my parents read books, though there was a book case in the living room where, under the glass ornaments on the top shelf, you could find a copy of the complete works of Shakespeare, several Readers’ Digest paperbacks and a medical book with detailed pictures of the human body (which I consulted furtively as the subject of sex was a complete no-go area in our home). At the age of ten, having been lucky enough to pass the 11-plus entrance exam a year early, I found myself, a rather lost country girl, suddenly pitched into the biggest co-educational grammar school in England at the time. For the first few days I carried my coat around with me, as I had no idea what a ‘cloakroom’ was. After I had finally worked it out, I remember a group of girls making me stand on the bench running under where our coats hung and asking me to say my name. When I did, they all laughed and imitated me – my strong Hampshire accent was a great joke for them. Remembering this, I don’t recall being particularly traumatised. Somehow, I was already so overawed by the whole situation that I just took it as another inexplicable experience. These girls were simply alien and my voice, which I knew I could trust, was my own, even if the accent was wrong. It did nevertheless slowly dawn on me that my way of speaking was a limitation and over the years I lost most of that accent, without ever really trying to. However, this accent, and more especially its social origins, in fact affected my whole trajectory through grammar school so that, despite passing 10 GCEs2 (as

24  Part 1

they were then called), by the age of 15, the careers advice teacher told me that I should under no circumstances consider applying to university. Rather, I was advised that my choices, like most girls from my background at that time, were to train as a nurse, a teacher or a secretary. But silently, I knew that I wanted to go to university in order to learn to speak. By the age of 15, I had already realised that to be able to express oneself led to empowerment.

Vivienne Young3 During my first days after arriving at the grammar school, I noticed each morning a tall, thin girl walking down the school drive, seemingly unaware of the other students around her, as if she were in another world. This person was Vivienne Young and, as we travelled on the same bus and were classmates, we became friends. Her faraway look, which earned her a reputation for ‘stand-offish-ness,’ was actually due to the fact that she refused to wear her prescription glasses. She was very shortsighted. Vivienne lived about a mile from my home and, as I grew to feel increasingly oppressed by my mother, I went as often as I could to Vivienne’s house, where she lived with her mother, Mary. It was through Vivienne that I eventually joined the Roy Hart Theatre (RHT). Vivienne’s father, a journalist, had left Mary and their two daughters, though he still supported them financially. Mary had moved south with Vivienne from Henley to a beautiful old house with a lovely garden, where she set herself up as a home-visiting hairdresser. Her other, older daughter Sylvia was away in a convent boarding school. Mary was probably struggling with depression but seemed to me to be wonderfully liberal in her attitude to motherhood. She often didn’t come home until late in the evening, leaving a note for Vivienne as to what she could eat for supper. She spoke softly with a friendly Lancashire accent which she tried to hide, especially when she answered the phone with a very carefully pronounced ‘Helloe.’ There was a small grand piano in her living room, which she played in a florid, romantic way, usually in the key of F major and often Vivienne and I would sing along. I remember songs like ‘Happy Talk’, from the musical South Pacific (1958). In that living room, tasteful paintings hung on the walls, including a copy of a Picasso woman. The room was light and warmed by central heating and there was a big window looking out onto the garden. The feeling of harmony and comfort contrasted with the coldness and oppressiveness I felt in my own home. I was at Vivienne’s house (I was about 15), when her sister Sylvia came to visit. Sylvia’s then fiancé/boyfriend Charles Enfield was a childhood friend of Hart’s. They brought some friends from London who were from the group working in The Studio with Hart and with Alfred Wolfsohn, or ‘Awe’ as he was called by his students, who must by that time have been nearing the end of his life. I remember discovering Derek Rosen, a founder member of the RHT (who was later known as Rossignol), in the garden and wondering if he was some kind of magical being (I had never met a gay dancer before!).4 I also recall the son of Hart’s wife Dorothy,5 Jonathan Hart,6 being there. Jonathan must have been about six years old; he left a

Early life  25

drawing behind which intrigued me. Then there was the deferential way in which Mary treated Charles Enfield as he reclined, reading in a deck chair in the garden, studying to become a psychiatrist and the patronising way in which he spoke my name with a thick, RP7 accent. This contrasted with the genuine warmth of Mary, Dorothy, Sylvia and Vivienne. That was my first contact with people from The Studio (which later became the RHT) and this constellation of unusual people impressed me deeply. The friendliness and creative expression of these Studio members was, however, tempered by Charles Enfield’s rather patronising, entitled attitude. This tension between cold, upper-class, patriarchal entitlement and the sense of openness, warmth and sincerity seemingly more aligned with the feminine, would become a recurring issue in my journey through the RHT. Vivienne and I had already begun singing with the guitar, inspired by the folk and pop music of the time, especially Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. As singing had always been such an elemental part of my life and my father had taught me a few chords on the guitar, it felt great to share this with Vivienne. We used to sit cosily on the thick yellow carpet in the little study at her house, sharing her guitar and singing all those dream-land songs, from ‘Silver Dagger,’ to ‘To Know Him is to Love Him,’ with harmonies that I discovered I could also produce vocally. We discussed school, boys, life in general and often did our homework and exam revision together. We also got jobs together in the holidays and one year picked fruit and potatoes after school on a local farm to earn pocket money, which was paid out in a little brown envelope that we received joyfully with our muddy fingers on Fridays. We laughed a lot about people and situations and had much in common, especially our slightly unusual and perhaps complementary family backgrounds. Although we were like sisters, we had quite different personalities and gifts. Vivienne was a wonderful visual artist and eventually studied for a degree in Fine Art at Newcastle University. At school, under the desk, she drew funny and affectionate cartoons and portraits of teachers and other students. I was so bad in art lessons I wasn’t allowed to take the exam. Vivienne, being left-handed and shortsighted, was quite hopeless at sports. I loved games lessons and athletics and I actually looked forward to running around in the icy winds on the vast sports field playing hockey. I also loved maths. Having heard that it wasn’t a subject that ‘girls could do,’ I immediately took it as a personal challenge to disprove this. It helped that we had a very enthusiastic maths teacher who got so carried away with resolving quadratic equations on the blackboard that when he ran out of space, he continued scrawling his calculations across the wall, which we found endearing and somehow encouraging. Vivienne’s artistic gifts contrasted with my more practical and logical abilities and she taught me a great deal about the world of self-expression, artistic style and beauty. I think that my more down-to-earth understanding of the world was also important for her. In history exams, she could write at length about the characters of kings and their advisors, but she passed her rubber to me so that I could pass it back with their dates pencilled on the back. Vivienne’s sense of humour had an

26  Part 1

affectionate, gentle and perceptive quality that I loved. She did great imitations of her Aunty Phyllis reciting music hall poems in her breathless Lancashire accent and much later something of this compassionate humour filtered into her approach to voice work and I hope, into my own. Once, I learned Bob Dylan’s ‘Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall’ and I sang this to Vivienne, accompanying myself on the guitar, when she came home after her first term at university. Something had grown in me in her absence and I really performed the song – singing full out with a strong voice and a lot of feeling. I remember her being very surprised and a little put out by this powerful interpretation. It was a moment that in a way, changed the balance of our relationship. I think perhaps it also signalled how later in my voyage of discovery as a singer, the vocal style and lyrics of Bruce Springsteen’s songs would move and inspire me as well.

Transition into womanhood Aged 15, during my fifth year in grammar school, I went on a school trip to France, where I stayed with a family in Strasbourg for two weeks. I had taken to French from the first lesson – I loved the structured and calm way the tiny, elderly French teacher explained the grammar and I was fascinated by the idea that in other countries people communicated using an entirely different set of words and did things so differently than in England. My trip to Strasbourg was the first time I had been ‘abroad,’ and I was entranced by it all, especially by the warmth and liveliness of the household where I stayed (including the pains au chocolat for breakfast). However, after returning from France, when I got off the bus which took me home from school, I was surprised to see my father waiting to meet me. He bore the news that my mother had left us. As my brother Dennis (later known as Noah)8 had left earlier that year to go to university, it meant there were now only my father and myself living in the small family bungalow and my father was extremely depressed. Having left, my mother attempted to train to become a nurse, then tried various jobs and finally, while working as a housekeeper, she had a schizophrenic breakdown. When I went, alone, to see her in the mental hospital, my first sight of her was in a padded cell with her arms constrained around her by some kind of special clothing. Eventually, as she had nowhere else to go, my mother came back to live with us, heavily medicated, having received electric shock treatment and no psychotherapy whatsoever. During the 18 months or so of her absence, I had become housekeeper and emotional support for my father. He was a gentle and intelligent man who seemed to love my mother despite everything, but he didn’t notice that I took advantage of the circumstances to enjoy the liberty my mother had never allowed. After the hour’s journey from school, I would pick up some shopping, cook supper and then Vivienne and I would often meet up to go dancing or to a concert in Bournemouth. This was how we got to see The Beatles, screaming ourselves hoarse: me for John, Vivienne for Paul.

Early life  27

Vivienne’s mother Mary was tolerant of our outings, so we would return together to her house and I would stay the night there. As Vivienne was a year and a half older than me, perhaps this tolerance was understandable, but we also gave Mary as mild a version of our activities as possible. During my mother’s absence, Mary was, for me, a precious and supportive presence. A sort of kind aunty whose parenting style was so different from my mother’s that I couldn’t actually recognise her as a substitute mother. Over the years, she slowly became a real friend and remained so until her death many years later at the age of 94. The timing of my mother’s absence and breakdown was unfortunate for me. I didn’t feel sad about her leaving because her presence had become so oppressive and dominating that I was simply glad of the freedom. I felt relief that the atmosphere of a continual, silent war between her and my father was gone, though I was very concerned for my father. At the same time, I was going through important stages in my life, not only at school, where I was beginning to work towards my A-levels, but also in terms of my transition into womanhood. Instead of receiving support from my parents, I had to support them. My teachers were unaware of all this and it took a toll. My exam results were not good enough for university so, as I was underage, I used the extra year to stay on at school and sit the exams again. During this extra year, I joined three other boys who were also Sixth Form students and who had started a folk group.9 We performed in pubs and made a record (privately). My parents, however, never came to see us. At this time, I also had a loyal and loving, slightly older boyfriend. Luckily, he had a car and would drive me to these gigs, my father having refused to let me start to learn as ‘girls don’t need to drive.’ (My brother had been allowed to use the family car to learn and to pass his driving test as soon as he was 18.) Strangely and very hurtfully for me, after my mother returned home, my parents behaved as if nothing had happened. There was no recognition of the responsibilities I had carried for more than a year and of the support I needed at least for my studies. The old regime and tensions set in again and I couldn’t wait to leave home myself. In the summer of 1963, I hitch-hiked to Spain with my boyfriend and in 1964 to Italy and really did not get back to my studies as I should have done, with the result that I didn’t get a university place again. My boyfriend wanted to emigrate with me to New Zealand, but the idea filled me with horror. I still wanted to study at university. Although I had learned to play the piano and obviously loved singing, it was never suggested that I should study music or singing. The assumption was that it was now up to me to find my own way to earn a living. So, I moved to Birmingham where my brother Dennis was studying at university and got a job as a teaching assistant in a primary school in Balsall Heath, a very deprived suburb where there was a large population of African and Pakistani immigrants. I rented a room in the house full of hippy students where Dennis was living, and I would leave for work every morning at about 7am. When I arrived home around 5pm my housemates were often just getting up or lying around in an atmosphere heavy with marijuana smoke listening to John Coltrane or Miles Davis.

28  Part 1

During the nine months that I managed to keep working like this, I became responsible for a large Year 2 class, covering for the teacher who was off sick. I had really no idea how to organise this large multi-ethnic group, about eight of whom spoke no English and several of whose genders I could not guess either by their clothes or their names. This inner-city multicultural environment was totally new for me. Also, as I was still applying for a place at university, I started attending evening classes in Latin, which took place in a dark building somewhere in the town centre under a flyover rather than in the well-lit modern class rooms of the grammar school I had just left. Although I kept working at the school, I was struggling with deep fears and insecurities during my time in Birmingham. I felt lost and terribly alone – my housemates were all young adults in their second or third year at university. I was a school leaver. My brother Dennis was also going through a very dark and difficult period of psychological struggle and was mostly not around. He ‘dropped out’ of university during that year and went to Nigeria. I helped raise money for him to be repatriated from Lagos, when he ran out of money there. I could say that a typical pattern was beginning to emerge from the maelstrom of my search for identity and voice as a young woman, in which I found myself pouring my energy into caring for others. ‘Typical’ because, like many young women, I had been taught that my own needs were not as important as those of others, especially men’s. Like most women in England at that time, I was already struggling with the constraints imposed by the patriarchal culture that later, in the RHT, I believe, undermined my search for individuation. Following the influence of my brother and his friends I tried smoking marijuana but hated it. Then I was persuaded to take LSD to ‘get beyond my ego,’ a commonplace experiment in the 1960s, but basically destructive for a very young, naive woman still in the process of developing a functioning ego. Inevitably, this experience pushed me further into my mentally tormented state. I felt terribly lost and was often overwhelmed by the feeling that I had no value, no legitimate reason to exist. I was not able to express any of this and looking back, I was really in need of psychological support. I wasn’t singing and the household where I was living mocked my love of Bob Dylan, whose songs actually came the closest to expressing my anguish. Cool, voice-less jazz was the approved music in the house and ‘cool’ behaviour was the required norm. However, my friendship with Vivienne continued, and we met up during the holiday period in Newcastle. She never got involved in drug-taking, though she was having her own psychological struggles.10 She began talking to me more about The Studio in London where her sister and people like those I had already met years before in her garden were gathering together to sing and explore the connection between their voices and their lives. At this time in Newcastle, I met Vivienne’s close friend Richard Armstrong,11 who also later joined The Studio. In the spring of that year, when I was finally offered a place at Hull University to study Philosophy and Sociology, I was overjoyed, believing that my life had at last found some direction. I felt as if the doors to paradise had been opened for me

Early life  29

(perhaps not a common description of Hull at that time!). As it turned out, studying Philosophy was probably more useful than English, because I did learn a little about how to order my ideas and to begin to articulate complicated questions and, of course, it was wonderful to be supported by a full grant. Probably the turbulence that troubled the years in which I moved from grammar school to work and then to Hull University, was largely a result of my mother’s breakdown and my father’s emotional immaturity. But, of course, they were not themselves to blame. Their problems were similar to those of many working-class people of their generation who had had to give all their energies to earning their living and surviving. They had little time and scant models for creative introspection or self-development. My parents were both profoundly handicapped by having had access to only the most basic education and, looking back now, I can only admire their courage and persistence in nevertheless building their own lives and sustaining a family for as long as they did with very little support from their extended family or society at large. Growing up as a girl in that environment and at that time, my sense of self became, from very early on, inevitably distorted and limited by the patriarchal attitude to women that permeated almost every aspect of life, especially in working class society. I had in many ways already internalised this oppression so that the future for which I was automatically destined took hold of me, despite my deeper longings and possible potential. Within that social context and with no positive role models, my emerging questions about my place in the world, my raison d’être, could only receive unsatisfactory answers based on the assumption that my function was basically to serve others, rather than to follow my own creative path and, in other words, to find and truly own my own voice. It was this deep need that inevitably drew me to work with Hart.

Notes 1 The Goon Show, a British radio comedy programme originally produced and broadcast by the BBC from 1951 to 1960. Peter Sellars, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe were the main stars and their surrealist and absurd humour influenced performers from The Beatles to Monty Python. 2 The General Certificate of Education (GCE) is a subject-specific family of academic qualifications that awarding bodies in England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Crown dependencies and a few Commonwealth countries confered on students. The exam was normally taken at age 16. 3 Vivienne Young, B.A. Hons (born in the UK, 1944), was a founder member of RHT who originally trained as a painter at Newcastle University. She participated in the early performances of the group in London as an actor, singer and as a director. She died on the 18 May 1975 in the car accident in France that killed Roy Hart and his wife Dorothy. 4 Derek  Isaac  Rossignol  (born Rosenberg, in 1923, in Kimberley, South Africa) was a founder member of RHT who originally trained as dancer. He died in 2010 in Malérargues. 5 Dorothy Findlay was born in Kenya on 8 May 1926 and attended Cambridge University. Whilst there she started a relationship with fellow student Chief Kidaha Makwaia from

30  Part 1

6 7 8

9 10 11

Tanzania and had a child, Jonathan. She was an accomplished pianist and teacher. After meeting and marrying Roy Hart, she became an essential part of the RHT, making important creative and intellectual contributions to the work. She died in the car accident in which Roy Hart and Vivienne Young also lost their lives on the 18 May 1975. Jonathan Hart Makwaia (born in London, 1957) is Roy Hart’s stepson and is a founder member of RHT. He is an innovative vocalist, teacher, composer and actor and lives in New York, USA. Received Pronunciation, indicating the accent traditionally regarded as the hegemonic standard for British English. It is often associated with the upper classes. Noah Dennis Pikes (born in the UK, 1941) is a founder member of RHT and of the Whole Voice approach to voice teaching and coaching. He is a teacher, speaker and, as a writer, is the author of DARK VOICES: The Genesis of Roy Hart Theatre Vol. 1 (2004/2019). He lives in Zürich, Switzerland. In the education systems of the UK and some other Commonwealth countries, sixth form represents the two last years of secondary education, where students prepare for their A-level (or equivalent) examinations. I recently discovered an old letter I wrote to Vivienne at this time in which I encouraged her to be patient and not to expect too much of herself. I wrote ‘We have 80 years to achieve all these things.’ Sadly, as it turned out, her 80 years were cut tragically short. Richard Armstrong (born in the UK, 1945) was a founder member of RHT who originally trained as a painter at Newcastle University. He participated in the early performances of the RHT as an actor and as a director. He is a well-respected teacher, director and performer and lives in New York City, USA.

2 A CONSCIOUS FAMILY Voice work at The Studio and Abraxas Club with Roy Hart Margaret Pikes

Hesitation In my first year at university, I began attending meetings at The Studio in Golders Green, hitch-hiking down from Hull to London. On one of these visits, I met and began a relationship with a painter who was 12 years older than me. He lived in Putney and for two years or so I stayed with him on my visits to London. I remember the first meeting I attended at The Studio, being met at the front door by a young woman in pink crimplene ski-slacks who invited me in with a smile. I was mainly used to cool hippies in jeans and baggy sweaters who only smiled when they were stoned, so I was already disorientated and became even more so, when I saw and heard the other people present, who to me looked very ‘bourgeois.’ I felt frightened yet at the same time comforted by the atmosphere of care and concentration. Early on, Roy Hart called me to the piano to work. I had no idea what I was supposed to do, and I can’t remember very much except that I stood at the piano and looked into his face and found it very strange. He wore thick-rimmed glasses and when he smiled, he showed a gap between his two front teeth. He gave the feeling that he was a big person as he sat at the piano, although he wasn’t actually very tall. I didn’t like his RP1 way of speaking, but I understood somehow that it wasn’t really his ‘natural’ voice but was how he chose to present himself. It was a kind of careful mask employed to communicate neutrally, yet which in some way made you feel safe. So, there I was, at the piano in front of Hart. He didn’t say very much, he just played notes and I followed with my voice. At a certain point, he asked me to move my arms and that felt right. I understood physically what he meant. I must have been so frightened that my arms were glued to my sides with my shoulders up by my ears! And this simple movement freed me. I sounded, and it was wonderful to

32  Part 1

have somebody listen, trying to really connect with where I was. This helped me to feel my own voice in a much more direct and conscious way. At the end of my ‘lesson,’ I sang the melody of ‘Plaisir D’Amour’ as Roy accompanied on the piano. I continued attending meetings at The Studio and receiving lessons when I could, but after some months I stopped. I felt too out of place: that I just did not belong with these people who, to my eyes, formed such a tightly knit, bourgeois group. Also, more pragmatically, I didn’t like the discipline that was needed: regular attendance when I was in London and arriving exactly on time. Added to this, my painter boyfriend hated me going to these sessions and made fun of the whole idea of the extended voice. So, I continued my studies in Hull and after I got my BA, I studied in London for a postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE), struggling nevertheless with the knowledge that the Wolfsohn-Hart voice work at The Studio was really important for me and that I seemed to lack the courage to truly engage with it. I also felt I was losing touch with Vivienne. After this pause and period of confused reflection about my attendance at The Studio, I began to have voice lessons there again – mostly with Marita Günther and Kaya Andersen, who had been students of Wolfsohn and who had continued working with Hart after Wolfsohn’s death. In a typical lesson there would be two or three students who might start by each in turn sounding as fully as possible on a pitch given by the teacher from the piano. After a while, the teacher might work more specifically with one of the students and the others would listen attentively or mirror the sounds. There was usually some encouragement for physical engagement: pushing against or resisting another student while sounding, or (rarely) more gentle contact. I remember one series of lessons where there were often several of us crawling over another student sounding on the floor as they tried to get up! Sometimes we might be asked to role play characters that might encourage or provoke the sounding student to contact a more authentically angry or sad or sensual sound. As I remember, the main focus during those lessons was on bringing out strong energy in the voice, exploring the range and vocal sources (mostly deep belly or chest.) Sometimes we might work with a word or phrase like ‘Anima viva’ or ‘I want .  . .’ bringing the voice fully and bodily into all the vowels. These sounds could be on a single pitch or move over several, sometimes over a three- or fournote arpeggio given by the teacher from the piano, which would move slowly up the scale with each outbreath. You were trying to hold onto the same source of the sound as the pitches changed. As the lesson advanced each student would become the focus of the work. The lessons were both exhausting and deeply exhilarating as well as often cathartic. I would return from these sessions full of radiant energy to the dark, smokefilled bedsit where the painter, accompanied by Shostakovich, would be far away in his expressionist collage making. I began to realise that he had no interest in my artistic development or my existential questions and fears, and that I was basically just a sex-object for him. Then one Sunday, while he was away working a shift of his day job, I just packed my bag and moved out. I went to stay with Vivienne and

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Richard Armstrong who by this time were living in a flat in Ladbroke Grove and were committed members of The Studio. There followed months of coping with my struggling ex-boyfriend and his emotional blackmail, including some months where he had some voice lessons and attended meetings with Hart, but (I’m happy to say) he eventually moved on, married again and became a very successful painter in Canada. Vivienne and I soon found a big flat in Belsize Park in the Hampstead area of North London and began living there with Richard and two other members of ‘the group,’ which was the way we referred to the people working at The Studio. From there, we attended long meetings on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays with Hart in Golders Green and then at the Hampstead Squash Club, (renamed by Hart as the Abraxas Club). We also each had weekly voice ‘singing’ lessons with one of the older members, such as Dorothy Hart, Marita Günther, Kaya Andersen,2 Elizabeth Mayer,3 Derek Rosen, Robert Harvey4 or Barry Irwin5 (no longer with Hart himself), for which we were asked to pay what we could. I seem to remember paying seven shillings and six pence, which I had to ritually put on the piano before the lesson began, making eye contact with my teacher as I did so. During this time, I was working as a primary school teacher and I really enjoyed the contact with children that this gave me. However, while sitting in the gloomy staffroom having a cup of tea during break times, I became increasingly aware of how most of the other teachers seemed to be bored with their lives. I felt very glad that my life also included my engagement with the voice work and the group formed around it. I am sure that Vivienne and Richard, who were also working as art teachers in local secondary schools, felt the same.

The synthetic family During this time, around 1968–1970, a wave of younger students arrived, many of whom were connected as friends, or friends of friends, to Vivienne, and the Squash Club gave employment to a number of members of the group. This wave of new students reflected the Zeitgeist of that time, when many young people were exploring communal living; pursuing new ways to heal the mind/body split; seeking spiritual guidance and a place where they could feel they ‘belonged.’ It should be perhaps noted that group members did not give money to Hart. They paid only what they could afford to their teachers for singing lessons. The Roy Hart Theatre (RHT) was, in this sense, a philanthropic organization, committed to enabling group members to focus intensely on their personal and artistic development through work on the extended voice. For Hart, it had become a synthetic family. He wrote: Twenty years ago, I started a dedicated study of the human voice. Today I find that I am the head of a group of some thirty people who form a kind of synthetic, growing family . . . with its purposive way of living. (Hart 1967)

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In the same paper, he refers several times to this idea of the group as a family: I have described my work and the family ties it has caused as an example of integrating work that can be done within the existing framework of society. (ibid.) Hart was (as he said) the head of this synthetic family and he developed within it an implicit hierarchical structure with his leadership at the top. The older teachers were on the rung below him and some of the newer members also occupied higher positions, usually because of their personal relationships with Hart. This hierarchical structure had in my view, both positive and negative effects. It allowed everyone to have a voice teacher who was at the same time a mentor, aware of many of the intimate and personal aspects of the student’s life and who also had a closer connection with Hart. And Hart did follow each student in an amazingly personal way. But the hierarchy was also restrictive, in so far as its almost military ethos underpinned the authoritarian nature of Hart’s, by then, unquestionable position of what (in the context of his idea of the synthetic family) might be called paternal power. Hart was often scathing about our biological families and we were strongly encouraged to distance ourselves from them in order, I suppose, to further the process of individuation. However, in my case (and that of my brother) there was a time when during one of our mother’s psychotic breakdowns, she came to live with me for some months and attended meetings. She also began to write poetry. Hart treated her gently and with care, focusing on one of her questions as part of the material we were currently considering. It was: ‘What’s going on?’ I was both touched and embarrassed by this. Eventually her behaviour became too difficult to handle and Vivienne’s mother Mary (who had befriended her) came to fetch her and took her again to a mental hospital.6

Voice and movement Some very significant changes and encounters happened in the six years from 1968 to 1974, including the move (in 1968) from the Ridgeway to the Abraxas Club (in which the Hampstead Squash Club was housed), which became the base for our meetings and rehearsals. This move was important in opening up Hart’s work to a wider public and also brought physical training, dance and body work more intensively into the voice work, with movement classes and general physical fitness becoming almost obligatory. We were sometimes allowed to join the club’s movement classes and could also use the squash courts. Robert Harvey, Barry Irwin and Gaël Andrews7 led movement and dance classes for club members and also for the RHT; I learnt a great deal from these teachers. We were pushed hard physically and taught basic ballet and modern dance exercises, which I found challenging, but greatly enabled me to develop better coordination, awareness of my body in space and also to just simply enjoy dancing. Deep, searching vocal work happened in voice lessons which included talking

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about dreams and personal issues, as already explained. Physical training took place in dedicated movement classes. These two disciplines weren’t integrated directly but in rehearsals voice and movement just happened simultaneously and this was further developed, perhaps, following the theatrical impact it made. I also took up jogging (a word not at that time used for outdoor running as exercise) and I began to recognise the importance of deep breathing and endurance. I enjoyed playing squash, but my lack of self-confidence made it frustratingly difficult for me to hold the centre of the court, as this is in fact a very important aspect of the game. Overall, this body work was invaluable in helping me and the other members of the group, who hitherto had had no movement training, to develop an inner strength as well as a better level of fitness, and made it possible for us to give ourselves as fully as we later did on stage. I believe it was also to a large extent responsible for the improvement I felt in my mental health. It has also been shown that the act of singing itself stimulates the production of endorphins and helps to create a sense of community.8 In voice lessons, I was also often encouraged to use movement to help to directly amplify the connection with a vocal source or, at other moments, to move in a way that resembled the character my sound evoked. Amplifying the connection with a vocal source deep in my body could take the form, for example, of pushing against another student, as I strove to contact a deeper source by sounding on the low notes played on the piano by my teacher. If I was alone in the class I might instead sound while pushing against the (unmovable) piano. At other times the movement suggested by the teacher could be lighter; skipping or dancing to express a more carefree character, or perhaps embodying a darker image by walking heavily, dropping my centre of gravity to feel like a big bear as I sounded. However, not all vocal work was accompanied by external physicality. Exploring space through movement is also closely connected with exploring inner spaces through vocal work and thus can provide an invisible but nonetheless powerful way to prepare for and to support vocal liberation. Sometimes in a voice lesson, I would travel in my imagination, accompanying my sounds with images. I remember an important lesson with Marita Günther where she led me in this way into a warm, tender contralto sound. I was sounding in the middle of my vocal range and engaging strongly in my imagination and in my feeling world while looking at a small painting on the wall of the studio, depicting bright colours coming like a vibrant rainbow from a woman’s open mouth as she sang. Marita heard the special quality in my voice and made me hold on to it and amplify it. As I did this, it seemed to come from a source directly in my heart and I was literally touched by a profound sensation of both grief and truth that actually physically ached as I sang. The connection between voice and body is complex. Hart described the way his students worked on their voices as: [A] very formidable, disciplined training. They attack with the utmost effort of body and will the different centres of energy – a form of shock treatment for the cells, a biological shake that one hopes will occasionally spark

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off a new communication between two yearning synapse. Certain sounds stimulate the cortex, others vibrate the genitals, almost all are controlled by the diaphragm and the mind, and the most rewarding sounds involve a fine, tight-rope-walking communication between head, guts, diaphragm, fingertips and toes. (Hart 1972) Hart also explained that [S]inging, as we practise it, is literally the resurrection or redemption of the body. The capacity to ‘hold’ the voice in identification with the body makes biological reality of the concept ‘I am.’ (Hart 1967) In order for this kind of identification or ‘redemption’ to happen, the body needs to be prepared and awakened because it is also a question of being conscious of the connections between voice, body and image, so that they can be repeated and integrated. This is one of the aspects of Hart’s work which differentiates it so entirely from primal screaming and also from the use of electronic amplification to create distorted and weird vocal effects that have only a superficial connection with the body of the vocalist.9 The fact that Hart saw his work on the extended voice as a way of understanding and integrating the unconscious and thus to become, according to his terminology, ‘more conscious,’ leads to the question as to how far his work can be called freeing the ‘natural’ voice.10

Singing lessons Voice lessons were in fact called singing lessons, even though we were more often than not sounding vocally in a way that would not traditionally be called ‘singing,’ in that the aim was to engage the body and to connect with both physical and imaginative sources of the sound as a way to explore the whole range. That a piano was used to give musical pitches to these sounds made it a kind of singing, and sometimes students did use songs as a vehicle to explore the range. Hart, following Wolfsohn, sometimes called the work that we did with him including in meetings, rehearsals, talks and voice lessons, the singing process. The room that we used for our singing lessons at The Studio in Dorothy Hart’s house at the Ridgeway in Golders Green was the size of a large living room and so relatively intimate, contributing to a feeling of security. My lessons, every Saturday morning, lasted for at least three hours and there were usually two or three students present. My voice teacher was for many years Kaya Andersen, who had worked with Wolfsohn. She sat, often wrapped elegantly in a warm shawl, at the piano, and would usually work with a focus on each student individually, while the other(s)

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would be asked to join in either with physical engagement or by dramatically acting and sounding characters to mirror or oppose the student in focus. Sometimes a student might tell a dream, which could become the theme for the lesson, or it might simply be a voyage of discovery as the teacher guided us into exploring the areas of our voices which, in her experience, would be helpful to cultivate.

Rivers The regular and long thrice-weekly meetings we attended had been renamed by Hart as Rivers, in my understanding, as a poetic way to overcome the bureaucratic and boring implications of the word ‘meeting.’ After we had left the Ridgeway, the Rivers took place with the group sitting on low stools (whose cushions I had personally upholstered), on the top floor of the Hampstead Squash Club and were always led by Hart sitting by the piano, in his black, high-backed swivel chair. The subject matter of these meetings is hard to describe but centred on the many less obvious dimensions of the voice work and in a way, flowed like a river from its source – Hart. To come to the observances of mind and spirit, each student is given constant exercises in mental concentration, comprehension, verbalisation, memory. He is trained to bring into the studio an awareness of his outside activities and relationships, and to be prepared at any moment to render these experiences in dramatic form. There is group discussion of dreams and personal problems. The dreams are often used in artistic formula, dance, drama, and painting. (Hart 1967) Sometimes Rivers would be concerned with a letter written to Hart by one of the group or with someone’s dream or relationship problems. At other times, Hart, or occasionally another group member, would bring a book or newspaper article which would be read out in the meeting and which he felt contained insights into his ideas about the core values of our work on exploring the voice. I once was given the mission to read and report in a meeting on Tools for Conviviality by Ivan Illich (1973), which I think Hart felt touched on his beliefs about the importance of individual consciousness and how our exploration of the human (as opposed to the specialised operatic or theatrical) voice, helped to develop this: I choose the term ‘conviviality’ to designate the opposite of industrial productivity. I intend it to mean autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment; and this in contrast with the conditioned response of persons to the demands made upon them by others, and by a man-made environment. (Illich 1973: 11)

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This kind of reading and discussion of scholarly texts was in fact an encouragement to ‘use our heads’: to develop our intellectual faculties as well as our physicality. I believe this was also Hart’s aim when he encouraged the creation of the Roy Hart Theatre Journals.11 These journals contain very personal pieces of writing by members of the group, some of which are remarkably rich and articulate, while others can seem to be evidence of a cult-like sycophancy. In fact, Hart sometimes encouraged this kind of blind obeisance, perhaps because he believed it to be akin to a kind of modelling: a step away from old psychological habits towards genuine individuation. He also sometimes strongly rejected behaviour that tried mindlessly to deliver what the person thought Hart ‘wanted’ and he actively encouraged originality stemming from a centred source. On one occasion, Barry Irwin arrived quietly drunk in a River. We all expected trouble, but Hart completely accepted this and as I remember, Barry drifted off to sleep at one point with no intervention from Hart! In general, a strict code of listening was the rule, and manifestations of an unconscious lack of concentration like fidgeting were remarked on critically. Hart would almost always pick up on coughing. He would then imply that you should consider what this unconscious vocal expression was all about. It could be, on occasions, difficult to keep up this concentration and once, as someone was telling a dream which included the image of a stone whale, I caught Vivienne’s eye and we both got the giggles. This was an un-heard of response to a dream and we struggled hard to contain our mirth but finished up by having to go out and regain our composure. I don’t remember there being any further retribution though, other than our own embarrassment. In some Rivers, Hart might guide the telling of a dream or just a discussion, into a voice lesson or into a physical and vocal group improvisation. There were also Rivers where Hart would call for responses, for example, to a letter he had received from one of the group and these responses would be analysed and judged in ways that I often found quite mysterious. If your response was judged to be ‘negative’ or otherwise uncreative, you might receive a strongly critical, verbal attack from Hart which would then affect the way others in the group responded to you for days afterwards. This could be quite a traumatic experience, especially when, as was often true for me, the reasons for your unacceptable response were rooted simply in a basic lack of confidence. On one occasion, Hart attacked me like this, after an incident in which, while visiting our flat, he had found me in the kitchen meticulously sticking Green Shield stamps12 into their book to be sent to collect the reward for which we, as a household, had been collecting them. For him, I suppose, this activity had seemed ludicrously inartistic. Coming from my background, it was just a normal way of being financially astute, but of course my housemates did not weigh in to defend me! I basically dreaded the Rivers because I felt so disempowered. However, I did manage at times to understand that Hart responded approvingly to people who were in a state of balanced energy: who somehow radiated centred and grounded

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presence. Although sometimes I seemed to achieve this state of grace, I did not really understand how, and it appeared to me more to do with magic than with a deeper or fairer understanding of my being. Perhaps what Hart was following in these meetings was less a logical discourse and more of a theatrical exchange, connected to body language, presence and creative energy, which he was able to recognise by drawing on his experience and gifts as a performer as well as the experience of his work with Wolfsohn.

Ideas fundamental to Hart’s praxis Apart from the ideas of Wolfsohn, there were two other major influences on Hart’s work: the philosophy of G. I. Gurdjieff (1872–1949) and of C. G. Jung (1875–1961). Gurdjieff believed that most people, while seemingly awake, are actually in many ways asleep, because they do not develop their full potential as human beings. He taught ways to attain a higher level of consciousness which he called The Work (meaning work on oneself) or the System. He also called his teaching the Fourth way in that he believed it combined the three ways of the yogi, the fakir and the monk. Hart was very interested in Gurdjieff’s teaching and asked us to read Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous ([1949] 2001). One of Gurdjieff’s main ideas, as articulated by Ouspensky, was that despite most people (‘men’), living so unconsciously that it is as if they are asleep or like machines, there are some who are able to work towards awakening their lives and becoming more conscious through connecting knowledge with being. Ouspensky quotes Gurdjieff: Everything in the world, from solar systems to man and from man to atom, either rises or descends, either evolves or degenerates, either develops or decays. But nothing evolves mechanically. Only degeneration and destruction evolve mechanically. That which cannot evolve consciously degenerates. (Ouspensky 2001: 70 [italics in original]) In 1963, in a letter to one of his early students, Hart wrote about his work in a somewhat esoteric, mystical fashion reminiscent of some of Gurdjieff’s ideas: Truly only such a biological discipline such as SING [sic] could help us grope towards a new philosophy of LOVE which is a philosophy of being constantly in awareness . . . we seek to establish the meaningful hierarchical gradations, the organic stratifications  between the  essentially POLAR significance of our BEING. The degree of coldness in death, the passion of LIFE is inexorably governed by the need to literally keep in touch with the awareness of the true meaning of SINGING, which to me is the epitomisation [sic] of FREEDOM on a BIOLOGICAL LEVEL; for me all that  IS – SINGS. (Hart 1963, original emphasis)

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Hart’s belief that exploring the extended, human voice is a discipline which leads to increased consciousness and which should include work on the body as well as on the intellect and the psyche, resembles Gurdjieff’s multi-dimensional view of the process of work on the self. There is perhaps a certain link between Gurdjieff’s movement exercises and ‘sacred dances’ which, although designed to support meditation, could be seen to connect with Hart’s wish to go deeper into the roots of authentic performance.13 Hart also stressed that for those exploring the extended voice, as for those following the Fourth way, the utmost dedication was essential. Again, like Gurdjieff, Hart also believed that not everyone is capable of evolving greater consciousness – in Hart’s case, he sometimes said that those who were, had an X factor. The other major influence on Hart’s ideas was C. G. Jung’s depth psychology. This had been an ongoing and important influence on Wolfsohn’s work and Hart continued this. He used Jung’s concepts of the collective unconscious and the archetypes that are shaped therein, to frame aspects of his vocal exploration, especially when working to encompass opposites like dark and light, height and depth, or male and female. Following Jung, Hart often referenced the god Abraxas (who also figures in the Gnostic belief system). Abraxas can be briefly described as representing the psychological work on the synthesis of opposites, which was central to Jung’s philosophy. According to Jung: This is a god whom ye knew not, for mankind forgot it. We name it by its name Abraxas. It is more indefinite still than god and devil. (Jung 1916. Sermon II) From his early collaboration with Freud, Jung took as a basis the theory that the psyche is formed of the conscious mind with which we rationalise, perceive, interact and function as part of our current awareness, and the unconscious, which influences our basic impulses, thoughts, feelings and memories and is outside of our conscious cognisance. After parting ways with Freud, Jung experienced an intense personal confrontation with the unconscious during the years 1913 to 1919, which coincided, in fact, with the years during which Wolfsohn lived his terrible confrontation with death while enlisted in the German army in World War I. From his powerful psychological journey, Jung developed his belief that personal fulfilment lay in seeking throughout one’s life to develop individuation, or the transcendent function,14  by working to integrate the opposite forces of conscious and unconscious within the psyche. He saw this as a spiritual journey which is close in fact to the way Wolfsohn and Hart approached their work. Jung also wrote in this essay that ‘[l]ife is born of the spark of opposites’ ( Jung 1970a: 48). For Jung dreams, coming directly from the unconscious, give us insight into the hidden depths of our psyche and often use archetypal images to express our inner processes. The archetypes themselves are, according to Jung, elemental forms which exist in our collective unconscious from birth (ibid. 81). The word archetype comes from the two Greek words:  arche, signifying broadly ‘origins’ or ‘cause’,

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and type, signifying ‘imprint’ or ‘form,’ so literally meaning ‘original form.’ These underlying, unconscious templates can give rise, potentially, to an infinite number of images, symbols and behaviour patterns the most notable of which are perhaps: the shadow; the wise old man/woman; the child; the trickster; the hero; the anima and the animus and the self. Individuation requires building the ability to hold the tension between the opposing forces (often recognisable as archetypes,) in the psyche: A psychological theory . . . must base itself on the principle of opposition; for without this it could only re-establish a neurotically unbalanced psyche. There is no balance, no system of self-regulation, without opposition. The psyche is just such a self-regulating system. (Jung 1970a: 52) Mozart’s The Magic Flute was used in the Wolfsohn-Hart vocal tradition to symbolise, vocally, the tensions between the opposite extremes of spirituality represented by the two main characters (in themselves archetypal images).15 The Queen of the Night, with her violent and vengeful possessiveness, expressed vocally with fantastic energy in a high soprano, was seen as the epitome of feminine emotionality and possessiveness. Both men and women in the group could well be accused of being caught in a kind of negative archetypal energy attributed to the Queen of the Night. In contrast, Zarastro, the bass baritone-voiced man was the high priest and epitome of wisdom and calm authority. As Cavarero provocatively suggests from a feminist critical perspective, ‘woman sings, man thinks’ (Cavarero 2005: 6). It is interesting perhaps to note that when the aria was interpreted by a young male student within the group, it was received with great admiration. As well as the major influences of Gurdjieff and Jung, Hart also maintained a constant interest in contemporary philosophical, sociological and scientific ideas. Among these I remember a book by Philip Rieff called Fellow Teachers (1973), which we were instructed to read. It is very densely written, but later I understood that it probably interested Hart because its thesis seemed to be that ideas central to the permissive or the therapeutic society, as Rieff called it, which had been increasingly influencing teaching and culture generally, represented a dangerous intellectual weakness. He argued that therapy encourages people to ignore their superego so that, in a way, they lose touch with cultural interdictions. Rieff (1966), considered a high culture to be a culture of truth, and he gives ancient Israel as an example, in contrast to modern Jewish society where therapy is so indulged that everything is possible and nothing is binding. I believe Hart might have been interested in Rieff’s ideas because they basically affirm his defence against the accusations that he frequently encountered, of being too authoritarian and not permissive enough. I also recall other fragments of Hart’s philosophy that emerged in Rivers, and that I believe he developed through his wide reading. One such interesting idea was that of the pathology of growth. This referred to the idea that a person’s psychic growth, or development towards individuation, was often marked by that

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individual’s displaying symptoms of some kind – often a cold or flu (which Hart thus renamed ‘a warm’). Thomas Moore, a psychotherapist working with Jungian ideas, writes about the ‘body’s poetics of illness’ (Moore 1992: 155). He suggests that as well as, (not instead of), the univocal factual interpretation of disease, it can be helpful to also consider a more poetic view. Is the body trying to tell us something about our emotional or existential problems when we are ill? I believe that Hart’s renaming of flu was to encourage reflection on the way the body can express profound personal transformations, especially those born out of a movement away from a heroic clinging onto the status quo. Hart seemed to imply that holding on to this attitude come what may, either directly in voice work or within discussion in the context of the Rivers, can be a defence against psychological growth. An apparently ‘pathological’ bodily expression can signal an opening, or ‘letting go’ to a more creative state of mind and increased vocal range. Hart also spoke of the mysterious organisation of minute matter, which I understood intuitively to refer to the still unexplained origins of life – and how it has developed into such myriad forms including the enigmatic forces at work in human spirit and society. Although this phrase can sound like vague, mystical thinking, and although scientific research has discovered much about the behaviour of sub-atomic particles, it remains impossible to be completely sure about what the universe is made of. The mysterious ‘dark matter’ is still only identifiable by its effects on gravity.16 On another level, scientists are also discovering how the microbiome (minute organisms in the gut) exert influence on health and behaviour and can themselves be strongly influenced by the emotions, especially by stress (Enders 2014: 118). In some way, Hart seemed to infer also that the mysterious organization of minute matter also explained how things in life can sometimes just fall felicitously into place, perhaps following Jung’s concept of acausal synchronicity.17 All these ideas were intimately connected with Hart’s work on his own voice and through that work he had in many ways embodied them. Being present in the studio and listening to him vocalising was a very powerful experience, which I have described to my students as like being in the room with a lion.

Practice moves towards performance For me personally, being part of the cohesive group that had gathered around Hart at that formative time in my life gave me a supportive, creative, if often challenging, context in which to develop personally. The regular voice work, movement classes and physical training really did bring about a positive transformation of my physical and mental health as I became immersed in all the integrating work that belonging to Hart’s family implied. Like many of the other group members of my generation who had joined in the latter part of the 1960s, as we began rehearsals aimed at presenting our work to each other or to small invited audiences, I also learned more about the bridge between the personal, transforming aspects of our research and performance. I understood this bridge to be related to throwing light into the unconscious in so far as opening

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the chaotic/poetic inner world of the psyche to the view of others, opens a channel along which communication can travel in both directions. The audience has the possibility to feel something of their own inner human drama played out and so to experience some kind of catharsis. Their presence, on the other hand, obliges the performers to exteriorise and objectify their personal research and so transform it from therapy to art. This for me, resembles how Jung’s concept of the persona intermediates between the unconscious inner world of the individual and the external demands of society. Jung defines the persona in the following way: The persona is a complicated system of relations between the individual consciousness and society, fittingly enough a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and on the other, to conceal the true nature of the individual. (Jung 1970a: 190) In performance, the two sides of this mask are experienced and embodied. Perhaps the fact that the mask was an integral part of ancient Greek theatre is linked to this theory, added to which it is thought that masks may have helped vocal projection. Certainly, Hart’s choice of Euripides The Bacchae as our first public performance must have been based on his wish to use a play that could contain and portray the roots of his work in both ancient Greek drama, which is at the origin of Western theatre and in archetypal psychology.

Notes 1 RP stands for Received Pronunciation, indicating the accent traditionally regarded as the hegemonic standard for British English. It is often associated with the upper classes. 2 Kaya Andersen began working with Wolfsohn and Hart in 1956. She was a founder member of the RHT and participated in all their early performances. She continues to live and teach in Malérargues. 3 Elizabeth Mayer (1936–2009) was a founder member of the RHT and participated in all of their early performances. Later, she became President of Pantheatre, where she worked and collaborated with fellow RHT members Enrique Pardo and Linda Wise. 4 Robert Mcfarlane Harvey (born in 1925 in Ballarat, Australia; died in 2009, in Ganges, France), originally a professional dancer in the West End of London, was a founder member of RHT. He participated in the early performances of the RHT as an actor and as a director and later created and performed in several successful solo and duo pieces. He was a well-respected and much sought-after teacher and director. 5 Barrie Irwin (born Coghlan, 1927–1983) originally a professional dancer, was a founder member of RHT. (He had been the lead Jet in the first performances of West Side Story in London.) He participated in the early performances of the RHT as an actor and as a director and was a gentle, intelligent and gifted performer, actor and teacher, who was loved by all for his story telling and ‘out-of-the-box’ way of approaching things. He died after suffering from a stroke in Malérargues. 6 My mother was able to leave the hospital after some months and continued, on medication, to live with my father, while sadly continuing to suffer from recurring bouts of schizophrenic breakdowns.

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7 Gaël Andrews was a founder member of RHT who was also formerly known as Hans. He left the Malérargues community in the late 1970s to work as an independent voice trainer. 8 ‘We show that singing, dancing and drumming all trigger endorphin release (indexed by an increase in post-activity pain tolerance) in contexts where merely listening to music and low energy musical activities do not. We also confirm that music performance results in elevated positive (but not negative) affect. We conclude that it is the active performance of music that generates the endorphin high, not the music itself. We discuss the implications of this in the context of community bonding mechanisms that commonly involve dance and music-making.’ (Dunbar et al 2012: 158) 9 Primal screaming is a technique linked to Primal Therapy, developed by Arthur Janov in the 1960s and 1970s. Janov believed that the repressed pain from childhood trauma causes neurosis and that this can be cured by getting in touch with the original experience and fully expressing the pain it caused, during therapy. Neither the patient nor the therapist sought to listen to or feel the physical source or pitch of these screams, which indelibly separates Janov's method from the Wolfsohn-Hart approach. 10 This point will be addressed in Part 2 Chapter 8, ‘Freeing the voice.’ 11 The Roy Hart Theatre Journals were published from 1973 to 1980. There were 13 editions in all and featured articles written by group members and seminal texts by Hart. Of particular interest is the autobiographical nature of most of the writing which offered insight into the ongoing work on the self, through the voice, of group members. Copies of the journals can be accessed through the archives of the Centre Artistique International Roy Hart (CAIRH) in Malérargues. 12 Green Shield stamps were a sales promotion scheme in the UK through which shoppers were rewarded with stamps that could be used to buy gifts from a catalogue or from any affiliated retailer. This offer later transformed into the UK catalogue store Argos. 13 In 1919, helped by his assistant Jeanne de Salzmann, Gurdjieff gave the first public demonstration of his Sacred Dances (Movements at the Tbilisi Opera House). He was also working on a ballet called The Struggle of the Magicians. 14 See Jung, Carl Gustav [1957] (1970a) Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 7: On the Psychology of the Unconscious. Two Essays in Analytical Psychology. (Edited and translated by G. Adler and R. F. C. Hull). New Jersey: Princeton University Press, pp. 68. 15 This choice of iconic opera, with its libretto based around the character of an evil mother, is perhaps already significative of a misogynistic predisposition within Hart’s philosophy. 16 See ‘What Is the Universe Really Made Of?’ The CMS Experiment at CERN. [Online] [Accessed on 1 July 2020] https://cms.cern/physics/what-universe-really-made. 17 Jung (1970b: par 654–668) writes that the ‘Synchronistic principle,’ suggests ‘an interconnection or unity of causally unrelated events, and thus postulates a unitary aspect of being which can very well be described as the unus mundus.’ He also links synchronicity to the collective unconscious and thus to the archetypes.

References Cavarero, Adriana (2005) For More Than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression (trans. P. A. Kottman). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Dunbar, R. I. M., Kaskatis, Kosta, MacDonald, Ian and Barra, Vinnie (2012) ‘Performance of Music Elevates Pain Threshold and Positive Affect: Implications for the Evolutionary Function of Music.’ Evolutionary Psychology: an International Journal of Evolutionary Approaches to Psychology and Behavior, Vol. 10, No. 4, pp. 688–702, 22 October. Enders, Giulia (2014) Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Under-rated Organ. London: Scribe Publications. Hart, Roy (1963) Personal Correspondence between Roy Hart and Sylvia Enfield. Unpublished.

A conscious family  45

Hart, Roy (1967) ‘How a Voice Gave Me a Conscience.’ [Online] Available at www.royhart.com/hvgmc.htm [Accessed on 9 September 2017]. Hart, Roy (1972) ‘The Objective Voice.’ [Online] Available at www.roy-hart.com/objec tive.voice.htm [Accessed on 9 September 2017]. Illich, Ivan (1973) Tools For Conviviality. New York: Harper and Row. Jung, Carl Gustav (1916) The Seven Sermons to the Dead Septem Sermones ad Mortuos (trans. H. G. Baynes). [Online] Available at http://gnosis.org/library/7Sermons.htm [Accessed on 9 June 2020]. Jung, Carl Gustav ([1957] 1970a) Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 7: On the Psychology of the Unconscious. Two Essays in Analytical Psychology (ed. and trans. G. Adler and R. F. C. Hull). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jung, Carl Gustav (1970b) Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 14. Mysterium Coniunctionis, 2nd ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Moore, Thomas (1992) Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life. New York: Harper Collins. Ouspensky, Peter, D. ([1949] 2001) In Search of the Miraculous: The Definitive Exploration of G. I. Gurdjieff’s Mystical Thought and Universal View. Eugene: Harvest House. Rieff, Philip ([1966] 1987) The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rieff, Philip (1973) Fellow Teachers. New York: Harper and Row. ‘What Is the Universe Really Made Of?’ The CMS Experiment at CERN. [Online] Available at https://cms.cern/physics/what-universe-really-made [Accessed on 1 July 2020].

3 THE PRIVATE BECOMES PUBLIC Margaret Pikes

England The first public performance of the Roy Hart Theatre (RHT) that I participated in was in fact, The Bachae as the Frontae at the Roundhouse in 1969. It was a courageous and provocative step to take our intimate research work, linking voice and psychological development, onto the stage in front of an anonymous public. Hart had however, been building up to this for some years, preparing the group with the rehearsals to which interested people were invited. His insistence on disciplined and supportive listening in group improvisations and indeed in Rivers, added to the fact that we all knew each other so well as a ‘family,’ gave a cohesion that was surprising in a group of mostly amateur performers. It also allowed for the freshness and lack of the kind of theatrical pretension that some audiences had begun to grow tired of. The power of the naked human voice and the years of voice work leading to the commitment that the group members demonstrated on stage, was the key. This differentiated these performances from some of the other groups at that time following Artaud and Brecht to break theatrical traditions, like the Living Theatre, Grotowski’s Laboratory Theatre or the work of Peter Brook. At the Roundhouse, Hart was present with us on stage, directing from a piano on a wheelbarrow with which he charged around sometimes pushing it through the middle of the group, sometimes putting it down to work with someone. This also gave a powerful force and a focus to the performance. Personally, I was excited by this transition from private research work to public performance, although my only previous experience of performing had been as a folk singer with my friends, during my last year at school. The transition was in many ways overwhelming, combined with the deep emotional and psychological upheavals that I was going through, stemming from my voice work. As a result of this, my memory of specific performances and places is unclear, though the emotions connected with many of them remain vivid.

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Following on from the subtitle of the performance at the Roundhouse, Language is dead: long live the voice, the subsequent performances of the RHT were increasingly non-verbal. The rehearsals included repeatedly enacting The Magic Chord, in which we slowly emerged from a mass of bodies seething and breathing on the floor (known as the amoeba) before pulling each other up to standing. As we continued to pull, push and resist each other physically, we held onto sung notes that formed the harmony of a major chord. These notes slowly became distorted by our physical efforts until we could hold on no longer and, as the sounds reached a crescendo, truly exhausted, we dropped on top of each other back to the ground. It was a scene which horrified some audiences and enthralled others. Another scene involved a line of seven actors sounding powerfully in rhythm, each on one separate beat of an eight-beat phrase. On the eighth beat, everyone clapped. This was accompanied by a mimed slow-motion scene, entitled Huanacu, of two actors embodying a hunter and his prey. There was also scene in which a large group of us sang Handel’s ‘Hallelujah Chorus’, with conga drums accompanying the rhythm (at that time an un-heard of innovation!). We were standing stock-still singing with very disdainful expressions, as one actor (Nadine George)1 wandered between us screaming as a heart rending way to break through the barrier of our smugness. These and other powerfully evocative scenes were not directed by Hart. He had begun to encourage other key members to develop and realise their own theatrical ideas using the voice work. His wife Dorothy, Robert Harvey, Nadine George, Barry Irwin, Jennifer Allen,2 Richard Armstrong and Vivienne were among those who directed the devising and rehearsal of original and powerful scenes, including those described earlier. I was given responsibility for teaching the musical parts of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ and also arranging and teaching a version of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, which we sang in one show.

Europe We rehearsed in the evenings and on Sundays. I continued working as a part-time teacher in a nearby school, somehow finding excuses to take time off from work, as I participated in most of the performances and tours which then followed. These included The Singer and the Song (1971) and Birthday (1971), performed at the Cockpit Theatre, London (UK) and in Angers (France); A Song of Everest (1971) in San Sebastian (Spain); and And (1972) in Bordeaux and Courbevoie (France); Madrid, Barcelona and Bilbao (Spain) and Geneva (Switzerland). At one theatre, I remember that, while lying on the floor as part of the chorus who were still and silent at that point, I was pushing the pedals of the organ that was on the side of the stage, to create a deep sustained bass-line harmony for Vivienne as she sang the song (made famous by Melanie Safka,) ‘Mama Mama I fear you reared me wrong.’ We had no microphones, so Vivienne’s interpretation of this song was strong and very moving.

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During the performance A Song of Everest (1971) in San Sebastian, we were confronted on stage by political activists, angry that Hart’s choice had been that we should perform instead of joining their boycott of the theatre festival, in light of the Franco regime (Pikes 2004: 112). It was an electric and daunting moment as the demonstrators invaded the stage and Hart, hoping for some dialogue told us to freeze. However, as the atmosphere became more aggressive, he told us to leave the stage. Whilst he no doubt had sympathy for their cause, Hart’s position was that, before anyone seeks to be a revolutionary, ‘[o]ne has to know oneself, to know one’s real motives’ (Hart 1972). He expands on this in The Objective Voice: I know that my role is to teach people to be aware of the political explosives within themselves before they can be of any use to the cause of human progress. (ibid.) Perhaps by ‘political explosives’ Hart was referring to the fact that political views are often formed on the basis of emotional and unconscious social factors rather than the kind of conscious, embodied reflection that Hart believed he was working towards. His attitude is controversial – but it is notable that Hart himself lived in a way that was totally true to his beliefs. For Hart claiming to express and embody opposites through vocal exploration was (as I suggest later in Part 1, Chapter 6), as much a spiritual journey as a work of theatrical research, just as is Jung’s goal of psychic wholeness or individuation. As Jung suggests: [A]ctually the most dangerous revolutionary is within ourselves, and all must realize this who wish to pass over safely into the second half of life. (Jung 1970: 116) Moreover, these beliefs were again of the time and were certainly more substantial than the platitudinous ‘Make love not war,’ in that Hart completely dedicated his life on a daily basis to the struggle to create more consciousness in the world through his voice work. The most successful of our performances at that time was And, which was given this title as it is a small and apparently simple word which in fact can hold together powerfully opposing concepts like ‘God’ and ‘the Devil’ in an Abraxian way. And was the performance in which I was most at ease and where I felt I understood what we were doing, perhaps because Hart had mostly not been present at the rehearsals, so I felt more free and less intimidated, and also because I was beginning to find my feet (so to speak) as a performer. While we had begun preparing And, Hart had separated meetings, or Rivers, from rehearsals, so that the theatrical work began to take increasing priority, although the spiritual aspect of the work and the focus on relationship was still very present.

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New directions and directors During the time between 1971 and 1974, as well as rehearsing these performances, Hart encouraged us to prepare and perform cabarets in the Squash Club restaurant (to the increasingly baffled membership) and later in a space adjoining the club. These later cabarets, each directed by a different group member, were called Cathédrales. I enjoyed singing in these contexts, exploring what I had developed in my voice lessons as I interpreted contemporary popular songs like ‘What’s It All About Alfie’ or Dylan’s ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’. It was such a pleasure to work with songs that meant something to me rather than the more technical exercises of learning Mozart arias, which in my singing lessons had (occasionally) been the case, probably following the Wolfsohn tradition and some of the underlying middle-class aspirations of the group. We also performed funny sketches including one where, as a small choir, a few of us sent up a whimsical, romantic Victorian song wearing shower hats, which I enjoyed enormously. However, Hart observed our efforts and the person who had directed could come in for an attacking judgment if we lost the thread of maintaining a conscious attitude to the basic dignity of our humanity: to the ultimately serious project of the voice work. Nevertheless, he didn’t object to the shower hat song! Through these cabarets, I began to catch up on some of the more fundamental aspects of my theatrical education. I learned more about some of the simple basics of performing; about the difference between on and off stage; where and how to stand; how to use the space, and about relating to an audience (or not!) These can seem obvious to people from a background of theatre-going, or perhaps with different gifts, but these experiences allowed me to gain confidence on stage. Our performances as the RHT were relatively well-received in France and Spain, whereas in England the responses and reviews had been overwhelmingly negative. In France, Jean-Louis Barrault3 had invited us to perform And at the festival Théâtre des Nations in Paris (1972). We incurred the name Le Théâtre du Cri (The Theatre of the Cry, or Shout), which was not intended to be derogatory: it implied rather the experimental and energetic nature of our work (Tribune de Genève, April 28, 1972). Catherine Clément (1972) reflected with a deep sensitivity from a psychoanalyst’s viewpoint that while watching And she felt that: [t]his echo of the origins which makes itself felt before us . . . is at the meeting point of voice and myth: at the precise point where the voice alone, apparently liberated from the constraint of meaning, finds it on the Other Stage: in the presence of the unconscious. (ibid.) Not only our performances in Spain but also several workshops at the Higher School of Dramatic Art in Madrid, led by Hart and other members of the group including Vivienne and Elizabeth Mayer, were received with acclaim. José Monleón,4 one of

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Spain’s foremost theatre critics at the time, showed a profound understanding of Hart’s work. He wrote: It is not a matter of singing, but of sending the voice from the deepest parts of the body, with free but controlled delivery. From this personal and collective control, the drama . . . a total theatre is achieved. Roy Hart Theatre represents one of the most important experiments in the restless world of the theatre today. (Monleón, in Pikes 2004: 102) Given these successes in Europe, Hart began to express the feeling that we would never receive recognition in England, implying that English culture induces such a strong fear of emotionality and its concomitant refusal of the body and physicality that the value of his and our work could not be recognised there. So Hart finally decided that he wanted to leave the UK and move to either Switzerland, Spain or France. The decision to make the move to Europe was announced in a River and we were asked to enter into a moral contract with Hart, committing to either moving (and to all that that would entail), or deciding definitely to stay in London and therefore leave the group. Like most of us, I was very excited about this and wanted to move, though for some older members who had families, children or dependent parents in London, it was a very hard choice. Some stayed, but one couple came with their two teenage children, donating the money from the house they sold to the enterprise. Of course, I had no idea what this future was going to bring, but like the other group members, I was so locked into the group, the philosophy and also relationships that it would have meant an enormous rift to decide not to go. I had had a career plan in fact, which was to complete five years as a teacher and then to train as an educational psychologist, but I also felt that my engagement with the voice work was much more enriching.

Return of ‘the word’ and new influences In the last year or so in London, besides working on various solo projects, Hart began exploring two plays in French in which he performed with the group: Mariage de Lux (1973) and later L’Economiste (1975). He wanted to move on from the pre-verbal because he believed that after so many years exploring our voices, we had embodied the cry and were now ready to work with words and text. I was included in the cast chosen to work with Hart on these plays, but I found them strange and rather incomprehensible. Of course, I was not able to express this, but there were scenes that we rehearsed and explored so often that I was able to find some kind of meaning in them, though I had no idea how the whole piece was supposed to hang together. They were obviously meant to be vehicles to showcase Hart’s philosophy and the vocal and group work that underpinned it and perhaps they were meant to be surreal: they were meant to challenge the audience’s cerebral

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expectations by coming from an illogical, dream-like place. I think I at least understood that, so I did my best to fit in as one of the chorus of strange characters. Nevertheless, during one rehearsal, Roy seemed really irritated by the lack of initiative coming from the chorus group and I received a light smack on the head as he passed by. It did little to increase my creativity. Vivienne had a very central role in these two later plays. In Mariage de Lux she was Flora to his Lux and possibly Hart wanted to work on a piece with her in this way and at this time when their personal relationship had become very intense. Hart and Vivienne had begun a relationship and I had noticed her subtle influence on him and in some way, on the direction of the theatre’s evolution. Richard Armstrong was a close friend and gifted artistic colleague of Vivienne’s and I think that Hart welcomed their younger, but nevertheless informed, input. On a personal level, Hart’s appearance changed as he began to wear contact lenses, as did Vivienne (despite her struggles with the mechanics of putting them in, removing them and not losing them). He began to dress in a more stylish way, though I remember a meeting where he had a semi-serious rant about his hatred of bell-bottomed trousers, which possibly Vivienne had suggested he might wear on stage as they were the height of fashion at the time. For one of our performances, Vivienne and Richard created costumes which reflected an aspect of the actors’ characters. Roy was to be dressed as a cowboy, Jennifer Allen in a judo outfit, my brother Noah as a convict and myself with trailing pink, gossamer sleeves, head and wasteband, as a kind of ethereal being. They also designed the simple primary-coloured costumes we wore for And. Again, Richard was centrally involved in designing the stage set for Hart’s performance of Eight Songs for a Mad King with the Pierrot Players in 1969.5 Vivienne’s influence went deeper than appearances of course. She had a gentle sense of humour and lightness of touch in her attitude to other people, of whom she was nevertheless penetratingly observant. Vivienne combined this element of humour and lightness with her gifts as a performer of powerful presence, grace and vocal impact. I think these qualities began to affect Hart’s more rigid authoritarian style. For me, many of these attributes reflected her mother Mary’s personality and it touches me personally to think that, in fact, those rather fey qualities which I dearly loved in both Vivienne and in my old friend Mary, somehow penetrated the walls of Hart’s philosophical castle! Hart was also influenced of course by his intelligent, beautiful and generous wife Dorothy, whose indomitable spirit had also often confronted him creatively. Both these women must have invited and accepted Hart’s anima projection; as for them, he represented in some way an animus, though it’s not easy to be clear about the extent to which Hart acknowledged this. Despite her relatively short time practising the voice work, Vivienne was chosen, with Elizabeth Mayer, who was a much more experienced older member, to be one of the teachers to go to teach at the Higher School of Dramatic Art in Madrid. Her letters sent to me from there were wonderfully funny and during that time she made a lasting friendship with Elizabeth, who was normally known for

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being rather strict and serious. While teaching in Madrid, they were lent a student’s flat from where Vivienne wrote: This morning I awoke to the unusual sight of Elizabeth carrying the kitchen door which had come completely off its hinges when she opened it. You know how calm Lizzy is? – well that’s how she was carrying the door, serenely around the apartment. (Young 1971) Hart had once told Liza that, having now mastered her voice, the next step was to ‘mistress’ it. In fact, Liza too had a wicked sense of humour, which this friendship with Vivienne seemed to me, to set free. In their classes, they began to open up the way the Wolfsohn-Hart voice work could be transmitted. Up to that point, there had been very little group work offered to students outside of the context of The Studio. Hart himself, when not working with the RHT group, usually worked with one person out of the class and the others learnt by watching and listening in a focused and engaged way to the lesson, which could last an hour or more. He did not lead group sessions in these contexts and indeed most of the group exercises and improvisational structures that are now used in Wolfsohn-Hart workshops were devised by the founder members, when we began giving workshops publicly. Vivienne also wrote at the time: Our classes are going very, very well, and sometimes I know that I am inspired – or really I catch a glimpse of what I might be one day after years of work. What we offer is seriously and enthusiastically received and we are moving towards group sessions where everyone is involved and listening to themselves and working together. At the same time we are giving individual singing lessons but obviously it has to be so concentrated . . . in order to leave something that they can continue with alone. (ibid.: original emphasis) We performed L’Economiste in Avignon and in Alès. There were a few positive responses, but in the main it was not understood or appreciated. In May 1975, we travelled to Austria and performed in Vienna, Villach and Klagenfurt. A reviewer (E. Darnhofer in the Kärntner Tageszeitung, 10 May 1975) appreciated that: [E]ven if one does not understand the words, one feels the archetypal shadows glide across the stage in certain scenes . . . but in spite of magnificent performances (by Vivienne Young and several others) it fails formally because of the use of too many means of expression. It fails in content because the underlying philosophy emphasises the male principle too strongly. (ibid.) After Klagenfurt, we set off to play in Valencia in Spain while Hart, Vivienne, Dorothy and Paul Silber6 left by car. The rest of the cast continued by train, but

The private becomes public  53

during the journey we received the tragic news of the fatal car crash in which Hart, Dorothy and Vivienne died. This shocking loss of life left the rest of us traumatised and heartbroken. We returned to Malérargues and began arrangements for the funerals of our friends and teachers.

Notes 1 Nadine George originally trained as an actress in the early 1960s at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London and was a founder member of RHT. She later founded the Voice Studio International and is a well-respected voice teacher working in many European countries. She lives in Grantham, Lincolnshire, England. 2 Jennifer Allen (originally Anna Allen) (1941–1994) was a student of Roy Hart’s and a member of the RHT. She was an actor by training. She left Malérargues in the 1980s and moved to Canada, where she built up a practice as a respected voice teacher. 3 Jean Louis Barrault (1910–1994) was a celebrated French actor, mime artist and director ‘founder member’ who starred in many films including Marcel Carné's Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise, 1945). 4 José Monleon became a good friend of the group and stayed in our Belsize Park flat when he visited London. 5 The Pierrot Players, who later became The Fires of London, were founded in the UK as a chamber music ensemble and were active from 1965 to 1987. 6 Paul Silber was a founder member of the RHT who performed in most of the early productions. He has taught internationally and, with his wife Clara Silber-Harris, was the archivist of the RHT until 2019.

References Clément, Catherine (1972) ‘Review of And.’ Tribune de Genève, 28 April. Darnhofer, Edith (1975) ‘Review of L’Économiste.’ Kärntner Tageszeitung, 10 May. Hart, Roy (1972) ‘The Objective Voice.’ [Online] Available at www.roy-hart.com/objective.voice.htm [Accessed on 9 September 2017]. Jung, Carl Gustav [1957] (1970) Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 7: On the Psychology of the Unconscious. Two Essays in Analytical Psychology (ed. and trans. G. Adler and R. F. C. Hull). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Pikes, Noah (2004) DARK VOICES: The Genesis of Roy Hart Theatre Vol 1. New Orleans: Spring Journal Books. Young, Vivienne (1971) Letter to Margaret Pikes. Unpublished.

4 LIFE AFTER DEATH Malérargues Margaret Pikes

Hart, Dorothy and Vivienne were buried in Malérargues accompanied by a very moving funeral ceremony including powerful vocal tributes from the group. Their graves are still cared for and marked by the headstone which my brother Noah carefully arranged to be created and engraved some months later.

Organisation After the terrible shock of the car accident, as I remember, there was no collective discussion about whether or not we would continue with our project of living in Malérargues, pursuing personal development through the vocal research and creating performances. A group of mostly men took on the leadership and they were known as the Régisseurs, from the French word for a theatre director. They were not democratically chosen – rather they chose themselves from among those who had been close to Hart and included Monty Crawford1 (known also as Davide), who had been the owner of the Abraxas Club, was one of the biggest investors in Malérargues and acted as a broker during the purchase of the chateau. In the ensuing months, the Régisseurs took decisions concerning our finances and how to organise our daily living. I did not at that point think about leaving. My closest relationships were with other members of the group and I still wanted to continue the voice work. For a long time, I could not really grasp the fact that Vivienne was dead. I somehow expected her to appear again, to return from her journey and that we would continue our lives as before. I had known her for so long, she was like a sister and it was simply unthinkable that she was gone. I was also deeply saddened by the loss of Dorothy who, like Vivienne and contrary to her reputation for eccentricity, seemed to me to be one of the few relatively normal, lively, intelligent women in the group. Sometimes, when I was waiting for my singing lesson at The Studio in

Life after death  55

her house at the Ridgeway, I used to weed her vegetable garden, which she appreciated and which I really enjoyed as it connected me with what felt like a familiar and useful activity. However, regarding Hart’s absence, my guilty secret was that I somehow felt enormously relieved. I had for so long been oppressed by constantly feeling that in Hart’s eyes I was inadequate, and this was compounded by my feeling that Hart was not really concerned with the basic psychological issues which were binding me. I think that I had begun to sense that my deep personal healing was impossible within Hart’s regime. I did not speak of this lack of grief about Hart’s death to anyone until very many years later and discovered that others had had a similar feeling. I only now understand it and actually feel real sadness. Hart was an exceptional man and his death at the age of 49, when he was on the point of possibly achieving his own professional success and personal happiness, was indeed tragic. Vivienne’s sister Sylvia, who knew him well when he had just begun to take over the leadership from Wolfsohn, believes that Hart may have always had a kind of ‘death wish.’ He once told her that he did not wish to live beyond the age of 60 and that if he did, he hoped someone would help him to die. Also, in a letter to her, Hart had written: I see my life as supple – risk-taking in the face of the overwhelming, which may pitch the practitioner into sudden death, even the finest practitioner, – deadly risks are worth taking, when one is after something that really matters. (Hart 1963) Very soon after the funerals, we began again to rehearse L’Economiste in a rather sombre atmosphere, two of the group members taking what had been Hart’s and Vivienne’s roles. There was a feeling that this was the best way to honour our departed friends. Probably also, the aim was to keep us occupied with a view to selling the performance and hopefully maintaining the impetus of success that we had seemed to be generating in Europe. After L’Economiste, we went into rehearsal of Shakespeare’s The Tempest and performed this to some acclaim. I had the role of the Goddess Ceres, who did quite a lot of singing and dancing and who often also transformed into a member of the chorus, running or rolling around the floor and sounding. It was a very physical and vocal version of that play. However, those of the group not in the cast, were obliged to find moneyearning jobs in a geographical area of France already beset by high unemployment. For more than two years, they gave all their earnings to the community in Malérargues, which made it possible for the other members to spend their days rehearsing. I was part of the rehearsal/performing group while my partner Boris Moore,2 who had been a research mathematical physicist at Cambridge, found a job in a local furniture maker’s workshop as a cabinetmaker. Others found jobs including building the roads; working in a boarding kennel; at the local pottery; making kitchens; as a wedding photographer and in a hotel. We all spent some time collectively earning money at different times picking apples, grapes and chestnuts.

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These collective activities were hard work but also an enjoyable way to be together creatively and out in the bright, beautiful countryside around Malérargues. After the loss of our friends, the atmosphere in Malérargues often felt to me to be suffocating and dark both literally and psychologically. For those working fulltime, and not necessarily in interesting jobs, it was especially challenging, even after they were allowed to keep ten francs a week to buy a coffee at lunch time, after eating their packed lunch. After about two years, I began to feel that this division of labour was too unfair and I dared to express this with anger and frustration one day in a rehearsal, when it seemed to me that we were often basically wasting our time, while our friends were dutifully continuing outside with their hard labour. This did lead to some discussion and things eased up slightly. I myself got a part-time job as a cashier in a local supermarket, where my French improved rapidly. Mainly because of our straightened financial circumstances (there were around 35 of us living from a budget for 8 people), we were obliged to live very communally, sharing our limited means. Much of our food was bought in bulk at the market on Fridays in nearby Alès, where at the end of the morning considerable bargains on unsold fruit and vegetables could be negotiated. Those of us who were able to, made bread every few days. Sometimes the yeast quantities were misjudged with the resulting 14 loaves emerging anything from hollow to completely fused into a foaming mass. Not to speak of the mice who occasionally enjoyed sitting on the warm dough as it rose in the oven before baking, but we did soon employ a cat to solve that problem. Working, eating, meeting and generally living so closely with all the group day after day, with very little money or transport possibilities to get out, was frankly very challenging. The winter months were sometimes cold and wet, and we had limited heating. During one week of non-stop rain, our photographer Ivan Midderigh’s3 mother (who was an astrologist) remarked softly in her rolling Scottish accent: ‘You know – at times like these the astral plane is very close!’ We smiled at the echoes of Agatha Christie evoked by this observation. On some days, the place could well have been the backdrop for some mysterious disappearances. In any case, this demanding lifestyle went on for several years before we were able to afford to have more independence and the almost military organization that we lived through was quite the opposite of the idea of a ‘hippy’ artistic community that some of our neighbours out in the hills probably imagined, especially when they heard the roars and screams coming from our studios. However, it was the discipline we had learned through working with Hart and, also, the micro-social structures he had set up, especially in the years preceding our move to France, which really enabled the continuation of the RHT in Malérargues. The hierarchy allowed everyone to continue to have voice lessons as well as having a mentor and it underpinned the acceptance of the division of labour, an aspect of which I eventually objected to. The regularity of the Rivers that we had known in London, continued and, even if they tended to be dominated by the same persistent male voices, permitted a context where personal conflicts, dreams and relationship problems could be discussed. Hart’s insistence on theatrical ritual

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did in fact help us as a way of raising consciousness and avoiding some of the pitfalls of communal life, although the solemnity of some of those rites in retrospect now seems comical. For example, the ceremony where, standing in a circle every evening, a special cup would be handed over to the next ‘Guardian Angel’ whose privilege it was to knock on everyone’s doors at 6am, so we could be in time for the movement class before breakfast. Or the way we dressed up for dinner, which was not usually a particularly gastronomic event. Then there was the procedure aimed at containing anger, whereby, when publicly expressing strong annoyance, the phrases ‘Curtain up’ and ‘Curtain down’ should be spoken. For example: ‘Curtain up! Who the hell has stolen the chocolate I left on top of the cupboard! Curtain down!’ Not often in fact practised, as it is difficult to express your anger while at the same time taking distance on it in this way. It is a bit like trying to whistle while you smile.

The problem of leadership Classically, according to Max Weber (1947), when the charismatic leader of a group disappears, and if he has not specifically designated someone to replace him, this is often accompanied by the appearance of a personality cult of the departed figurehead, supported by bureaucracy. In the RHT community, the Régisseurs who had at first taken on leadership, slowly evolved into a group of four:  Richard Armstrong, Barry Irwin, Robert Harvey and Paul Silber. These four men while moreor-less successfully working together, continued to guide the group whose daily practical organisation had become routinised along quite regimented lines. During that time, in my view, many aspects of Hart’s philosophy became rigidified – almost reified in fact, as unbreakable rules. The divisions of labour within the group and the hierarchy became entrenched. Also, seven years after Hart’s death, to try to even question, for example, whether having a child could now be a legitimate choice for a woman (or for her partner), was met in my case with a stern response from my teacher that this would be extremely ‘negative.’ The definition of RHT group membership became strictly linked with living in Malérargues. When a young Spanish woman (the pianist and composer Maria Escribano)4 came to work with the group and planned to rent a small cottage nearby, I asked if I could take the spare bedroom that she was offering. This request to move one kilometre down the road was at first strongly criticised as my wish to ‘leave’ the group. I did in fact finally succeed and was extremely happy to have that new space, a kitchen shared with only one other person and also Maria’s friendship. Concerning the voice, there was a tendency to insist that working with the extended voice necessarily implied attacking the sound with hard physical effort and aggression to ‘get into the body.’ This concretised and masculine idea of what contacting the body through the voice means led often to an inflexible approach that, for some time, made anyone working on songs, in a more musical but nevertheless physically connected way, somehow guilty of not being true to the ‘real’ Wolfsohn-Hart voice work. I felt that this attitude narrowed the voice work away

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from Wolfsohn’s and Hart’s actual vocal philosophy and could also potentially be vocally damaging. I also experienced this routinised attitude to ‘getting out of the head’ in the refusal to admit any questioning of ideas about the nature and aims of the work or the social structures of the group. Questioning the hierarchy, for example, or discussing the role of psychotherapy in the voice work, was usually met by my teachers with the rebuke that I ‘lacked faith,’ or that this kind of questioning was too cerebral. This attitude was perhaps also fed by the lack of the intellectual stimuli that Hart had often brought into meetings in London, where he introduced relevant current literature for discussion and analysis. In 1987, group member Enrique Pardo,5 had the brilliant and generous idea of bringing James Hillman6 and some of his colleagues, with whom Pardo had made contact through his own researches and work, to Malérargues. Almost all of the group, including myself, responded with hungry interest to the talks and the rich sources for reflection and study which they opened up for us. Like others, I felt a deep need to re-awaken thoughtful discussion about the philosophical background to our researches on the voice and on ourselves. The talks that Hillman, his colleagues and Pardo himself gave, provided a long-needed point of focus and specialist guidance for some of us in reassessing and updating our conceptual understanding of our voice work in relation to its links with depth psychology, archetypes and performance. Earlier, as part of his collaboration with the other three directors, Richard Armstrong had taken on the role of administrative director, and I was happy to be asked to accompany him on some trips to Paris, traveling north across France on the old, overnight sleeper train to the Gare de Lyon, to discuss our projects with various departments of the Ministry of Culture. On one occasion, we stayed overnight in Paris in the flat of a dancer friend, where an American actor from the OntologicalHysteric Theatre7 also lived. As I entered the kitchen in the morning, I greeted her with my best Malérargues community smile and a bright ‘Good morning,’ to which she replied in a gravelly, irritated voice, ‘I’m naht feeling well and I’m naht feeling sociable.’ I smiled as I imagined what would happen if I used that response back home.

Performing, teaching and travelling So as a result of Richard’s discerning foresight, undoubted charm and work on our public relations, the RHT began from around 1978 to be awarded valuable subventions from the French government. In the beginning, we received support to send three teachers regularly through the winter into nearby isolated villages, to give singing and music sessions to classes of school children. These were not, of course, extended voice sessions. Boris, his twin brother Stephen Rivers (also a musician) and I were thus very happy to be delegated to drive for two days every month, often through the snow, into the beautiful Cevennes hills, where each of us delivered our own versions of simple voice-work-for-kids to large groups of French

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children, watched by their teachers enjoying a break as they sat on the radiators at the back of the classroom, letting us cope with the sometimes chaotic results. From this experience, I learned a lot of French nursery rhymes and also to love the wild, open spaces of the ancient Cevennes hills and their old hobbit-like villages. The subventions grew and enabled us to create new performances. With a piece called De Vive Voix (1979) (based on Hermann Hesse’s Der Steppenwolf [1927]) we were to represent French theatre with a tour of South America in 1979. I was part of the small group of six actors who devised and performed this under Richard’s direction. Our tour included also giving workshops in the six countries we visited and, after four years of relative isolation in Malérargues, it was extremely educative to suddenly find myself teaching a group of experienced actors from the National Theatre of Argentina in Buenos Aires. The country was still ruled by a right-wing military junta and people were being regularly ‘disappeared.’ I remember to this day, the calm and gentle way the professional performers responded to the voice work that ‘la France’ had sent them, as they knew that I probably had no idea of what they were living in their daily lives, but could not speak about it with me. In Paraguay also, I was shocked to learn that the actors to whom I was trying to bring vocal liberation were living a daily experience of terrible repression by their longterm dictator – President Alfredo Stroessner. For me it was a powerfully humbling experience and led me to question the ultimate truth of Hart’s principle of remaining detached from political engagement. During this tour, on a less stressful note, and due to some administrative problem, the French cultural organisers were obliged to send Richard and me on an upgraded flight from Lima in Peru to Quito, Ecuador, to be in time to give the two workshops organised for us there. So, having spent the last four years with hardly a penny and often on a financially restricted diet, we found ourselves flying first-class over the snow-capped Andes being served a luxurious warm breakfast accompanied by glasses of champagne. I was then especially touched by the dedication of the small group of very poor Grotowski-inspired actors who travelled for two days across Ecuador in very difficult conditions, to participate in my workshop in Quito, with sweaty and dusty, true physical engagement. Back in Malérargues, Richard also began to create small cabaret-like pieces which we then performed in the neighbouring villages. This helped establish our reputation and earned us a less reclusive image. I sang and danced in several of these shows and it was fun to create and perform them. Several more of these traveling, locally popular shows were then created by other group members. The venues could be charmingly unusual, including small Protestant temples and old town hall courtyards and we were often invited to wonderful meals afterwards, with local people who surprised us by their warmth and understanding of what we were trying to do. Following an idea from a friendly director of a French cultural centre, Richard suggested that we start to offer courses to the public. So in 1977 Malérargues opened its doors to the first of many RHT workshops. We were still in fact in the process of rebuilding the studios, so we were obliged to use some of the bedrooms

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which contained a piano in the main chateau, to give lessons. We were on high alert for the arrival of these new students and they were received with great care and attention, to which they responded, in the main, with enthusiasm and loyalty, so that many returned in the following years, or became friends or peripheral group members. I was one of the main teachers in this workshop having been encouraged by Hart to teach in the workshops that we had begun to offer in London. I had a little experience and spoke French reasonably well, but it was nevertheless challenging. As ‘trainee teachers,’ we did not at that time receive any formal supervision, but at the end of each day the RHT workshop leaders met and discussed in quite some detail how their lessons had gone and the suggested program for the next day. I relied on my intuition, combined with the experience of all my own years of voice lessons and Rivers where we learnt much about how to listen, to feed my work. My earlier life experiences, from keeping safe when hitch-hiking, to working as a primary school teacher, to coping with my schizophrenic mother also contributed, I believe, to how I looked for ways to connect with a student, to put them at ease and to stimulate their imagination. From that summer on, workshops were organised in Malérargues and we were also invited to give workshops all over France and internationally so that all the group members began to teach following their own methods, with some guidance and supervision from more experienced RHT pedagogues. Malérargues workshops were very efficiently administrated by Marita Günther and, when she went to live in Germany, I took over her job and later shared the work with Marie-Paule Marthe,8 a gifted French teacher who joined the RHT group in 1980 after participating in a workshop led by Barry Irwin.

Roy Hart Theatre – Activités Paris After we had returned from South America in 1979, I had begun to feel increasingly the need to have more contact with French society than was possible while living permanently cocooned in Malérargues. Founder member Robert Harvey had already felt something like this and had started to spend time in Paris where he was able to stay with a couple who were actors and who had attended the first workshop in Malérargues. Robert gave regular classes there and learnt French at the Alliance Française. He was happy to collaborate with Boris and myself, so eventually we rented a tiny flat at the top of 12 flights of stairs, in the 18th arrondissement, and set up Roy Hart Theatre – Activités Paris. We found a studio nearby, organised regular classes and thoroughly enjoyed the freedom of Parisian life – if on a reduced budget. Most of what we earned only just covered our expenses and the rest went back to Malérargues. We also invited other RHT members to come and teach our groups and enjoy a break from rural community life. It was an immensely creative time and probably where Boris began to conceive the idea of Musiques pour Marsyas and where I began to recognise my deep wish to become a mother.

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Boris was an accomplished musician, who played clarinet at a professional level. He eventually composed and directed and, in effect, produced Musiques pour Marsyas (1982) with support from me. With a cast of six singers (including Boris and myself: three women and three men), we performed this completely vocal piece at various venues including the Almeida Theatre in London and at the Festival de Royaumont (near Paris). The singers, dressed soberly mostly in black, moved very little on stage but travelled dynamically and musically through the range of the human voice. It was partly improvised, partly composed with phrases from a poem by Kenneth Patchen9 called ‘The Dimensions of the Morning’ (1968), woven into the vocal journey. In 1986, Boris went on to write the music for and to direct, with Johannes Theron,10 a performance of the two radio plays Paroles et Musique, Cascando and two poems by Samuel Beckett, in a performance entitled Beckett de Trois Côtés. I was also a vocalist in this piece, improvising with the poems, together with Boris on clarinet and Jean Baptist Lombard11 on kamaycha (a small Iranian stringed instrument.) This was recorded and broadcast by France Culture. We were very proud to receive a rare postcard from Beckett himself, congratulating us on our performance. (See Figures 6.7 and 6.8.) We went on to collaborate with composer and jazz-percussionist Allain Joule on Le Miroir à Musique (1983), for five voices and four instruments. The premier was performed in Montpellier with Accroche Note, a contemporary music ensemble.

A soloist – singing songs In 1982, a choir leader in Montpellier had been preparing Canto General, a popular oratorio with poetry by Pablo Neruda12 set to music by Mikis Theodorakis.13 The choir leader was auditioning for the two soloists and, after Richard Armstrong was chosen as the male voice, he encouraged me to audition for the female voice, (for which I remain deeply grateful as I had not planned to do this). I learned one of the pieces very thoroughly in Spanish and emerged successfully from the audition. Canto General also requires a very large mixed choir, two pianos as well as a small orchestra containing five percussionists. This unusual, powerfully emotional and rhythmic oratorio, in which Neruda’s beautiful Spanish poetry is set, tells of the beauty and suffering of South and Central America and also has a dimension of political protest against North American imperialism. We performed this at many well-attended mostly outdoor concerts in France during the next years and, as my confidence grew, I began to feel deeply connected in an unexpected way, to the pieces I sang. Neruda’s feeling-full words combined with the Greek rhythms and strong harmonies of Theodorakis’ music give the soloists a wonderful opportunity to sing out against poverty, oppression and exploitation and for life and humanity. I was drawn deeply into expressing passionately all these themes and sang more in the style of a rock singer rather than a classical contralto.

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In April 1985, I was contacted to replace the Greek female soloist Maria Farantouri for whose voice the ‘songs’ had been written.14 For this tour of seven concerts in the South West of France, I had the privilege of singing alongside the Greek male soloist Petros Pandis whose style of singing impressed me deeply.15 He is a well-known Greek baritone folk singer and delivers his songs with a range of feeling from tenderness to angry protestation which I always felt was connected to real sentiment. I was therefore thrilled when he complimented me on the way I interpreted the pieces. I was subsequently invited to sing with him for the premiere of Canto General in the US. This American concert had been organised by a very politically engaged Christian choir, at a time when many Christian groups and priests were supporting activists in Central American countries living under dictatorships that were receiving aid from Reagan’s government. As both Neruda and Theodorakis were communists, at a time when to be of this political persuasion was regarded as completely toxic by Reagan’s government, there had been enormous hurdles to overcome in programming the event. As a result, the big concert in Minneapolis was given in an atmosphere of huge enthusiasm and emotion with the audience on their feet applauding and cheering after each piece. Despite problems with my monitor, which left me singing without the possibility of hearing my own voice, it was one of the most moving performances in which I have ever participated, and the experience was a real turning point for me in my career as a singer. As a result of singing Canto General, I recognised how much I enjoyed the form of the song, especially poetic popular songs. Although I wanted to continue the work of connecting the voice with its sources in the body and the ‘soul,’ I realised that as a performer, I wanted to use this work in the interpretation of songs rather than in creating more experimental vocal pieces. For me, songs can be a uniquely powerful way to communicate the inner world of feeling and poetry directly with an audience.16 A singer links theatre, literature and music in a uniquely human way. Voices singing from a genuinely rooted place with significant words, rhythms, melodies and harmonies can be deeply moving. Whatever criticisms can be made of the music industry, it is clear that millions of people around the world are often led to feeling powerfully emotional responses through listening to popular songs. Partly because of the intimate quality afforded by the use of a microphone, singers are able to use more intimate vocal qualities when they want to, which can make possible a very personal connection with each individual listener. Then again, songs like Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ or John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s ‘Imagine’ can even have a prayerful quality. Many voices singing together can be politically powerful, for example songs by supporters of the African National Congress in their struggle against the apartheid regime.17 For me, this recognition of my love of both listening to and singing popular songs, reached back to my earliest years and is in fact, part of why my animus projections have been onto singers like Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen.

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Moving out In the early 1980s, my wish to have a child had been growing and Boris shared it. I spoke rather secretly to other women of my age in Malérargues and discovered that some of them also felt the same. However, it took some time for me to become pregnant and, sadly, when I eventually did in 1983 at the age of 37, I suffered a miscarriage. Not everyone in the group approved of the women who had decided to have a child, on top of which, in my case, the miscarriage happened on a bank holiday weekend and the local doctor refused to come out to help me, so it was an especially hard time. I had been overjoyed to feel my body transforming as it began preparing this new life, and the loss was both physically and emotionally very painful. A week after this, some large rooms in the chateau became available for transformation. Boris and I asked to take these over as a living space where we could imagine more realistically having a child. However, the decision was rather that the space would be ‘more creatively used’ by being given to two men of the group who had previously been rivals, so that they could make it into a flat for them to share and hopefully transform their relationship. They did work on the space and live there for six months until one of the men moved out. I was deeply hurt by this decision, which followed on a series of struggles for Musiques pour Marsyas to be recognised within the group as a worthy project, despite the prestigious places we had performed in and positive feedback we had received. So we decided to take out a loan to buy an old house in the nearby village of Lasalle and do it up. This was of course a serious and decisive step away from the community. After Boris and I bought the house in Lasalle, we worked hard rebuilding and repairing it. But our relationship had begun to suffer from all the stresses and struggles we had been through within the community and with our own different needs for independence and we split up. We sold the house and I decided to base myself in Montpellier, 40 kilometres from Malérargues, while continuing to regularly travel there to maintain the organisation of the workshops. I received only a tiny, nominal payment, for this fairly important administrative work which, throughout the winter, I often found myself doing alone in the chateau, whilst I was obliged to pay a monthly rent for the room I used for these visits. This felt to me again like an unfortunate lack of recognition for my continued support of the RHT work. By 1989, the workshops were so popular that I suggested we rethink our organisational structure in order to take the running of Malérargues onto a more professional level and I stopped traveling to work in the office there. Sadly, this structural change proved to be more difficult than I had hoped and did not happen. In the early years in Malérargues several members of the group who had made the move from London at the beginning, had left for various, sometimes dramatic, reasons. Then in 1981, Barry Irwin died. In 1986 Richard Armstrong also left to

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pursue his own career in Canada and the US. Most of those who went away had been people to whom I felt a close personal connection and their absences weighed on my daily life in the community. I was also ready to leave. During the 11 years between the car accident in which Hart, Vivienne and Dorothy died in 1975, and 1986 when I moved to Montpellier, my sense of self grew. It was as if I slowly awakened from the infantilization that I believe was a byproduct of life in the RHT community. I began to understand more clearly that the voice work did not have to include my living as part of a community which was in fact, mainly controlled by men who were becoming increasingly competitive regarding their own personal artistic recognition. As a newly single woman I felt isolated and unsupported and the ‘synthetic family’ from my point of view, no longer existed. I had made several new friends and artistic colleagues outside the group, including Venice Manley, a wonderfully gifted singer, choir leader and teacher especially of songs from the world music sphere, who travelled to Malérargues every summer after participating in her first workshop there.18 Recognising how much she could offer other students, I invited her to lead polyphonic singing sessions in my workshops. She then began exploring her voice regularly with me and we developed a warm and creative teaching partnership and friendship. Sadly, Venice died in 2004, but the songs she had collected and taught with such joy and panache, continue to be taught and sung by choirs and in workshops all over Europe. In 1987, I had been invited to lead a workshop in Liège where I met the heads of voice work from the Royal Conservatories of Liège and Brussels, both of whom invited me to teach in their schools. For several years, I was also invited to teach regularly in Aarhus, Denmark. I knew that to stay alive as an artist it was vitally important for me to be in contact with new creative sources. It was not enough to feed off the past and it seemed to me there could also be a tendency among group members to identify with the persona of ‘Roy Hart Theatre Voice Teacher,’ which seems to me to induce a stultifying lack of humility. Voice teachers (and directors) are not gurus and must constantly work on the connection between their own voices and lives. Moreover, and importantly, they have a duty of care to their students and, by 1989, I had reached a point where I wanted to learn more about this.

Notes 1 Monty (Davide) Crawford, was an accountant and property developer who was the owner of the Abraxas Club and a member of the Roy Hart Theatre group. He was one of the main investors in the purchase of Malérargues. 2 Boris Moore (1948), an accomplished clarinettist, was a founder member of the RHT and took part in the group’s early performances. He left the RHT in the 1980s. He has a bachelor and masters degree in Mathematics and Theoretical Physics from Cambridge University and a PhD from the University of London. He was a Research Fellow with Roger Penrose at Birkbeck College in General Relativity and Twister Theory. After leaving the community in 1986 he went on to become a programme manager and developer at Microsoft from 2000–2014. He lives in Seattle.

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3 Ivan (born David) Midderigh is a graduate of the Brighton College of Arts and Crafts. He worked as a freelance photographer in London before becoming a founder member of RHT. Ivan is a senior consultant for the Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute, University of California. Performer, teacher and photographer, he is responsible for the creation and maintenance of the Roy Hart Theatre’s photographic archives. 4 Maria Escribano (1954–2002) was a composer and music educator. For three years in the 1980s she was composer-in-residence at the RHT, where she also worked as a singer and a pianist. 5 Enrique Pardo (born in Lima, Peru, in 1946) originally studied law and economics in Madrid then graduated in painting from Chelsea School of Art, London. He was a founder member of RHT and is a theatre director, performer and writer who founded Pantheatre in 1981 with a now legendary solo performance on the god Pan: Calling for Pan (hence ‘Pantheatre’). This dance-theatre piece was a physical and vocal tour de force, a ritualistic and wild invocation of the singing-dancing God who embodies the borderline between animal and human. 6 Calling for Pan was based on meetings with Rafael Lopez-Pedraza, Charles Boer and James Hillman, authors of books on Pan and mythology, all three leading figures of archetypal psychology. 7 The Ontological-Hysteric Theater, founded in New York in 1968 by Richard Foreman, had the aim of stripping the theatre bare of everything but the singular and essential impulse to stage the static tension of interpersonal relations in space. 8 Marie-Paule Marthe is a founder member of the Roy Hart International Arts Centre (1991) who trained with Barry Irwin and later as a movement teacher with Dominique Dupuy. She is a teacher and performer and divides her time between the US and France. 9 Kenneth Patchen (1911–1972) was an American poet, novelist and playwright. The poem ‘The Dimensions of the Morning’ is in The Collected Poems of Kenneth Patchen, New Directions Paperback published in 1968. 10 Johannes Theron originally obtained a degree in Business Administration from Pretoria University of South Africa and then a diploma from Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, London. He was a founder member of RHT and later in 1990 of Archipelago Theatre company. He is a professional theatre director, actor and educator. 11 Jean Baptiste Lombard is a musician and storyteller who co-founded and directed the group La Grande Bleue from 1981 to 2014. He is based in Montpellier. 12 Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (1904–1973), better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda, was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. 13 Canto General, an oratorio for two voices, mixed choir and orchestra by Mikis Theodorakis is based on poems from Canto General by Pablo Neruda and was first recorded live on 13 August 1975, at the Karaiskakis Stadium, Piraeus and on 16 August 1975, at the Panathinaikos Stadium, Athens. 14 Maria Farantouri or Farandouri (1947) is a famous Greek singer and also a political and cultural activist, for whose voice the female soloist part of Canto General was originally written. 15 Petros Pandis (1941) is a famous politically committed Greek folk singer, for whose voice the male soloist part of Canto General was originally written. Pandis is best known as the interpreter of Theodorakis' music. 16 See for example, Brackett (2000), Hawkins (2009) and Moore (2012). 17 See Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony. (2002) Directed by Lee Hirsch [Film] United States of America: ATO Pictures. 18 Venice Manley (1934–2004) was a singer, choir and workshop leader who also worked in the 1960s to help the children of travelers in Ireland to have better access to education. She worked with Nor Hall in Canada; in America; with Odin Teatret in Denmark; in Germany; in the Netherlands and for the RHT in France. For the last five years of her life she also ran Maspinzeli, the London Georgian choir. She also co-founded and sang with the four-woman acappella group Kite.

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References Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony (2002) Directed by Lee Hirsch [Film] United States of America: ATO Pictures. Brackett, David (2000) Interpreting Popular Music. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hart, Roy (1963) Personal Correspondence between Roy Hart and Sylvia Enfield. Unpublished. Hawkins, Stan (2009) The British Pop Dandy: Masculinity, Popular Music and Culture. Farnham: Ashgate. Moore, Allan F. (2012) Song Means: Analysing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song. Amsterdam: Elsevier B. V. Patchen, Kenneth (1968) The Collected Poems of Kenneth Patchen. New York: New Directions Paperback. Weber, Maximillan ([1922] 1947) Theory of Social and Economic Organization (trans. A. R. Anderson and Talcott Parsons). London: Free Press of Glencoe.

5 LEAVING MALÉRARGUES AND GROWING INDEPENDENCE Margaret Pikes

Autonomy and healing The small flat I first rented in Montpellier was in a narrow street of tall, stone-built townhouses in the old town centre and somewhere on another floor, I often heard a flamenco-rock group’s singing, clapping and ferocious guitar strumming. It was lively and very welcome. I was regularly teaching a small group of voice students, some of whom had already been working with other Wolfsohn-Hart teachers and I also travelled every term to Belgium to teach for several weeks. Besides this, I was performing a solo, Voyages (1989), which I had created of mostly French songs and some sketches, accompanied first by a classical guitarist (who always brought his vegetarian dog along to rehearsals), then by two excellent jazz orientated guitarists, Christophe Lombard and Hervé Loche. Christophe arranged my songs and both musicians sang the harmonies. As our project was a new departure for me, I very much appreciated their patience and support. We toured our show for two or three years in the region and made an album. It was both educative and fun for all three of us in different ways, I believe. I also made contact with other musicians and performers and slowly developed my career as a singer as well as an independent Wolfsohn-Hart voice teacher.1 At this time, I also began psychotherapy. I wanted especially to assess what I had lived through in the years since joining the Roy Hart Theatre (RHT). In addition, I also wished to experience and learn more about being guided to contact emotional sources in an acknowledged therapeutic context, so that I would be better equipped professionally when guiding my students in the voice work. By chance, my therapist turned out to be someone who came from a famous theatrical French family, and working with him for four years helped me to get my feet on the ground psychologically: to start to ‘understand’ myself better.2 Although I was not

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usually literally working vocally in these sessions, it was a vital step in my practice towards taking possession of my own voice. I learned, for example, that it was normal to express anger in situations where one’s point of view was not respected. Within the RHT, despite voice lessons where I was encouraged to express aggression, I was immediately labelled as ‘difficult’ when I questioned decisions made, or tried to express anger in relation to actions taken by others in the daily life of the community, with which I disagreed. This was all the more frustrating when the new girlfriends of some of the male RHT members were described as ‘feisty’ when they expressed disagreement or anger! Such is the dynamic of a family-styled community perhaps, but this kind of refusal to allow another person to be other than what has hitherto been projected onto them, is none the less unconsciously restrictive and uncreative. Through my work in therapy, I also became aware that in serious psychotherapeutic practice the client/therapist relationship is protected by boundaries. Even as a tool for performance research, there is a need to find the right balance between the freedom to explore and an awareness of responsibility on the part of the voice teacher. I have come to believe that all vocal work that opens up emotions should be facilitated carefully by an experienced teacher who has a clear understanding of their duty of care to their students and of the essence of the ‘rules of protection’ and professional boundaries.3

Motherhood As well as helping me to develop a more informed approach to my voice teaching, my work in therapy encouraged me personally to listen more to my own needs. I began to allow myself to think more about my wish to become a mother. Having discovered that a single adult in France over the age of thirty could apply for permission to adopt a child, I decided to investigate this and finally I began the application process. The details of how I did finally adopt my son form a personal story that I will only sketch here. However, when I look back at all that led up to the decision and then all that followed, I realise the breadth of what I learned through this and how deeply valuable the journey has been for my personal growth as a woman and therefore for my connection with my voice. Having received official approval from the French social services to adopt, it was up to me to find the child. At the time, I was aware of various stories where people paid to adopt children from developing countries. I wanted to avoid any of these kinds of channels, so I turned my searches to contacting African embassies and I received a warm and encouraging letter from the Embassy of Burkina Faso. I was put in touch with their Ministry of Social Services, who told me that my papers had been accepted and that they would look for a child for me. Everything was transparent and direct and there was no request for money. So I decided that I should visit Burkina Faso as I had never, in fact, been to any African country and most especially the one from where my child would come. It was the start of a life-changing journey of discovery which I could never have imagined a few years previously.

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As the plane flew in low over the red laterite ground and landed in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina, I had the strange feeling of coming home. Getting off the plane I walked into a wall of damp heat and during the ride in the beaten-up old taxi to my hotel, I was fascinated by the little stalls and the number of people walking along the roadside, carrying all kinds of loads on their heads. I must have seemed naive and gauche, but I was treated respectfully as I struggled with the CFA4 bank notes to pay the driver. For most of my stay I lodged with Blanche, the mother of a Burkinabé5 friend in Montpellier. On one evening, Blanche, a physically substantial woman, took me and a younger daughter to the open-air cinema, all three of us seated on her moped. She confided in me that she always took a knife with her to that cinema as protection. Her house was a simple, relatively comfortable bungalow with a goat and some chickens in the courtyard and a small, smoky outhouse where all the cooking was done on a wood fire. One evening coming home, I was surprised to find the darkened living room filled with an audience of Burkinabé viewers in front of the TV, totally absorbed watching an American soap opera starring glamourous, rich white people acting out their jealousies and machinations in palatial houses with swimming pools. It seemed such a contrast to the actual surroundings of the viewers, but I realised that the themes of these human stories are of course, universal and archetypal. I soon made an appointment to visit the social workers who were responsible for my adoption application. I spent some time walking around the very hot, dusty streets before I eventually found their corrugated-iron roofed offices. As I entered looking distinctly hot, pink and flustered, I was met by four elegantly dressed and poised women coolly assessing me as they looked up from working at their desks. I explained who I was and was then politely and warmly welcomed. These were to be the angels who, with discrimination and complete integrity would find my child. In my application, I had not specified whether I wanted a girl or a boy. They told me that it would probably take a year, so I returned to France to continue working and to wait. I had in the past year been invited to perform in a piece called Des Nuits Noires de Monde (1991), written and directed by Michèle Bernard,6 a well-known French singer and composer of contemporary chansons françaises. It was a beautiful story, partly inspired by Bruce Chatwin’s The Song Lines (1987), of six women of different nationalities who were seeking the country where they could live in peace. During rehearsals, I was impressed by Michèle’s gentle but clear and efficient way of directing, which was quite different from my years of being directed in the RHT. Michèle managed to get the best out of her professional cast, including two jazz musicians, a cellist and a barrel organ player, as well as the five vocalists, by appealing to our intelligence and using her dry sense of humour. The performance toured successfully, and it was during a break from this that I had travelled to Burkina Faso. Unfortunately, after I returned and during rehearsals for a new creation in Montpellier, I became very ill. I had contracted hepatitis A in Burkina Faso probably through drinking contaminated water. The problem was that we had a very

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important gig in Paris for Des Nuits Noires de Monde for which I really needed to be present. So, I travelled to the theatre from Montpellier, huddling, yellow and feverish in my first-class TGV (high-speed train) seat and managed to perform, thanks mostly to adrenaline and support from all the cast. I staggered home and tried to rest and recover. A few weeks later at the end of May 1992, I received a message that I should phone the social workers in Ouagadougou. A warm voice speaking in the slow, calm way of Francophone Africans, told me: ‘We have found your child. He is a boy.’ I was trembling. ‘What is his name?’ I asked. ‘I’ll have to look in the file, please wait.’ I heard footsteps disappearing and returning. ‘Il s’appelle Dieudonné’ (‘His name is God-given’). As tears poured down my face, I was told that he was recovering from measles, and malnutrition and that I should come as soon as possible to fetch him. I said that I would and hung up. So, despite my convalescent state – due to the severity of the hepatitis infection I had lost a lot of weight and hair and was still struggling with exhaustion – I booked a flight and ten days later arrived again in Ouagadougou. As soon as I had decided to accept the offer from the Burkinabé Social Services, I began to have a lot of luck (apart from the hepatitis!). Luck or synchronicity, as Jung might have described it. A new voice student revealed that her sister, a sociologist, was married to a Burkinabé professor and lived in ‘Ouaga,’ and that this couple had also recently adopted a child. After we met, the sister very generously offered to help me with accommodation when I returned for the actual adoption. In the end, she was also able to help me in many other ways. During these two weeks in Burkina, I also met, by chance, a French couple who were looking to adopt a child. The woman was a professional singer and it emerged that they lived in a village about two kilometres north of Malérargues. Other such surprising meetings and links occurred for which I have no explanation other than my feeling that I was on a path totally connected to my heart. I had a clear feeling that events of synchronicity like these come when such a connection is being lived. Before returning to Burkina to adopt Dieudonné, my new friend who lived in Ouaga, the sociologist, had agreed to bring him to her home for the few days before I arrived, as he was so weak and in need of urgent care. When I arrived, after waiting at the noisy carousel for my suitcase, as I came through the ‘Arrivals’ exit, I saw a woman at the other side of the hall with a beautiful little boy balanced on her hip who was looking eagerly in my direction. This first meeting with my son was a very special moment, which as I remember it, still touches me deeply. After some more felicitous meetings and when all the papers were stamped and signed, we flew back to Paris, then to Montpellier. During the first months after my son’s arrival, I was still quite weak and tired from the hepatitis. But as I needed to keep earning, I continued teaching, rehearsing and performing with a lot of support from friends nearby who had children of the same age and frequently babysat for me. I realised how lucky I was to have this support and I really appreciated the generosity of these friends (who, incidentally, were not from my old ‘synthetic family’).

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After two years, I began to reconsider my situation. I was invited to create a new performance with two female singers in Marseille. This would have meant leaving my son overnight with friends regularly while I was rehearsing. I knew as a mother that I could not do this and, finally, that I was going to have to change my way of life to be more available to spend time with my ‘family.’ So, I decided to look for work as a schoolteacher, using the qualification I had obtained 25 years previously, partly because such work was relatively easy to find, but mainly it would mean I could be free at the same times as my child. It is true that I also enjoy working with young children sometimes, even if it can be exhausting, because their energy and enthusiasm is usually still so full of life.

Togo, West Africa – teaching and singing During a workshop I was giving in 1995, I happened to speak of my teaching post searches to one of my students, who suggested I contact an international school in Togo, West Africa, which her children had attended when she had lived there with her family for some years. This contact, amazingly, proved to be successful. I was offered, at short notice, a post as a primary school teacher at this private international school, offering education in the English language and following an English curriculum, in Lomé, Togo, which is a French-speaking country. As Lomé is 900 kilometres south of Ouagadougou it seemed to be an extraordinary opportunity, especially for my son to be able to feel perhaps a little less disorientated. So, I wound down my voice teaching and performing, packed up our things, rented out our house and we set off for a new life in Togo. I was ready to take a long break from performing but planned to give a workshop with Venice Manley in Malérargues the following summer when we would return to France for the long summer holiday. About a year after I began working in Togo, a rather extroverted old friend from Brussels came to visit me. He had previously done some voice work with me and loved to sing the blues, so when I took him to the jazz club in downtown Lomé he asked, at the end of the evening, to join the excellent jazz trio to sing. They politely accepted and when he told them later that I had been his teacher, they said they were looking for a singer and would be interested to give me an audition. The result was that they took me on and, having thought that I might not sing again for a long time, I found myself performing regularly with this trio in the jazz club and also at different embassy functions and other events. I was intrigued and warmed by the fact this group had been playing for a long time under their chosen name Anima and its leader, the excellent Senegalese guitarist Edu Bocandé, generously taught me much about singing jazz.7 It was indeed educative to work with these professional and dedicated musicians who always arrived punctually and well prepared for rehearsals and performances. Our rehearsals took place not far from the seashore, in a compound of small tworoomed houses set on sandy ground around a well. The leader had rented one of these houses as a rehearsal space and while we practised, women would come and

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go to the well, with a cloth tied round their bodies and often with a baby on their back. One day, I heard a woman on her way back from the well tunefully singing the melody of Ellington’s ‘Take the A Train’, on which we had spent some time, as it is not an easy piece. It was both beautiful and incongruous to hear this seemingly unsophisticated woman singing like that in such a context. I enjoyed very much singing with the trio Anima and I appreciated the chance to meet and work with African people outside the ex-pat community of teachers from the international school. It was also after singing with the trio one evening that I was introduced to a German engineer who was working in Lomé at the time. We found that we had much in common including a love of the Cevennes hills in France and of music. He had a wonderful sense of humour and we became good friends, regularly meeting up to go hiking in the Cevennes in the following years. He proved to me that the label ‘difficult’ which had been attached to me in my old RHT community, depended so to speak, on the eye/I of the beholder. The school in Lomé also had a very strong tradition of musical theatre and for each of the six years that I was there, I worked with the young, energetic biology teacher who used his previous experience in theatre and his infectious enthusiasm, to inspire students and staff to create really interesting shows each year. We engaged Anima to provide instrumental accompaniment for many of these performances including Jesus Christ Superstar, Oliver, and Grease, all performed by mostly Ghanaian and Nigerian students whose theatrical presences were often remarkable. These rehearsals added another creative dimension to my life in Lomé. I also gave voice lessons and workshops at the French Cultural Centre and collaborated on a CD with Joe Coo, a gifted Togolese singer-songwriter who later travelled to Malérargues and led a workshop with me there. These encounters and experiences in Togo (and there were of course many more than there is room to write about here), were so far from what my life had been within the RHT group, yet they were also very connected. Starting with the adoption of my son, my life had opened up ways to new creative horizons.

Return to Europe In the end, however, after six years, I was obliged to leave Togo due to a serious and mysterious health scare. Financially, I needed to finish my contract at the school, but I reluctantly had to stop all my other activities. I realised that I had simply been pushing myself too hard and that this frightening illness was probably a desperate signal from my body that I should treat myself more gently. I decided that we should return to Europe and I found a post in London at an international school. Just after returning to London in 2001, my brother Noah Pikes invited me to participate in the important seminar on Wolfsohn-Hart voice work that he was organising for the International Centre for Voice at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. It was a great opportunity to meet and discuss with contemporary voice teachers; among the students who attended the workshop I gave were the actors and directors of Insitu theatre group based in Cambridge, whose

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work in environmental theatre interested me a lot. We became friends and for some years I regularly gave voice classes to the members of their theatre group as also did my brother. I continued working as a schoolteacher for six more years, always leading a voice workshop in Malérargues in the summer and giving voice lessons and workshops when possible in London and elsewhere in the UK. In 2005, as well as individual voice work, I began to give regular group classes again in London. Around this time, Michael Keegan Dolan8 invited me to lead a workshop in Ireland for the Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre company which he directed. Working with Keegan Dolan and the dancers in this renowned and wonderfully innovative group was richly rewarding. At the beginning the vocal exploration was sometimes challenging, as can be the case with dancers who have such well-developed control over their bodies that it can be hard for them to let go and allow sound to emerge without this kind of control. But these talented and experienced performers soon understood and allowed another dimension of control through listening and feeling, to feed their experience with devising performances. This meant that by the end of the workshop they created some extraordinarily beautiful and powerful vocal and physical improvisations. Of course, the presence of several professional singers within the company, who were prepared to explore the whole range of their voices, added to the richness of these moments. The company also came to Malérargues for a workshop that I organised in 2009. One particular member of the company who seemed to understand the voice work right from the beginning was Neil Paris.9 As he continued to work with me and other Wolfsohn-Hart teachers from time to time, after the original Fabulous Beast company disbanded, I invited him to lead some movement work in a course I was giving. I very much appreciated the quality of his teaching and we have continued to lead courses focused on linking voice and body, for many years now.

Cologne I had begun to successfully establish myself as a voice teacher in London but, as a single mother, I was struggling financially although my son was now doing an apprenticeship. In 2007, I was offered a well-paid position in an international school in Cologne, the town very near to which my German hiking friend (whom I had met in Lomé) was based. As my son seemed ready to live independently, I accepted the post and once again, packed up my things and moved, this time to Germany. My friend was happy that I was nearby and we discovered with astonishment that by chance, the flat I had rented in the centre of Cologne actually looked out across a short expanse of trees and parked cars to the house where he had been born and grew up. Over the following months our relationship grew and later we married. Working again as a schoolteacher was both interesting and, in many respects creative, but I really wanted to have more time for voice work. After nearly two years, I gave my notice and began focusing on voice teaching again, this time in

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Cologne where some other teachers from RHT had, in fact, already introduced their version of the Wolfsohn-Hart voice work. I quickly established a regular voice research group and a network of students. I also fell in love with that old city with its layers of cultural origins dating from before the Romans; its Carnival and its fame as the place where Keith Jarret recorded his beautiful improvised piano concert in 1975. Karl-Heinz Stockhausen had also lived very near to Cologne and the jazz and improvised music scene there is very lively. I studied German (of which, at the beginning, I knew hardly a word) and slowly began to understand the basics of that precise and difficult language. As well as teaching in Cologne, I also continued teaching in London and leading workshops every summer in Malérargues. I was invited for several years by the theatre group bluCinque to lead workshops in Turin and also to work with the Theater Labor in Bielefeld. In 2011, Neil Paris invited me to join the cast of Agnes and Walter: A Little Love Story, a performance that his company was creating in the UK with support from Arts Council England. We played for ten days at the Edinburgh Festival (Off) at the Zoo Southside and toured the performance throughout the UK very successfully.10 In this show I sang some French and Spanish as well as English songs that were chosen because of their emotional force and their connection with memory. The last song I sang in my role as ‘the singer’ in Agnes and Walter was Bruce Springsteen’s ‘My Father’s House’. In fact many of Springsteen’s songs, and his visceral and emotionally engaged style of singing, have continued to be an important reference for me since I first heard his album The River (1980) in the early 1980s. The last line of ‘My Father’s House’ speaks of how that house is calling out coldly into the night, across the darkness, reminding us of our unrepented sins. With this last image, the song was especially meaningful for me in that it somehow conjured sadly the memory of Malérargues, the place I had been psychologically obliged to leave, in order to continue the journey towards owning my voice. It is the place also where Hart’s patriarchal authority continued to resonate – authority which, in my view, was not entirely without its dark side.

Notes 1 I was especially helped at that time by the prize-winning singer-songwriter Michel Arbatz, who wrote some songs for me and helped with theatrical direction. www. michelarbatz.com/ 2 Hart, who enjoyed putting a new slant on the meaning of words, sometimes spoke of comprehending by disconnecting under and standing: to ‘understand’ or ‘stand under’ something meant you had a more embodied, grounded connection with it. 3 See Part 2, Chapter 9: ‘The role of the teacher.’ 4 The acronym CFA stands for Communauté Financière d'Afrique (‘Financial Community of Africa’) or Communauté Financière Africaine (‘African Financial Community’). The currency is for members of the UEMOA (Union Économique et Monétaire Ouest Africaine, ‘West African Economic and Monetary Union’). 5 Burkinabé is the name given to people born in Burkina Faso. 6 Michèle Bernard (1947) is a well-known French musician, singer and songwriter, who is also a politically engaged artist. From the 1960s onwards, she has used her position as a

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pillar of the chanson française style to champion alternative lifestyles through many of her songs. 7 See www.edubocande.com/ 8 For more information on Michael Keegan Dolan and his professional relationship with Pikes, see ‘Conclusion: owning our voices – a pluriphony,’ at the end of this book. 9 For further information on Neil Paris, see ‘Conclusion: owning our voices – a pluriphony,’ at the end of this book. Paris is also one of the four performers appearing in the video samples that accompany this publication. 10 SMITH dancetheatre's Agnes and Walter: a Little Love Story is a ‘delightful flight of fancy that set the Edinburgh Festival Fringe alight with its poignant and compelling comic story-telling. Crossing boundaries of dance and theatre, the work combines physical and visual performance styles including dance, physical theatre, clowning and live music’ (Martin 2011: 16).

Reference Martin, Iain (2011) ‘Dance and Physical Theatre Review – 5/5 Show: Agnes and Walter (a Little Love Story).’ Three Weeks in Edinburgh: Your Free Guide to the Edinburgh Festival. Week 1.

6 SOME REFLECTIONS Margaret Pikes

Both Wolfsohn and Hart created around themselves a community of students, who were also followers and believers. The work has now continued without the presence of these two ‘masters’ and the question arises as to whether a community context for this approach to voice research work is a necessary requirement for it to maintain its depth and intensity. Hart described the atmosphere of our communal life as the pressure cooker, and clearly such a community would not have been possible without a strong leader. But I now question to what extent the style of that leadership was creative and to what extent it unnecessarily infantilised and disempowered the group members. I also wonder to what extent both Wolfsohn and Hart were themselves dependent upon the faithful support of a group of ‘disciples’ in order to continue researching their own visionary and extreme beliefs. They certainly did not acknowledge this. In the earlier chapters, I have tried to describe some of the positive aspects of working in Hart’s synthetic family. I have also touched on some of the problems that seemed inherent in our life and work in that community: I would like to enlarge on those now. In fact, the feelings that underlay my original hesitations about joining the group never entirely disappeared. On some intuitive level, I did not feel able to believe in Hart’s personal authority with the same complete faith as others in the group seemed to do. This troubled me, as well as the fact that most of the group members were from middle- or upper-class backgrounds and seemed to be unaware of, or uninterested in, the struggles and lack of opportunity that I felt were the lot of many people in the world at large. Concerning my doubts about Hart’s authority: when, from around 1968 onwards, the group’s interpersonal and professional lives became slowly ever more entwined and his leadership of the growing group became more demanding, Hart wrote: Subjectively I felt the strain of this kind of harness; objectively I accepted it as part of the philosophy of the 8-octave approach to life. (Hart 1967)

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Does this perhaps explain why from this point onwards, he became even more autocratic and patriarchal? His own career as a soloist was in the ascent, with works written for him by composers, such as Hans Werner Henze’s Versuch über Schweine (1969) and Peter Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969). Was it during this time that the group started, in my view, to take on more cult-like aspects? Linked to this question are two other important points of discussion related to Hart’s (following Wolfsohn’s) leadership and the direction the voice work took at this time: the androcentric bias of Hart’s ideas and whether the work, as he led it, could accurately be called psychotherapy.1 These questions are not only relevant to my own journey, but also to the way the indubitably powerful potential of the voice work was shaped and developed.

Guru, therapist or director? Hart was, of course, a pioneer who proceeded according to his own personality and psychology. As the charismatic leader, he was navigating the hazardous path between the roles of spiritual leader or guru, theatre director, performer and psychotherapist. Although Hart was an actor, a man of the theatre, as a young student at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) he had known for some time that his voice was not rooted, not literally embodied. Through the voice work with Wolfsohn, he wrote that he became: [M]ore and more convinced that there was a serious philosophical flaw in the approach to Theatre in the Drama schools in those days. I was interested in the relationship between the actor and his personal life. I became concerned with the relationship between voice and personality, especially as this manifested itself in a spectrum of energy production varying from apathy to intensity. (Hart 1967) I believe that this was essentially a spiritual quest rather than a search for an acting technique or even a more general theatrical research inquiry, though it has a lot in common with other theatrical philosophies that were flowering at the time: for example, Stanislavsky’s ideas as transplanted and reworked by Method Acting, as well as groups such as the Living Theatre and Grotowski’s Laboratory Theatre. Hart’s particular quest was: ‘[g]rowth from ego to involvement’ (ibid.). As the director of the RHT performances, his role was again more akin to a spiritual teacher or guru and perhaps psychotherapist than a theatre director and, in fact, he encouraged other key members of the group to give the more basic theatrical direction. I now believe that the usually pejorative epithet ‘cult’ as applied to the group, is in many respects accurate. As James R. Lewis (2014) suggests, many contemporary cults emerged in the early 1970s out of the ashes of the counterculture and as successors to the youth movement of the 1960s. ‘Cult’ is usually used in an accusatory fashion to denote ‘malevolent’ religious groups although in the case of the RHT, religion was not foregrounded but was rather replaced by the belief in the potential

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for attaining individuation (or becoming more conscious) through the work on the extended voice.2 Moreover Hart’s charismatic leadership style, combined with his spiritual aspirations, had more than once drawn comparisons to religious gurus – something he strenuously denied, although his way of insisting that the group was a family, also suggests a kind of guru-like status. Nevertheless, and despite its cult-like nature, it is also true that this close knit therapeutic/artistic society had a positive side, as it provided a structure within which members could develop creative sides of themselves in ways that they would not have been able to do elsewhere. As the voice work opened up new psychic energies, students were enabled to understand and build on these discoveries through the containment provided by the group and its interpersonal structure. (This is what Hart meant by the ‘pressure cooker’ effect.) In my view, this structure would not have been possible without strong leadership and many members were indeed helped to overcome psychological problems like depression and a loss of a sense of purpose in life. However, Hart clearly believed that working on the extended voice was a kind of psychotherapy: on some occasions he said that the work was 51% ‘art’ – he also declared on others, that it was 51% ‘therapy.’ It is this aspect of his leadership which, for me, poses more questions. During the singing lessons, very strong, cathartic moments often occurred and Hart was described by Charles Enfield, a qualified psychiatrist and, at the time, a friend and colleague of Hart’s, as ‘a lay therapist who has been trained in a technique of both singing and psychotherapy and yet not medically’ (Enfield 1963: 1). The paper in which Enfield wrote this description was intended to persuade psychotherapists of the importance of the voice work for their field of expertise and this also was of its time – as other artistic practices like dance, drama, music and art also began to be connected to psychotherapy in the 1950s and 1960s. Nevertheless, there were many psychotherapeutic ground rules that were not present in Hart’s approach and the lack of these, in fact, made the work as psychotherapy unbalanced and dangerous. In an earlier chapter, I noted that Hart was a pioneer and that his work lacked many of the protections that are now currently seen as fundamental in humanistic psychotherapies. In fact, these boundaries have been developed through the experience of early researchers like Hart himself and others of that epoch. Among many examples: Fritz Perls and his wife Laura were developing Gestalt Therapy, in New York and California in the 1960s and 1970s, and its premises and early practice resemble in some ways Hart’s ideas and ways of working.3 Another example is Transactional Analysis, which is based on a particular theory of personality and a systematic method of psychotherapy aimed at personal growth and change, which began to become known following the publication of the book Games People Play in 1964 by its founder, Eric Berne.4

Hart’s androcentricity Influenced strongly by Jung’s concept of individuation as the goal of psychotherapy, Hart – like Wolfsohn – believed that working to synthesise opposites within the

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psyche was the way to achieve a similar goal. For Hart, his work on the human voice was his search for synthesis and he sometimes referred to it as ‘conscious schizophrenia’ (Hart 1972). His focus was often on the opposites of masculine and feminine, as well as for example: height and depth; animal and spirit; conscious and unconscious, all of which, in fact, he linked in many ways to the male/female division. However, like Jung, Hart’s definitions of ‘the feminine’ and the anima (the unconscious feminine side of a man as configured by an archetype appearing in dreams and projections onto others) were heavily influenced by his androcentricity. This, for me as a woman, is where Hart’s psychotherapeutic credentials, and also the foundations of his ideas about ‘family’ structure, are again open to criticism. Demaris S. Wehr writes that from an androcentric perspective: The male is the centre of experience, and that experience is normative. The male norm parades as universal, and by that norm women are defined as ‘other,’ not center, as ‘object,’ not subject. (Wehr 1988: 16) For men, working to synthesise the opposites meant integrating the feminine. But to what does this correspond in fact? In Jungian theory, ‘the feminine’ and the anima might be close but they are not identical, while these two terms were often used interchangeably in our meetings and talks with Hart. Anima and ‘the feminine’ were associated with all the common and reductive stereotypes of femininity including weakness, irrationality, capriciousness, erotic seduction and emotional excess. The anima archetype, coming from the unconscious, was thus potentially dangerous until it had become ‘integrated.’ In fact, because, like Jung, both Wolfsohn and Hart mixed their own anima projections into their ideas about women’s psychology, we, the female members of the group were fundamentally yet subtly handicapped by the assumption that we were somehow more genetically endowed with anima qualities than men. Furthermore, (a sort of Catch 22) to not display these qualities meant that you were somehow not properly female! And incidentally, as Wehr (1988 64) suggests, in Jungian psychology it was obliquely implied that women themselves did not have an anima and, therefore, possibly had no soul. On top of this, the corresponding unconscious masculine side of a woman, the animus, was associated with even more negative manifestations. While it was often deemed positive for a man to get in touch with his femininity, possible animus possession by a woman within the RHT group, was really unwelcome. This could be interpreted as the woman being for example: argumentative, bossy or difficult. This perhaps came as a result of the tendency of Jung himself to write more about the negative animus than the positive one. But, as Wehr correctly observes: If used as a diagnostic tool, the term ‘animus-possessed’ should be a neutral one. Its meaning would be, simply, that a woman has not come to terms with her animus, has not integrated ‘him,’ and is therefore at the mercy of this image. (ibid.: 119)

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Wehr later goes on to suggest: Jung’s assumption that men and women are in equal and symmetrical relationships with their contra sexual sides involved a total lack of awareness of the oppression from which women suffer. Without giving this dimension its due, his psychology cannot be completely healing for women. (ibid.: 119–120) This undertow of vocally linked patriarchal prejudice often emerged in my singing lessons where my teachers (apart from Dorothy Hart and Marita Günther), rarely encouraged me to use my soprano range. I was constantly told to sing deeper pitches as if this automatically meant I would be more ‘in touch with my body.’ In the higher pitches, women were pushed vocally to sound out with a strong, hard, bright sound or to belt as it is now called. In fact, because of the damage that this in my view caused, several of the older female members no longer had access to their higher range. It is true that, for a woman developing access to sounds that are deep in pitch and source is an important part of connecting to her whole vocal range. Furthermore, belting out in a loud tenor can be really satisfying, but this should not be at the price of losing access to the contralto and soprano range. In fact, when singing fully with these more feminine qualities and in the higher pitches, we are not sourcing the voice in our heads. These sounds also require a deep, open and genuine connection to, and support from, the body. So, it is my belief that, to some extent, in the early Wolfsohn-Hart vocal research women were deviated from developing ownership of their voices by being encouraged to sound in a brutalising way, which was seen, from the masculine point of view, as the means to validating women’s higher range. That this unconscious patriarchal bias was shaped by Hart’s (and Wolfsohn’s) own psychologies and cultural backgrounds, is very probable. This attitude was echoed within the group where somehow, whilst the abstract idea of integrating femininity was seen as positive for men, actual women’s bodies and their particular needs were often not understood or respected but seemed rather to be rejected. Perhaps this explains why there were less women than men who remained in the group. On a more personal level Hart admitted that as a young man he was not successful in his relationships with women and did not consider himself attractive. Paul Silber, who read Hart’s student diaries is quoted by Noah Pikes as saying: Women found him ugly and I think Roy found himself ugly. He was certainly distressed that women seemed inclined to distance themselves from him. Indeed, much of his quest focused on a desire to transform himself from a frog onto a prince. (Silber in Pikes 2004: 76) Perhaps related to this, Hart himself also said: ‘When I left South Africa, I decided to renounce my body’ (Hart in Pikes 2004: 74). Hart’s connection with and love

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for his mother was described to me by Sylvia Enfield (Vivienne’s elder sister mentioned earlier), who knew him well personally, as ‘unusually intense.’ (Enfield 2019). Mrs Enfield’s husband Charles had in fact been a childhood friend of Hart. She also spoke of the fact that Hart’s father, although running a successful haulage business, was illiterate. His mother was more artistic, literate and extrovert. Possibly therein lay a familial constellation that also influenced his attitudes to ‘femininity.’ Obviously, with these brief reflections we cannot come to any conclusions about Hart’s deep psychological make up, but in thinking about him in the round as a person rather than as a leader, I hope to better understand the undercurrents that led to his way of working. As previously mentioned, Hart used a strategy of verbally attacking and humiliating students, often quite cruelly, in meetings. This was aimed somehow, I believe, at breaking through the ego to help students go beyond their habitual limits. This way of interceding with a student’s unconscious was developed from Wolfsohn’s teaching methods. Sheila Braggins (2012) describes how during talks with Wolfsohn (which were also considered to be singing lessons): Sometimes his message was strong. Every time the knife went in, it went in slowly and the wound could be deeply painful, but I always knew he was right and that whatever we had discussed gave me an invaluable new approach to myself and to life. (ibid.: 156)5 So, it seems that the assumption was that it was always the ego that blocked growth and therefore needed attacking. The ego has been defined in various ways: by Freud as the psychological component of the personality that is represented by our conscious decision-making process (or personal agency); Jung used the term in various ways but, essentially, he saw it as the centre of consciousness (Samuels et al. 1986: 50). Ego is also involved in forming identity and self-esteem. Individuation, central to both Jung’s and Hart’s philosophies, requires transcendence of the ego, but what if women’s egos, their sense of self-esteem and identity have been stunted by the internalised oppression created by the patriarchy? What if their ego development has from early childhood been warped and weakened by the constant experience that their worth, their right to exist, is dependent on serving others? The list of the ways in which girls are induced to grow up feeling that, in themselves, they are somehow essentially inadequate or deficient has been described for a long time by feminist theories.6 Even when women’s psychology is defined in a ‘flattering’ way, saying that, for example, a woman can be a man’s inspiration and that she is more intuitive and knows more about contacting personal feeling, this is no more objective or respectful of women’s basic humanity. We are still either defined by our usefulness to men or in terms of what we have learned to develop as a way of surviving, given that, from the word ‘go,’ we are not permitted to have personal agency (except perhaps for a lucky few). For these reasons, many women do not develop such a strong

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sense of self, of their a priori right to a place in the world: of ego boundaries so strong that they need to be attacked. So whilst it may be appropriate for some men’s egos to be battered in order to help those men break through to transcendence, for most women maybe other routes are more appropriate as they seek a perspective beyond their habitual limits. Thus, the kind of guerrilla attacks on the (already weak) self-esteem of some of the women in the group was damaging and lacking in insight, pointing again to the profoundly androcentric nature of the Wolfsohn-Hart philosophies and, possibly, even to a pleasure in dominating the female, unconsciously perceived as dangerous. Whether man or woman, you might be called ‘a bitch’ (note the negative female connotation) for appearing to be negative or mean. No attempt was made to dig into the possible psychological reasons why a group member might find themselves in this kind of emotional state. You were simply ‘attacked:’ metaphorically hit over the head with this appellation and ‘sent to Coventry’ by the rest of the group. Over the next days or weeks, you would try to understand, with support from your voice teacher, who would perhaps help you to ‘sound out’ feelings around the attack or interpret dreams that were connected. However, there was no room given to understanding where in the psyche the possible resistance or emotional blockage had originated, so deeper healing was not usually the outcome. Often rather, a re-enforcement of fear of the patriarchal figure took place, which did help concentration perhaps, but not an authentic movement to a bigger perspective. I think these ego-breaking tactics were much more the style of a spiritual leader than a psychotherapist. I do not want to suggest that men do not also struggle with problems of identity or low self-esteem. Indeed, I believe that most of Hart’s students, both men and women, were dealing with more or less serious psychological issues – as are most of us when we start to focus on our inner worlds. What I wish to highlight is, firstly, the unconscious patriarchal bias of Hart’s ideas and, secondly, his lack of insight into the deep psychological roots of the fear that female students could be experiencing during the work and how this impacted on their vocal work.

What is sex trying to tell us? Love and sex Another questionable aspect of the rules within our synthetic family was the exploration of intimate relationships following Hart’s decree that we are ‘on loan to each other,’ so that within a couple, one or both of the partners should always be open to the other having a relationship with someone else. This should not happen in secret however – as had happened in Wolfsohn’s time when he had secret sexual relationships with a number of his female students and which Hart understood to have been destructive. This kind of research into breaking up old social norms was very current in the 1960s and can be seen as courageous, in the way Hart insisted on transparency. Following Jung, Hart was perhaps attempting to find ways to better understand how the projections of anima and animus onto prospective partners could be recognised as coming from the unconscious and so could thus

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be integrated. One of the conundrums that Hart brought up in a River for us to ponder was: ‘What is sex trying to tell us?’ Permission to sleep with another person, to share a pillow, had to be asked for in a meeting. This often provoked jealousies in the heart of the current partner, but that reaction was viewed as, although normal, essentially ‘negative,’ and would become material to be worked with, especially in voice lessons. However, the idea that jealousy was only a negative, uncreative emotion, did not take into account many complex psychological aspects. Detaching oneself from one’s animus or anima projection is, in our society, a huge undertaking for any adult, let alone for young people in their 20s. The cultural constructs (or perhaps even biologically rooted instincts linked to maternity), which can make women feel that they do in some way belong to their sexual partner as he/she does to them are also nonnegligible forces. Personally, I am aware that my own experience of this experiment in polyamory, in which for some years I maintained relationships with two different partners, left me in some ways emotionally damaged and did not positively contribute to my process of individuation. One of my partners was a male student who was even younger than myself and whom Hart had instructed me to sleep with to help his sexual education. I obeyed for many reasons, but I now believe that it was not appropriate for me to have been put in this role of ‘teacher’ as I myself was not at all confident about my own sexuality and needs. These difficult, very personal experiences are included here with the intention again to highlight not only the androcentricity of Hart’s explorations, but also the damage that this biased attitude caused. Moreover, on reflection I am also aware that while we discussed and explored the challenges of jealousy and learning to ‘let go’ within relationships, we very rarely, if ever, discussed the positive aspects of love (including, but not only, sex). The value of commitment, tenderness and trust within a sexual relationship as ways to deepen and develop a nuanced adult partnership, were not discussed or deemed relevant. Yet these qualities are integral to human relationships and in many respects to education and learning, but of course are often misunderstood as implying sentimentality from the patriarchal standpoint. Hart’s androcentricity was also apparent in his rule that whilst we were a synthetic family, we should not actually have children. At the beginning, I accepted this as I was well aware that at that time, in my 20s, I was not in any way ready to become a parent given all my existential questions, including problems understanding my own femininity. Again, Hart’s dictum was of its time – I know that some extreme left-wing groups of that epoch had similar rules. Hart’s philosophical standpoint was that we should focus all our energy on bringing forth our own artistry, which was linked with individuating, and that having children was a flight from this. That his wife Dorothy already had a child by a previous partner, probably made this standpoint more easily tenable for him. However, his lack of a deeper, less idealised understanding of women became apparent as his relationship with his second partner became more intense and the subject of children came up. In my view, this clash between his Jungian inflected concept of femininity and the

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reality of a physical and intimate relationship with an actual, strong and intelligent young woman, was the moment when Hart’s hold on the group endeavour became unsteady. It was also the time when the group was about to leave for France. Reviewing my process through those early years of exploratory vocal work in London, I am now aware of the fact that the lack of clarity in the distinction between the therapeutic and the artistic was damaging, especially for women. I did benefit from the way the voice work indisputably helped me to release blocked, feeling-full energies, and also importantly to connect with my body and to realise the value of simple physical fitness. Discovering the different sources of my voice, in my body and linked to my imagination and psyche, opened me up to an increasingly deep connection with my own creativity and ability to engage with life. Through working towards performing I also learned many useful life skills including teamwork, stage presence and how to better communicate. However, because the work was not clearly psychotherapeutic and because Hart’s understanding of female psychology was undeveloped, my need for help with healing the psychological problems that had taken hold of me partly as a result of my mother’s schizophrenia, were not safely or properly addressed within the group, despite the potential created by the vocal exploration. Many other members who did also benefit from the positive elements in the work, were in similarly vulnerable psychological situations. In my case, it has thus been important for me to take my work and practice outside of the community in order to keep alive my research into how exploring the voice helps towards individuation, – towards developing ownership of my voices. In my work as a voice teacher, my aim is to guide students through the practice of exploring the range of their voices, so that they come to feel that they are aware of and connected to, their own deep, personal vocal sources. This connection is what I mean by ‘owning our voices.’ I believe that the practice of vocal exploration should not be exclusive and will hopefully also include maintaining a disciplined and creative engagement with all aspects of one’s life, as all these experiences contribute to a deepening understanding of one’s own identity as a person, as an artist, and as a voice teacher in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition. The content of my classes and the way I use scenarios is rooted in this experience, and I urge any person wishing to teach in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition to take this into consideration as they read the second half of this book. The breadth and depth of our own life experiences as well as the practice of vocalising, are vital to the possibility of owning our voices. How can we contain the different, often opposing characters and types of energy that seek to express themselves through our voices, if we have not built an experiential, psychological foundation? Furthermore, if we lack this embodiment how can we safely guide others into their vocal journeys? Wolfsohn believed (as is often quoted,) that ‘the voice is the muscle of the soul,’ (Wolfsohn in Bozeman 2018: 1) and according to Jung the soul itself develops as we grapple with the darker problems of life as well as being buoyed by its joys and successes. As a performer or a voice practitioner, such

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trials can feel far from creative, yet when we come to focus again on our voices, we can feel how through those experiences we have become more connected vocally: that our soul-muscle has grown and developed unexpectedly.

Notes 1 Psychotherapy can be defined as treatment of mental disorder or illness using methods which involve working with the mind, the memory, the emotions and the unconscious to bring about healing, instead of using drugs or medical intervention (UKCP, online). 2 People who follow Jung's philosophy have been accused of treating it like a religion (although Jung himself denied that there were grounds for this), possibly because of his emphasis on the presence of soul in the psyche, and because in his writing he was often concerned with the meaning of life. 3 Gestalt therapy was founded by Fritz and Laura Perls and Paul Goodman. The Perls were both of German Jewish origin and had fled from the Nazis to South Africa, Roy Hart's country of birth. (Hart was also from a Jewish family.) 4 Eric Berne (1910–1970) was a Canadian doctor. Although his ideas were based on Freud’s, he believed that patients could be understood and treated more effectively by analysing the way they interacted with other people. He focused particularly on the balance in each client of the three ego states: Parent, Adult and Child. 5 Perhaps there was a limit to how tolerable these attacks were. This could explain why Braggins eventually left the Wolfsohn-Hart community in the early 1960s. Braggins chose, in my view quite understandably, not to continue the voice work with Hart, but to dedicate herself to her family life with her husband and children and her work as a physiotherapist. 6 Freud’s theory of penis envy describes one of the basic inadequacies that have been allotted to women. Karen Horney’s Feminine Psychology (1967) described this as inaccurate and demeaning. Betty Friedan, in The Feminine Mystique (1963), argued that patriarchal society disempowered women by expecting them to live stultifying lives corresponding to masculine ideals of femininity. Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch (1970) describes how women have been taught that they should be passive and subservient in relationship to men. In this way, they have been effectively castrated and so are seen as inadequate to handle power, including the enjoyment of their own sexuality.

References Berne, Eric (1964) Games People Play. New York: Ballantine Books. Bozeman, Kenneth (2018) ‘Voice, the Muscle of the Soul: Finding Yourself Through Finding Your Voice.’ Convocations, Vol. 9, pp. 1–8. Braggins, Sheila (2012) A Biography of Alfred Wolfsohn: The Mystery Behind the Voice. London: Oberon. Enfield, Charles (1963) Lecture about the Wolfsohn /Hart Approach to Voice Work, Intended for Psychiatrists at a Cancelled Prague Conference. Unpublished. Enfield, Sylvia (2019) Interview with Sylvia Enfield. Conducted by Margaret Pikes, 1 May. Greer, Germaine (1970) The Female Eunuch. New York: Paladin. Hart, Roy (1967) ‘How a Voice Gave Me a Conscience.’ [Online] Available at www.royhart.com/hvgmc.htm [Accessed on 9 September 2017]. Hart, Roy (1972) ‘The Objective Voice.’ [Online] Available at www.roy-hart.com/objec tive.voice.htm [Accessed on 9 September 2017]. Horney, Karen (1967) Feminine Psychology. New York: Basic Books.

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Lewis, James R. (2014) Cults: A Reference and Guide. London: Routledge. Pikes, Noah (2004) DARK VOICES: The Genesis of Roy Hart Theatre Vol. 1. New Orleans: Spring Journal Books. Samuels, Andrew., Shorter, Bani and Plant, Fred (1986) A Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis. London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Wehr, Demaris S. (1988) Jung and Feminism – Liberating Archetypes. London: Routledge. ‘What is Psychotherapy?’ [Online] Available at www.psychotherapy.org.uk/what-is-psycho therapy/ [Accessed on 1 July 2020].

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FIGURE 6.1

Margaret Pikes, first year at grammar school.

Source: © Personal archives.

FIGURE 6.2

Vivienne Young and Roy Hart (1974).

Source: © Ivan Midderigh.

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FIGURE 6.3 

Roy Hart in rehearsal at the Abraxas Club (circa 1969).

Source: © David Goldsworthy.

FIGURE 6.4 

Roy Hart Theatre: And (1972) ‘The Magic Chord’.

Source: © Ivan Midderigh.

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FIGURE 6.5 Roy Hart Theatre: And (1972) ‘Beauty and the Beast’ with Vivienne Young

centre stage. Source: © Ivan Midderigh.

Hart Theatre La Tempête (1976). Playing the three goddesses centre stage (from left to right: Pascale Ben, Liza Mayer and Margaret Pikes).

FIGURE 6.6 Roy

Source: © Ivan Midderigh.

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FIGURE 6.7 Postcard

from Samuel Beckett to Boris Moore with congratulations for Beckett de Trois Côtés (1986).

Source: © Personal archive.

FIGURE 6.8 

Envelope with Beckett’s handwriting (1986).

Source: © Personal archive.

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FIGURE 6.9 

Margaret Pikes in Canto General (1983).

Source: © Private archive.

FIGURE 6.10 

Margaret Pikes in Voyages (1992).

Source: © Richard Bruston.

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FIGURE 6.11 

Margaret Pikes in Lomé singing with Anima (1998).

Source: © Private archive.

FIGURE 6.12 

Margaret Pikes teaching a group (2017).

Source: © Richard Bruston.

PART 2

Methodology Margaret Pikes

It is with some trepidation that I try to describe how I work with my students. This is because attempting to fix in words the interpersonal dialogue that underscores the teaching process seems contradictory to its always unique nature. For example, I do not think in terms of ‘exercises’ especially with individual work, because I think the word implies a prescriptive set of actions to be followed inflexibly. Without careful in-the-moment listening and looking, these will not help the student to develop ownership of her voice. I have rather developed certain itineraries along which I guide the student, choosing the pathways according to what I perceive necessary for her learning experience at that point. These pathways may not always be the same, and I sometimes also call the suggestions I use to guide students, scenarios. As a result, there is an element of improvisation in my teaching which is based on my experience and on my knowledge of the student. Unfortunately, as Bolt explains: Theorists or logicians of practice tend to approach the task of theorising practice as a dressmaker approaches the task of making a garment. Using theoretical schemas or patterns, shapes are ‘cut out’ from the continuous flow of practices. These shapes are inverted and then become metonymic for the practices they purport to describe or explain. The part becomes the whole. (2004: 23) So, the ‘exercises’ I describe should be understood from this perspective. In fact, the practice of a voice lesson is, in itself, a time of research both for the student and for the teacher. As Cavarero (2005) underlines, each voice is individual, and so there can be no cut-and-dried ‘method’ for working with the human voice following the Wolfsohn-Hart approach. Each unique voice must follow its own developmental path. Hart himself wrote very little about his ‘method’ although he was an

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extremely articulate man. Developing ownership of our voices is an experiential practice, not a method, and pages of detailed explanation can in no way substitute for experiencing the work. The same overall caveat is true for my work with groups, although there are certain structures and games which are more defined and repeatable and could be called ‘exercises,’ with adjustment for the needs of the specific participants. Most of these ways of working (with groups) were developed by RHT founder members when we first began to give workshops at the end of the 1960s. We designed them with various aims: to build a supportive atmosphere; to give participants the aural space to hear themselves and others as they explore their vocal range; to facilitate engaging with the body while vocalising; to introduce a creative and/or ludic dimension to the work. Some of these exercises, including many activities for group warm-up sessions, have been taken up widely by voice teachers and workshop leaders from many backgrounds, who probably have no idea of their origins. The chapters that follow represent my attempt to focus on different aspects of my work, to give the reader better access to working with the nexus of voice through its interconnecting psychophysical components. In fact, each of these components is vitally implicated in the others, so that a scenario which appears in Chapter 8, ‘Freeing the voice’, may well be relevant to other chapters. The different chapters will be briefly contextualised by short Prefaces, written by Dr Campbell, that link the exercises to the wider field of voice studies. Furthermore, where appropriate, links to online footage of live lessons will be included in the body of the text, thus allowing access to the complex, embodied reality of a ‘voice lesson.’ Please note that, in line with my comments earlier, the filmed footage does not always correspond directly to the written descriptions of the scenarios, given the interactive nature of a live voice lesson. In this way, this section of the book should speak to both practitioners and scholars alike and we hope that this linking of theory and practice will inform and illuminate my unique approach to the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition of vocal discovery.

References Bolt, Barbara (2004) Heidegger, Handlability and Praxical Knowledge. Canberra: Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools Conference. Cavarero Adriana (2005) For More Than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression (trans. P. A. Kottman). Stanford: Stanford University Press.

PREFACE TO METHODOLOGY Patrick Campbell

Method, methodology, praxis It is interesting to note Margaret Pikes’ hesitancy to commit her methodology to paper at the start of this second part of the book, for how can one speak of ‘a methodology’ in terms of vocal training and exploration? Each voice is unique and inevitably carries the traces of a life lived. Loss, love, longing, experience, fear and anger; they are all imprinted on what Barthes so insightfully described as the grain of the voice, a concept he coined to denote ‘the encounter between language and a voice . . . the materiality of the body speaking its mother tongue . . . the language of sound supplementing sense’ (1977: 181–182). The grain of the voice encapsulates the ways in which each voice is indelibly shaped by physiognomy, drives, language, ethnicity, culture, gender, sexuality and class, to name but a few determining factors. Cavarero employs Barthes’ phrase here as the ground for ‘an ontology that concerns the incarnate singularity of every existence insofar as she or he manifests her- or himself vocally’ (2005: 7). Ontology, for Cavarero, refers to a ‘becoming,’ rather than a ‘being,’ and speaks to the vulnerable contingency of the individual human voice as ontic manifestation (ibid.). Pikes’ pragmatic perspective as a master voice teacher encourages her to question how any one vocal methodology could possibly respond to the distinctive disciplinary requirements of the actor, the singer, the performer, the pedagogue or the public speaker, let alone the human being caught in the complex maelstrom of daily life. Different situations must call for different vocal strategies, surely? And, ultimately, what are we ‘searching’ for in our vocal explorations and training – increased control over psychosomatic processes, extension, clarity, power, or indeed the grounding of our very being? How can any one methodological approach to the voice encompass and respond to all of these variables and demands? To further confound the situation, the very term ‘methodology’ is controversial. In one sense, it is used to describe the theoretical analysis of discrete methods applied

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to any given field of study, and thus is a conceptual exercise, one step removed from practice. In another sense, however, it can be used to designate a system of methods, and thus has an inherent relation to a more pluralistic, practical mode of research. Importantly, this second definition of a multivalent ‘methodology’ (often employed in the arts) refutes the essentialist notion of a definitive ‘scientific method.’ The scientific method is an empirical form of knowledge acquisition based on the application of clearly defined principles: the measurement-based testing of deductions based on induced hypotheses. Feyerabend (1993) famously critiqued any idea of a unitary method predicated on unchanging, binding principles, by arguing that scientific progress had rather derived from the fact that researchers either decided not to be bound by conventional methodological rules or consciously broke with them. If there is a Wolfsohn-Hart ‘methodology,’ then it emerged from a similar historiographic rupture, a paradigmatic break with extant voice training: an event, to paraphrase Badiou (1988). This event came into being, as we are aware, in the wake of one young man’s radically contingent encounter with death. Alfred Wolfsohn’s traumatic experience in the trenches of World War I, his subsequent period of selfhealing and his experiences helping others express themselves vocally, led him to conceive of the voice as an ontic manifestation, an epistemic phenomenon and a barometer of psychic development. As Wolfsohn himself revealed: In this work of developing the human voice, the singer penetrates into the depths of the body and so arrives at the new, unknown sounds of one’s voice. However, it is when the ‘It’ sings within that the adult person is brought back again to a child-like state, a truly creative state of a human being. Then one can be certain that the ‘It’ inside the listener is listening too, and that art fulfills the same function as religion, which turns us towards a deeper sphere in ourselves, leading us through depth to transcendence. (2012: 51) Vocal exploration in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition is thus, in essence, an encounter with alterity. This alterity takes a number of forms; there is the encounter with vocal sounds that are unknown; broken, extended sounds which point toward a self that transcends our alienated, socialised, daily personae. This arch-alterity, referred to as the ‘It’ by Wolfsohn earlier, could perhaps be compared to the Lacanian concept of the Other, which is used to describe both the unconscious, and the overwhelming jouissance of the unrepresentable Real, the order of being that transcends language and can threaten us with psychic disarray (Lacan 1998, 2007). Through guided sounding with an experienced teacher, the vocal explorer in the WolfsohnHart tradition often comes face-to-face with aspects of the self that were hitherto unknown on a conscious level. It is precisely this (facilitated) encounter with abject aspects of the voice that can allow for psychic integration and vocal development to take place. Furthermore, as Pikes relates, there is a dialogical, interpersonal level to voice work in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition, characterised by the teacher-student dyad.

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Wolfsohn-Hart vocal exploration is a praxis, understood, following Nelson (2013), as an imbrication of theory and practice, and in this particular tradition of voice work, the praxis is inherently pedagogical. Wolfsohn was primarily a voice teacher; Hart took on his mantle after his death and most of the members of the Roy Hart Theatre (RHT) went on to become pedagogues in their own right, drawing on their long experiences as students within the ‘synthetic family’ of the RHT. Pikes has carried on this pedagogic legacy, whilst importantly re-inflecting it after her own fashion, partly due to the ways in which she questioned certain aspects of the work that she judged inequitable, androcentric or patriarchal. Pikes’ writing over the course of this section of the book will importantly map out the different, key aspects of her praxis that together form a systemic methodological approach. However, perhaps it is wise to reflect on the key role that listening, interpretation and intersubjectivity play in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition of vocal discovery, which will allow a parallel to be drawn with the field of hermeneutics.

A hermeneutics of the voice In his opus Truth and Method (1960), Gadamer expounds on the concept of hermeneutics in order to systematically investigate human understanding. Whilst hermeneutics, broadly speaking, is the branch of knowledge that deals with the interpretation of texts and/or meaningful human actions, Gadamer develops his own vision of an ontological hermeneutics in this particular writing, positing that meaning is ultimately achieved through intersubjective communication. In attempting to untangle human understanding, Gadamer suggests that people are always grounded in a particular history and culture and, thus, in order to comprehend a temporally or culturally specific text or human action, a fusion of horizons is necessary. According to Gadamer: [U]nderstanding is certainly not concerned with ‘understanding historically’ – i.e., reconstructing the way the text came into being. Rather, one intends to understand the text itself. But this means that the interpreter’s own thoughts too have gone into re-awakening the text’s meaning. In this the interpreter’s own horizon is decisive, yet not as a personal standpoint that he maintains or enforces, but more as an opinion and a possibility that one brings into play and puts at risk, and that helps one truly to make one’s own what the text says. I have described this above as a ‘fusion of horizons.’ We can now see that this is what takes place in conversation, in which something is expressed that is not only mine or my author’s, but common. (ibid.: 390) If we replace the word ‘text’ in this citation with ‘voice,’ and ‘interpreter’ with ‘teacher,’ we can perhaps begin to grasp the intersubjective, dialogical, hermeneutical relationship that characterises the teacher-student dyad in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition. In the wake of what Thomaidis (2015) has called ‘the Cavarerian project,’

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Gadamer’s reflections on hermeneutics are perhaps further enriched by the ways in which Cavarero’s writing on the primacy of phone invites us to consider the ways in which voice both engenders, serves and at times undercuts or subverts logos – reason and language. Thus, the hermeneutic approach to voice work in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition – with its focus on sounding and singing, as well as speaking – is not concerned with ‘understanding texts’ (Gadamer 1960: 387) per se, but rather attending to the complex assemblage of human vocalisation through an interpretative process of close listening and dialogic exchange.1 This exchange necessarily entails a fusion of horizons, as the teacher and student make meaning out of their joint experience of, and engagement with, the student’s extended vocal exploration. Compared to other traditions of vocal teaching where the dialogic involvement of teacher and trainee, intersubjectivity and sounding as more than language are prominent, in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition, interpretative listening is more evidently guided by key tenets of Jungian depth psychology.2 This specific conceptual framework allows the Wolfsohn-Hart teacher to cartographically map the student’s voice work according to archetypal principles that the teacher has also encountered in her own explorative work on herself. A defining feature of Pikes’ pedagogic practice is her ability to be present and really listen to her students. This ‘listening’ is as much about kinaesthetic awareness as aural perception and is informed by the tacit knowledge garnered through years of vocal exploration and subsequent work integrating embodied pathways between voice, psyche and imagination. A master teacher such as Pikes has a kinaesthetic awareness of the muscular labour that goes into sounding, and is also aware of the powerful ways in which movement and imagination can nourish and activate the vocal sources. Vocal exploration in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition is also akin to Gadamer’s notion of Erfahrung, the experience of meaning over time garnered through (practical) application (ibid.). Importantly, Erfahrung is etymologically linked to the concept of ‘journeying,’ and one can speak of a vocal journey in relation to the pedagogical work of the voice teacher and student in the Wolfsohn-Hart approach to vocal exploration. In the case of the voice teacher, their pedagogy is the result of their lived experience of the vocal journey, undertaken over a process of many years through a meaningful relationship with a mentor/master practitioner. In the case of the student, the voice work, guided by the teacher, gradually extends the vocal range and expands conscious awareness of the psyche and its contents over time. It is thus a dialogical process, one that maps out hitherto uncharted vocal (and at times psychic) territory. Wolfsohn-Hart vocal exploration – particularly in the way practised by Pikes – is thus a holistic and restorative form of creative research that offers agency to teacher and student alike, as together they flow from phone to logos, from voice to reason, and back again, in a hermeneutic cycle driven by tacit experience and illuminated by sensitive, considered interpretation; a vocal journey that leads, ultimately, to personal growth and psychic (re)integration.

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Research through practice In an attempt to reflect the polyvalent, multivocal fusion of horizons that inform her methodological choices, Pikes’ pedagogical practice is presented over the following pages using strategies pertaining to Research through Practice (RtP) (Thomaidis 2015). According to Thomaidis, in RtP: A fluid, non-linear, studio-based, laboratory-inspired approach results in an idiosyncratic presentation/publication formula, in which the thesis cannot operate as distinct from the practical work or the plethora of supporting media that proliferate in tight connection to RtP projects. (ibid.: 16) Whilst RtP is a strategy related to practice-as-research pathways in postgraduate study, and reflects the particular demands of institutions of higher education, it also allows for a braided approach to analysing, documenting and disseminating Pikes’ praxis. As Nelson suggests: In hermeneutics, it is recognized that the question asked ultimately determines the answer and thus hermeneutic-interpretative models are not linear but figured as circles, spirals or networks with many points of entry.  .  .  . Hermeneutic approaches yield insights but there is an awareness that those insights are situated: depending on where you enter, or pause to reflect upon findings, the insights will differ, but this is seen not as a weakness of the model, rather a recognition that knowing is processual and a matter of multiple perspectives. (2013: 53) By reflecting back the hermeneutics of voice that organically underpins the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition of vocal exploration, methodological strategies related to RtP can facilitate a braided account of Pikes’ praxis, one that offers multiple, intermodal perspectives on her work. Thus, in the fusion of horizons between my scholarly prefaces, Pikes’ exegesis of her pedagogical practice and the filmed footage of Pikes’ work with students, the reader is invited to engage in an ‘iterative journey through process’ (ibid.: 53). What is emphasised in Pikes’ writing in particular over the following pages is Nelson’s (2006) notion of an ‘insider’ practitioner perspective; Pikes’ discourse is imbued with the knowledge garnered from her years of embodied practice in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition of vocal exploration. This comes to the fore in the detailed, sensitive descriptions she offers of scenarios, which indicate (but do not prescribe) pathways for the vocal performer or practitioner-researcher. This knowledge is inherently relational and processual, shaped by the dyadic dynamics interlinking voice teacher and student, as well as the collective becoming that is the vocal group or ensemble.

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The digital footage of the praxis foregrounds the living labour of sounding in a very particular way. Whilst digital footage is always an indexical trace of the live practice itself, and cannot fully replicate the nuances of a living voice lesson, it nevertheless can aid, as Thomaidis suggests, ‘to re-imagine dissemination too as a dialogic framework, a nexus of tensions between logos and voice’ (2015: 83). The affective impact, vulnerability and raw beauty of the extended voice is captured on film here, thanks to the work of Pikes’ long-term students Kate Hilder, Sam Frankie Fox, Neil Paris and Yuri Birte Anderson.3 Their own lived experience of the praxis is further elaborated upon in the Conclusion, which foregrounds their voices as creative artists who are translating Pikes’ methodology into their work as actors, singers, choreographers and pedagogues. And finally, the aim of my Prefaces is to further frame Pikes’ exegesis of her praxis, teasing out conceptual and historiographic connections that can enrich the reader’s understanding of the voice work. Importantly, my scholarly musings always retain a resonance of my own Erfahrung, my own vocal journey as a student of Pikes. Thus, a complex network of voices will be interwoven over the following pages, combining the scholarly with the performative, the exegetical with the empirical. This broad fusion of horizons also echoes the ways in which Pikes’ work continues to resonate across disciplines, influencing an emerging generation of scholars and practitioners working in the fields of drama, theatre and performance.

Notes 1 James Risser’s scholarly analysis of Gadamer’s oeuvre interestingly foregrounds the dialogical nature of hermeneutics by referring to the ‘voice of tradition’ and the ‘voice of the text.’ Risser explains that, in Gadamer’s philosophy, textual interpretation is always a ‘response’ to the Other (tradition). There are obvious parallels here to the dialogical listening underpinning Wolfsohn-Hart voice work. See Risser, James (1997) Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other: Re-reading Gadamer's Philosophical Hermeneutics. Albany: SUNY Press. 2 The Workcentre of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, the Centre for Theatre Practices Gardzienice, Odin Teatret, Teatr Pieśń Kozła and Pauline Oliveros are other groups/ artists with a comparable approach to what Thomaidis terms ‘physiovocality’ (2014: 243) However, these other artists do not overtly draw on the tenets of depth psychology in their work. 3 More information regarding these four artists is given in the final chapter of this publication, ‘Conclusion: owning our voices – a pluriphony.’

References Badiou, Alain (1988) Being and Event. London: Bloomsbury. Barthes, Roland (1977) Image Music Text. London: Fontana Press. Cavarero Adriana (2005) For More Than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression (trans. P. A. Kottman). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Feyerabend, Paul (1993) Against Method. New York: Verso. Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1960) Truth and Method. London: Sheed and Ward.

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Lacan, Jacques ([1998] 2007) On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge I972– 1973, Encore. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book XX (trans. Bruce Fink). New York: W.W. Norton. Nelson, Robin (2006) ‘Practice-as-research and the Problem of Knowledge.’ Performance Research, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 105–116. Nelson, Robin (2013) Practice as Research in the Arts: Principles, Protocols, Pedagogies, Resistances. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan. Risser, James (1997) Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other: Re-reading Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics. Albany: SUNY Press. Thomaidis, Konstantinos (2014) ‘Singing from Stones: Physiovocality and Gardzienice’s Theater of Musicality.’ Symonds, Dominic and Taylor, Millie (eds.) Gestures of Music Theater: The Performativity of Song and Dance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 242–258. Thomaidis, Konstantinos (2015) ‘The Revocalization of Logos? Thinking, Doing and Disseminating Voice.’ Thomaidis, Konstantinos and MacPherson, Ben (eds.) Voice Studies: Critical Approaches to Process, Performance and Experience. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 10–22. Wolfsohn, Alfred ([1938] 2012) Orpheus, or the Way to a Mask (trans. Marita Günther; ed. Jay Livernois). Woodstock: Abraxas Publishing.

THE PRE-VERBAL VOICE – A PREFACE Patrick Campbell

In many ways, pre-verbal vocalising is the bedrock of the Wolfsohn-Hart approach to vocal exploration and informs every level of Pikes’ own methodological approach. The pre-verbal voice is explicitly linked by Pikes to the notion of vocal sources; these ‘sources’ are psychosomatic in nature, and correspond both to qualities of timbre, ranges of pitch, feelings (both emotional and physiological) and images. The vocal sources are connected via practical exploration to different ‘spaces’ in the body and along the spine, broadly corresponding to the lower abdominal (belly), chest and head regions. Vocal sources serve as both evocative, imaginary frames for vocalisation and somatically identifiable nexuses of muscular engagement and sonorous vibration, which are consciously activated physiologically during breath-work and vocalisation. Pikes is aware that, anatomically, vocal production takes place in the larynx, whilst vocal resonance depends on the vocal tract and vocal registration is produced, in part, by vibratory patterns originating in the vocal folds. However, the WolfsohnHart approach eschews anatomy and rather focuses on a holistic, somatic approach to active vocal practice that encourages students to map the range and dynamic qualities of their voices as an organic extension of the body-mind continuum. It is fundamental to differentiate this praxical approach to exploring the extension, psychosomatic connections and sonorous qualities of the voice from other extant models of vocal training in the fields of opera and theatre. Importantly, Pikes’ understanding of the lower abdomen, chest and the head as vocal sources diverges from the vocal registers of bel canto, which consist, according to Miller (2000) of ‘chest,’ ‘full head,’ ‘falsetto’ and ‘Mezza voce’ for men; ‘chest,’ ‘middle,’ ‘upper’ and ‘flageolet’ for women. It is important to recognise, following Stark (1999), that: The whole matter of voice registers continues to engage voice scientists today . . . there is no single accepted theory of registers, although there are many points of agreement among the numerous studies. (ibid.: 153)

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In contrast, Pikes’ use of the term ‘vocal sources’ refers not to pitch alone, but also to timbre and vibrational quality and, importantly, their links to the roots of the sound in the body and imagination of the vocalist. Thus, her notion of ‘chest’ may well equate as much to the ‘Mezza voce’ or ‘middle’ registers in Miller’s taxonomy of bel canto. In a similar fashion, the vocal sources also diverge from Polish director Jerzy Grotowski’s notion of the vocal resonators, which he developed during the Theatre of Productions phase of his research (Wolford and Schechner 2001). Whilst Grotowski’s notion of the resonators also connected different qualities of timbre and pitch to sources of resonance in the body and promoted the cultivation of the imagination to release the voice, there are major differences separating one praxis from the other. The actors of Grotowski’s Teatr Laboratorium did not work on their voices alongside a piano, for example, and thus work on the resonators was not the same as the exploration of vocal sources in relation to musical scales and arpeggios in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition. Moreover, whilst the first phase of Grotowski’s research was predicated on theatre, the WolfsohnHart tradition moved into theatrical practice after an extended period of quasitherapeutic voice work and singing lessons developed over a period of decades. Hence, there is a much greater emphasis on feeling, inner sensations and vocal characters in the Wolfsohn-Hart work, particularly in Pikes’ re-appropriation of the tradition. This deeply subjective emotional connection to vocal production is not foregrounded in the same way in Grotowskian and post-Grotowskian traditions of ‘physiovocality’ (Thomaidis 2014), since voice work in these traditions is primarily linked to craft-based actor training and the construction of theatrical roles in performance. Whilst respectful of vocal health and well-being in her pedagogical practice, Pikes chooses not to foreground the anatomical functioning of the voice in her teaching, and this also sets her methodology apart from mainstream AngloAmerican voice training for actors. This more conventional approach to vocal preparation, which has considerable traction in acting conservatoires in the UK and the US, frequently draws on vocal anatomy as a methodological framework and traces its roots back to nineteenth-century traditions of elocution training for the British elite. According to Sansom (2019), elocution techniques were repurposed by seminal actor voice trainers such as Elsie Fogerty, Iris Warren, Clifford Turner and Cicely Berry in the first half of the twentieth century, whilst the subsequent generation of voice trainers, including Kristin Linklater, Catherine Fitzmaurice, Patsy Rodenburg and Arthur Lessac: [R]ejected elocution entirely, but . . . embraced the idea that voice training for actors should seek individuality and interpretation. The ‘second wave’ generation also focused on a more holistic mind-body-voice training praxis. (ibid.: 303) As evidenced in Pikes’ autobiographical narration in Part 1, Chapter 1, having grown up with a strong Hampshire accent, she was highly suspicious of Hart’s

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received pronunciation (RP accent), cultivated during his time as a student at Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA). Rather than normative approaches to standardised pronunciation, Pikes has always been more interested in the roots of the underpinning sounds and the expressive capacity of verbalisation when working on the connection between sounding and language with students. Thus, the traces of elocution that characterised the working methodologies of the first generation of Anglo-American vocal coaches are noticeably absent from Pikes’ praxis, although she does work with students on articulation, resonance and breath support. Whilst Linklater, Fitzmaurice, Rodenburg and Lessac approach the voice from a more holistic perspective than their predecessors, their emphases on vocal anatomy, traditional speech pedagogy and speech therapy would appear, at times, primarily to provide their multi-modal methodologies with the trappings of the scientific method and its allure of rigour and objectivity. Furthermore, their voice work is not overtly musical in nature and is rather geared towards preparing actors’ voices for the interpretation of (canonical) dramatic texts. Thus, the textocentric bias underpinning their vocal training ultimately differentiates it substantially from the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition, with its telos of the eight-octave voice, a vocal ideal unchained from speech and language. As Thatcher and Galbreath suggest: If . . . the voice is as beholden to the body as to language/logos, then training it only ‘for text’ neglects a significant dimension of that voice. As such, we [should] give the non-verbally material voice priority, while avoiding readings of the voice as pre- or post-linguistic . . . . or as a form of ‘excess’ . . . . Such readings risk relegating the voice to a ‘lesser’ position relative to a linguistic mind, rather than as a facet of physical experimentation and embodied cognition. (2019: 353) Pikes’ methodological approach to voice prioritises the ‘pre’ verbal voice, allowing students to explore the groundswell of libidinally charged laughter, sighs, cries, growls, howls and laments always already underscoring language. This highly evocative way of working can be both cathartic and artistically enriching, and will be explored in detail over the following pages.

References Miller, Donald Gray (2000) Registers in Singing. Empirical and Systematic Studies in the Theory of the Singing Voice. Wageningen: Ponsen & Looijen BV. Sansom, Rockford (2019) ‘Answer the Question.’ Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 303–304. Stark, James (1999) Bel Canto: A History of Vocal Pedagogy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

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Thatcher, Gavin and Galbreath, Daniel (2019) ‘Singing Bodies: Reconsidering and Retraining the Corporeal Voice.’ Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 349–364. Thomaidis, Konstantinos (2014) ‘Singing from Stones: Physiovocality and Gardzienice’s Theater of Musicality.’ Symonds, Dominic and Taylor, Millie (eds.) Gestures of Music Theater: The Performativity of Song and Dance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 242–258. Wolford, Lisa and Schechner, Richard (2001) The Grotowski Sourcebook. London: Routledge.

7 THE PRE-VERBAL VOICE Margaret Pikes

What is meant by ‘the pre-verbal voice’ in the WolfsohnHart tradition? The pre-verbal voice is vocal sound produced without the mediation of language: without the use of words, with their complex grammar and meaning, and worlds of cultural significance. I sometimes refer to working with the pre-verbal voice, as sounding, which is distinct from singing, in that there is no restrictive musical connotation. While sounding like this, the focus is on the dynamic source of the voice, using only a vowel or an ‘unshaped’ sound. I speak of the sources of vocal sound as being dynamic, because I have found that these sources are usually experienced not only in the body but also in the imagination and so are connected with complimentary psychophysical energies. I think that the mechanistic model of places in the body where the voice ‘resonates’ is not adequate and is too rigid. Nevertheless, there is a sense in which it helps to imagine the voice coming from, for example, the lower abdomen, body centre or ‘belly’, chest or head, although anatomically this may not be exact. When Hart added the subtitle ‘Language is Dead, Long Live the Voice’ to the Roy Hart Theatre’s (RHT) The Bacchae as the Frontae, he implied that language is treacherous – words can be used to transmit ideas, to persuade the listener into believing what is being said, when the person speaking is not really bodily engaged with the content of their words. This links with Cavarero’s thesis (2005: 40) that our culture has evolved to accept that thought and reason are embedded in a world of silence and purity and that words and language derive their meaning from a voiceless world of Platonic ideals. Hart, on the other hand, believed as do I, that spoken language has authentic meaning when it is spoken with an embodied voice. That is to say that the speaker has a voice which manifests a conscious connection with that person’s unique physical and emotional world. Before we learn to use language, we grow through a period in which we only use sound to communicate vocally. The baby’s first cry has been referred to as a

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response to fear, shock or pain, but I believe rather that it is a kind of wild expression of existential energy, following the very first intake of breath: that perhaps this cry has no other specific signification.1 The capacity to use the voice to speak, the employment of words and semantic pathways, is slowly acquired through interaction with the mother and others. The pre-verbal stage is thus a time when the child is transforming from a being with the ancient animal power of making vocal sound to one that can engage this sound with signifiers and articulated meaning. This engagement with meaning and reason seems to build a kind of cage that leads to a certain loss of freedom of vocal range. According to Cavarero, ‘[l]anguage asks the sacrifice of [babies’] free vocalization, which is still rooted in the biological’ (2005: 132). The baby’s pre-verbal sounding is still connected directly to the unconscious: to physical and affective imperatives, which it learns to partly control by using language. However, the flexibility and range of the baby’s voice can be at least partly re-found when the adult student works to rediscover, with conscious awareness, the connections to this pre-verbal freedom. The work on exploring and developing the range of your voice, following the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition starts by treating your voice as an instrument for sounding: you yourself, bodily and psychologically, are the instrument. The physical sources of this pre-verbal sound are basically the chest, the belly and the head. By working dynamically on experiencing and identifying these sources they can be slowly integrated into your vocal repertoire. Besides work on movement and breathing, this includes also allowing meaningful feelings, images and characters to enter into the sounding so that you engage your voice with your vital energies, your psychosomatic impulses and drives. The aim is not to achieve bizarre abstract sounds for their own sake: though the whole range of the human voice includes sounds that may seem strange or unusual, but can also of course, be rich and beautiful. The emotions, based as they are in the body and in the psyche, play an important part in this work. However, the sometimes-cathartic nature of the voice work is part of practice for performance, and I shall discuss the issue of its psychotherapeutic aspect later in this book. Learning to know your voice through sounding with pre-verbal exploration is radically different from the classical approach to voice development. Training the classical voice aims especially at developing vocal power and volume, often with importance given to the control of the ‘vocal apparatus,’ as well as to the aesthetic quality of the sound produced. Wolfsohn and Hart were not interested in the mechanics of the vocal tract: the vocal folds, glottal flow or resonating areas in the head. Their work was concerned with exploring and developing the human, as opposed to the specialized, voice. Wolfsohn (for whom all sounding was singing) said: I want to stress once more that when I speak of singing, I do not consider this to be an artistic exercise, but the possibility, and the means to recognise oneself, and to transform this recognition into conscious life. (in Günther 1960)

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When Hart took his work into performance, the aim was to express through the voice as much as possible of the range of human nature: both ‘Beauty’ and the ‘Beast.’ Pre-verbal exploration thus includes working with different broken or chorded vocal sounds as well as with clear, pure vocalization. (See Video Sample 1.)2 It is also not necessarily aimed at developing a voice that can reach to the back of the stalls – though this may well be one of the outcomes of the work.

While teaching – some basic points As discussed in more depth in Chapter 9, it is clear that the role of the teacher is central to working pre-verbally. The teacher is a guide and aims to help the student embody her voice through experiencing her full vocal range without getting caught at this stage, in the more cerebral complexities of words and language. This can then be a basis for working with text and song. Whilst teaching, here are some possibly helpful pointers: •

•

•

• •

From the very start of the lesson, observe and take mental note of anything in the student’s behaviour, posture and responses, especially the source of her voice, that might help you chose which path to take. Sounding with eyes closed can sometimes be helpful to focus on inner sensations, but in general I encourage students to work with eyes open, while nevertheless maintaining an inner awareness or listening. To own the voice means to take responsibility for how it communicates with the aural space and potential listeners. When the eyes are closed there can be, on some level, a denial of this. While standing in one place to explore and sound, the students should usually keep both their feet in firm contact with the ground. Raising the heel or standing with weight on one leg, for example, can create, or be a symptom of, tensions that are counter to maintaining contact with the body’s centre. Check for tensions in the lower jaw. While it is sometimes appropriate for the voice teacher to model the sound that the student is being guided to produce, in general it is more helpful not to demonstrate but rather to allow the student time to find the source and sound following the empathetic guidance of the teacher. The experience of searching and finding makes the learning experience more authentic.

How I practise pre-verbal sounding in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition Although it can also be investigated in group classes, the basic exploration of preverbal sound usually happens as part of a lesson for one or two students, where most of the work is one-to-one. The context of working on pre-verbal voices in a group session demands a different approach from individual voice teaching. If all the group is sounding, it is difficult to hear individual voices. When exploring

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pre-verbal sounds, Hart would work with one person at a time (and usually for a long time). A group might be assembled, but generally only one person would sound. The exercises that I myself and several of my colleagues from the RHT developed in the early 1970s, when teaching group classes, usually allow all participants in a group to vocalize, often putting the accent on listening – to oneself and to the others, as well as on exploring your own sounds. Sounding pre-verbally involves sustaining a sound for the length of an outbreath and repeating this, while engaging with the images, feelings and possibly characters which may accompany the sounding, often using physical effort in specific ways. Alternatively, active relaxation techniques can be helpful, to find and to feel the dynamic source of the sound. The teacher usually uses the piano to guide the student by suggesting a pitch on which she should sound, perhaps beginning by following the pitch on which the student is already sounding. Although some students can find it challenging to tune into a suggested pitch, it is surprising how quickly this obstacle can be overcome by engaging the body and the imagination, so that the student is no longer focused on ‘getting it right.’3 The student must work to hold the same vocal source whilst following the pitch of the notes given by the teacher, in order to embody the practice. It is important to bear in mind that descending in pitch does not necessarily mean that the voice is going to a deeper source in the body, though this may be the case. Equally, going up in pitch does not always mean that the voice is going into the head. Powerful high sounds can be made from deep in the belly and/or chest, and a voice apparently deep in pitch can have its main source in the head.4

Preparing for voice work A one-to-one lesson will usually begin with some basic exercises to warm-up physically. These can include stretching and shaking; curling and lengthening the spine then slowly rolling the shoulders, the head and the hips. Sometimes, but not always, it is helpful to use the floor for stretching. During these exercises the student is encouraged to bring her awareness to her breathing, and it may be useful to spend some time at this point working on developing a full, deep abdominal inbreath. With many students, it is necessary to work gently and repeatedly, to help release the lower jaw and to open the mouth in a relaxed way. The mouth is recognised in psychoanalytic theory as an especially sensitive body part and orality as an importantly formative developmental stage, linked to the organisation of the libido and hence psychosexuality.5 It should not be surprising then, that it is not always easy for a student to sound through a relaxed open mouth and learning to do this may take time and patience. The ability to open the mouth in a relaxed way while sounding is necessary to avoid tension in the throat. Connecting with the body’s centre, the lower abdomen or belly, is very important and is basic to exploring the vocal range: as some of the pre-verbal voice work is aimed at contacting and using strong emotional and/or physical energy, a centred

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connection helps to ground the student. However, although roaring and screaming may feel very satisfying, not all emotion is violent! It can also be interesting and rewarding to work with soft, ‘weak’ sounds and I often begin work on what I call the deep soft chest or contralto voice. (See Video Samples 3, 10 and 12.)6 This voice has its roots in the chest or heart region. Holding a tender sound that is deeply rooted in a warm chest source, over several pitches or on a melody, can also lead to a powerful exploration of feeling. This kind of vocalization can be a good way to warm up the voice before working with belly sounds and may be combined with gentle bodywork while paying attention to breathing. For example, jogging gently around the studio whilst sounding without effort, on a sustained pitch in the middle of the vocal range. Or, standing flexibly, feet well-planted on the spot, carefully stretching and rolling the spine and moving the upper body and arms in a fluid manner, activating the chest and sternum. With these movements, the student makes a gentle warm sound, sustained on one pitch, which moves up or down a tone with each outbreath. Sometimes sounding while yawning can help. In my experience, suggesting that the student imagines the sound coming from the same physical source as a sob, while she explores its physical roots, can also enable this vocal connection without actually entering into its emotional dimension.7 Care and time are allowed for a full inbreath. If the voice ‘wobbles’ with the movement, it is not to be hidden, rather we listen to where that instability is coming from. It can also be interesting to play with and to explore the vocal areas that are often viewed classically as ‘incorrect’ – for example the breaks/passaggi between the classically defined vocal ‘registers.’ This warm deep chest sound should not be breathy, but when well-rooted is dark, warm and clear. It can be linked to the archetypal image of the queen or a diva and can move to quite high pitches, (depending on the student, up to C6 or higher). I often link this sounding with the word ‘water,’ using the vowels to extend the vocalisation. Beginning to connect with the belly voice can also come from a relaxed place. This may help the student to avoid pushing from the throat as the work progresses. To connect with the belly, good physical engagement through the feet and legs with the floor, the lower spine and lower abdomen, with full and deep breathing, are important. Its discovery can sometimes be helped by connecting to images of a big animal, a giant, or to characters who are angry or authoritarian. (The archetypes of the monster or the king can figure here.) I often work with the word ‘earth’ as connected to this source. As described in the scenarios, using physical resistance to an object or another (willing) student can be useful. (See Video Samples 2 and 7.)8 At first it is easiest to contact this source by working with deep pitches (depending on the student, this can descend to E2 or lower). But once it is known and embodied, the belly can also support higher pitched sounds linked also with chest and head. Moving up to head voice: a strong and pure connection with this source is made through pushing breath and sound through an open mouth up into the head, using a good connection with the belly. (See Video Samples 8 from 9:10, 11 from

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4:00 and 12 from 13:00.)9 There might be a feeling of the power of an arched bow up through the spine between coccyx, pelvis, neck and head. The character and archetypal image of a witch laughing or a baby crying may help to connect imaginatively with this source. At first it is easiest to contact this source by working with high pitches. When pushed even higher these sounds were called peep sounds by Wolfsohn and Hart. (See Video Sample 6 from 4:20.) They can ascend to F6 and higher depending on the student. (I have occasionally worked with students whose peep sounds go off the range of the piano!) What I have described here is connecting to a very focussed version of the head source, and it can be tiring to work with this for a long time. The head source can also be mixed with a chest and/or belly source, in which case it lends brightness and a penetrating quality to the sound. I often link sounding with the head voice to articulating the word ‘air,’ using the vowel to extend the vocalisation. The tenor voice: (see Video Sample 12 from 5:55) is a mixture of head and chest, supported by the belly. The whole body is engaged. It is usually loud, and the student might begin to connect to this quality through shouting or laughing, then holding the source of these sounds on defined pitches, (perhaps beginning with G3 or C4 depending on the student). It can also be a conduit for an assertive, outgoing energy. It is linked to the archetype of the hero and most students seem to sometimes enjoy belting in this way and playing with different idealised characters who, for them personally, evoke this voice: maybe the seductive lothario character or the stereotypical mountain singer; a peasant calling the cows; a star from an American musical etc. This voice can be vocally demanding, and it is helpful after prolonged sounding with this tenor voice, to sound from a soft, warm chest place. Some preverbal sounds are rooted in a combination of some or all of the belly, chest and head sources. They may also emerge as vocalisations that contain several sounds at once and following the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition I call them broken sounds (as contrasted with ‘clear’ sounds.) We also sometimes make them in everyday life when experiencing a range of emotions: fear, pain, anger, joy and more. They may emerge in a lesson, for example when working towards sounding from the belly. (See Video Sample 1, and 10 from 3:20.) Exploring broken sounds can be a way to deepen the vocalist’s psychophysical connection to her voice and to extend her vocal range. The student will be guided by the teacher, who suggests appropriate pitches and possibly images, from the piano. The teacher also listens carefully and using her knowledge of the student, guides her as to how to avoid getting trapped in the throat by maintaining a strong connection to her physical centre while vocalising; sounding through an open mouth, and taking time to breathe in fully, through a small mouth or the nose. Pre-verbal broken sounds on higher pitches might sound like barks or screams. They can be worked on by clearly identifying both their physical and imaginative sources while vocalising and, as a way to help this, finding the musical pitch they relate to. So once again, the emphasis is on listening to, and being aware of, where the sounds are coming from physically and emotionally. The emotional release engendered by these sounds can be strong and empowering, and time should be

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given to absorb this experience and to discuss its implications for the student personally, if necessary. I often encourage the vocalist to ‘take responsibility’ for these sounds – to own them. This is to help them be aware of their potentially powerful effect on other students as well, especially during group improvisations where some students are tempted to let rip with screams or roars, not fully realising their impact!10 When working pre-verbally, these unleashed human sounds can strongly affect both the listener and the vocalist. If sadness is provoked when voicing, for example, it is important that the student is encouraged to keep sounding through the tears, on the pitch given, to develop embodiment of the practice. Equally, if anger is provoked, the student will often want to ascend in pitch, but the task is to stay ‘on the note’; in other words, to contain the sad or the angry energy within the act of sounding, being aware of the emotional source, but not getting swept away by it. It can be helpful to work with maintaining the vocal source while using one or two words but working with texts before the pre-verbal sources have been embodied is like trying to fly before you can walk. Through frequently experiencing her voice pre-verbally, the student builds an understanding of how to contact the dynamic sources of her voice when using words. She can negotiate the change from pre-verbal to speaking or to using words in a song, while maintaining contact with her inner physical and emotional world. She can thus avoid getting pulled into a less connected, more cerebral voice by the invisible, often habitual effect that linguistic meaning can exert on vocal production. Working with the pre-verbal voice is, then, an essential part of the WolfsohnHart tradition. Sounding dynamically and pre-verbally stimulates the vocalist in a complex and profound way and can involve a nuanced and far-reaching personal journey through connecting with the psyche and the body. In a general way, it is widely recognized that powerful sounding can invigorate and bring more energy to the person vocalizing. From the New Zealand team’s Haka and ‘grunting’ tennis players, to simply singing in a choir, ‘giving voice’ is seen as a health-giving activity.11 Furthermore, many creation myths suggest that the universe originated with sound: ‘For ancient Israel, neither creation nor self-revelation come from the speech of God but rather from his breath and from his voice’ (Cavarero 2005: 20). There are also scientific theories suggesting that the universe began with the vibration of the sound waves linked to the Big Bang (Starkman and Schwarz 2005). So, when we vocalise pre-verbally, do we perhaps become an instrument participating in the greater world of sound? Is this a hidden doorway to a deeper and wider connection to life?

Scenarios I have outlined next some basic scenarios for working pre-verbally in a one-to-one lesson, within which the teacher can improvise. I prefer to call these ‘scenarios,’ because I think the word ‘exercises’ implies a prescriptive set of actions that, if followed inflexibly and without careful listening and looking, will not help the student to develop ownership of her voice. These scenarios are only suggestions

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for a few of the many possible ways of accessing vocal sources that can emerge in a lesson following the essentially unique vocal path of each student. Perhaps what I describe will even inspire other quite different scenarios! Digital footage shown on the website connected to this book and its series, will also help to clarify how I myself put these suggestions into practice. Italics represent the teacher’s possible instructions.

Scenarios 1. Opening into and connecting with a belly voice (see Video Sample 2 http://www.routledge.com/cw/pikes) •

The teacher begins by suggesting some exercises to awaken awareness in the spine, concentrating progressively on the lower spine and sacrum. These could be inspired by Hatha Yoga exercises for the spine, either lying on the back, or on all fours. On all fours, rolling through the spine with the outbreath (through a relaxed, open mouth) by slowly rocking the coccyx under and bringing the head as if to meet the pubis. Then, on the inbreath (if possible, through the nose), lifting the coccyx and slowly rolling through the spine as the back of the head lifts as if to meet the tail. Repeat this at least four times. • Then with the student lying on her back, knees bent, feet flat on the floor: Allow a full relaxed inbreath. Slightly tip your pelvis under as you breathe out and imagine you are sending the outbreath from your belly, through a relaxed open mouth. Relax as you breathe in through your nose or a small mouth. Imagine the area between your lower back and your lower belly as your warm animal centre, which receives new oxygen and sends out the old air.12 The student works with this for a few cycles of breathing. • Allow your voice to mix with your outbreath. Relax as you breathe in. As you breathe out and sound, imagine that your voice is dropping into the bottom of your spine, into the coccyx. Gently roll your pelvis under and use the resistance you can feel against the floor, to gently push the sound out to the end of your breath (mouth open, jaws relaxed). Allow yourself to journey down into your centre, into the cracks in your voice at the end of your breath. • Once this open connection is made: Continue to maintain a relaxed inbreath, every time. With the outbreath start to stretch and roll, always sounding on the outbreath, and maintain the connection with a deep body/belly source. Allow images or imaginary characters to help you. Roll onto your side, then to all fours. • In this position, the student could also explore connections between breath and vocal sounds in the belly and chest as she rolls through the spine from tail to head. • After this, the teacher could invite the student to come slowly to the vertical standing position by continuing to sound from the belly, while taking time to breathe in also into the belly. The teacher might start to

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accompany the student’s voice from the piano, playing for students with naturally higher vocal ranges, around E3, or students with naturally lower vocal ranges from A2, then descending four or five half tones. Perhaps introduce using a word with this vocal source, for example: earth.

2. To release a warm deep chest voice (the archetype of the queen) (see Video Sample 3 http://www.routledge.com/cw/pikes) •

•

•

•

•

The teacher invites the student: Move your shoulders gently. Allow a full inbreath and imagine the outbreath comes from your chest. . . . Shake your shoulders and chest and allow the voice to come out with this movement, through an open relaxed mouth. It is fine if this sound feels weak. Repeat this several times. Maintain this vocal source as you bring your awareness to your chest and upper spine by moving your arms and upper body, feeling as if you are being moved by warm water while your feet stay rooted to the seabed. The chest, the breast where our heart is beating, is often associated with the emotions. As you continue to move and stay physically connected with this part of your body, play with the idea of feeling tragically sad and allow the voice to express this in an exaggerated way. The teacher suggests a pitch, probably near the middle of the piano (perhaps E4 for students with higher ranges, A3 for lower ranges), then for each outbreath the teacher plays a new pitch ascending a tone. The teacher encourages the student to bring out a voice that is linked to where a sob originates in the body and guides the student to maintain this source perhaps by suggesting: Explore bringing an element of exaggerated shock into the character. (This voice should not be a breathy one: it is a warm, richly feeling-full voice.) As the pitch ascends: Keep sounding from that emotional place and allow your movements to help you. Don’t look for power, but you can make a lot of sound! Look for a melodramatic, operatic voice. Play the character that this evokes. This could lead to working with articulating a word, while keeping this source, for example: heart or water.

As the pitch ascends, male students can be encouraged to allow the voice to go into the ‘falsetto’ range and to enjoy the characters (including the archetype of the queen) that they discover with this voice. They should also be able to really feel how the source of this voice is in the chest.

3. Linking preverbal exploration of the sources of sound to text (see Video Sample 1 http://www.routledge.com/cw/pikes) • The student begins by exploring space with movement, breath and sound.   The teacher guides the student into deep broken sounds using breath and engaging physically with the image of breaking stones.

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•

•

•

• •

•

The student works to keep a good vocal connection to the body while holding these broken sounds on a musical pitch suggested by the teacher from the piano. The teacher encourages the student to play with this freely, while slowly transforming it to a clear sound which is rooted in the belly. The teacher may guide from the piano. The teacher suggests a few words to be vocalised, either improvised or from a text or song that the student may currently be working on. They work with this, sounding on different musical pitches (descending then ascending). The student could then explore speaking the words from the same deep source. The teacher then invites the student to disintegrate the sound back to a broken deep source and guides the student to bring their voice to a broken emotional chest sound. From there, the teacher guides the student from the piano to a clear contralto sound. Perhaps it becomes a very short melody, but the focus moves to speaking. The teacher invites the student to use other words from the text using this voice.

Notes 1 See Winnicott, Donald [1964] (1987) ‘Why Do Babies Cry? chap. 9.’ The Child, The Family, and the Outside World. Cambridge, MA: Perseus, pp. 58–68. 2 All references to video samples direct our readers to video footage produced by Pikes and Campbell specifically for this publication and uploaded onto the dedicated Routledge Voice Studies website: www.routledge.com/cw/pikes. 3 An example aimed at guiding the student in this way can be found at the end of Chapter 9. Refer to the section ‘Finding the note.’ 4 See discussion of ‘vocal fry’ in Chapter 10. 5 See Freud, Sigmund  (1933) New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis,  Chapter Five. New York: W. W. Norton and Co. 6 See also the Scenarios at the end of this chapter and of Chapters 10, 11, 12. 7 Microbiologist Michael Onken (1997) suggests that sobbing is an autonomic response to sorrow or grief that provokes increased air intake into the lungs and absorption of oxygen into the blood, in part by opening the glottis. 8 See also the scenarios at the end of this chapter and of Chapters 8 and 10. 9 A number of the scenarios at the end of Chapter 11 are also useful in this respect. 10 On the website www.roy-hart.com/roycds.htm it is possible to hear Hart himself demonstrate some examples of these broken sounds. A few were given different names in early Roy Hart work: motor sounds: deep double-stopping vocal sounds which often come from a mixture of belly and tenor; chorded sounds: from the whole body where the different harmonics that emerge can be heard clearly. 11 See, for example, Hollands et al. (2015) ‘Maori mental health consumers' sensory experience of Kapa Haka and its utility to occupational therapy practice.’ New Zealand Journal of Occupational Therapy. Vol. 62, Issue 1, pp. 3–15 and Raine et al. (2017) ‘Tennis Grunts Communicate Acoustic Cues to Sex and Contest Outcome.’ Animal Behaviour, Vol. 130, pp. 47–55, August. 12 Italicised text indicates one of the possible ways that the teacher might guide students through particular exercises.

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References Cavarero Adriana (2005) For More Than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression (trans. P. A. Kottman). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Freud, Sigmund (1933) New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. New York: W. W. Norton. Günther, Marita (1960) ‘Marita’s English Preface to Alfred Wolfsohn’s “The Human Voice.”’ [Online] Available at www.roy-hart.com/marita1.htm [Accessed on 8 September 2017]. Hollands, Tania, Sutton, Daniel, Wright St. Clair, Valerie and Hall, Raymond (2015) ‘Maori Mental Health Consumers’ Sensory Experience of Kapa Haka and its Utility to Occupational Therapy Practice.’ New Zealand Journal of Occupational Therapy, Vol. 62, No. 1, pp. 3–15. Onken, Michael (1997) ‘What Causes the Lump in Your Throat When You Cry?’ [Online] Available at http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/1997-03/855114309.An.r.html [Accessed on 21 June 2020]. Raine, Jordan, Pisanski, Katarzyna and Reby, David (2017) ‘Tennis Grunts Communicate Acoustic Cues to Sex and Contest Outcome.’ Animal Behaviour, Vol. 130, pp.  47–55, August. Starkman, Glenn D. and Schwarz, Dominic J. (2005) ‘Is the Universe out of Tune?’ Scientific American, 1 August. Winnicott, Donald ([1964] 1987) The Child, The Family, and the Outside World. Cambridge, MA: Perseus.

FREEING THE VOICE – A PREFACE Patrick Campbell

In my experience of Pikes’ training, what comes to the foreground is that her development of vocal exploration in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition is concerned with constructing a more conscious relationship with the potential of the voice, rather than with ‘freeing it.’ Whilst Pikes’ pedagogical praxis does enable students to deal with unhelpful psychosomatic blocks that hinder vocal expression, her approach is not a utopian endeavour but rather a pragmatic methodology based on consistent work and close listening. The layers of socialisation, language acquisition, neuroses and trauma that constitute the embodied grain of the voice are not stripped away in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition; there is no revelation of an essentialised, idealised ‘free’ voice. Rather, these psychosomatic layers are encountered and explored, as other expressive vocal potentialities are revealed and slowly integrated within the secure context of the teacher-student dyad. A fundamental conceptual thread informing the Wolfsohn-Hart approach that can help us to differentiate between notions of vocal freedom and vocal growth in this tradition is the field of analytical or depth psychology, to which Pikes has alluded to previously. Pikes’ reference to Jungian paradigms in relation to her teaching harks back to the time she spent in the Roy Hart Theatre (RHT). Wolfsohn was deeply influenced by Jung: he even went so far as to enter into contact with the Swiss psychologist and Hart in turn drew on Jungian depth psychology as a framing mechanism for aspects of his vocal work (Pikes 2004). As mentioned by Pikes previously in her autobiographical narrative, both men applied aspects of Jungian terminology to their emerging vocal praxes, and the development of the extended voice in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition was importantly correlated to the notion of individuation, a term used by Jung ‘to denote the process by which a person becomes a psychological “in-dividual,” that is, a separate, indivisible unity or “whole”’ (Jung [1959] 2009: 275 para 490).

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Individuation is a telos or ‘goal,’ and, in the case of the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition, a vocal ‘becoming,’ focused on the progressive extension and increased expressivity of the human voice. Wolfsohn’s description of the dialogical process of deep listening underscoring his pedagogic approach to the voice, and how it both differs from and approximates Jungian depth psychology, is illuminating: Because the basis of singing is the same as that of psyche, so their development proceeds in the same direction. The difference is that the growth of the voice is more distinctly perceptible than the growth of soul. The psychologist can gauge progress from the development of dreams. The voice psychologist likewise can follow a student’s dreams with an inner eye, but even more so one can hear with an inner ear all the stages in the grounding of the voice. (Wolfsohn 2012: 136) Implicit here is the belief that vocal exploration may complement or even surpass depth psychology in terms of both facilitating and corroborating the process of individuation. It is particularly interesting to note Wolfsohn’s emphasis on ‘growth’ – voice work is developmental rather than merely liberational and concerned with the integration of the psychosomatic feelings and experiences uncovered through the voice lesson. The imagery employed by Wolfsohn here clearly speaks to a vocal process of individuation, which is how he articulated the gradual unfolding of the extended voice through vocal exploration. Hart, too, adopted elements of Wolfsohn’s post-Jungian stance, suggesting that in the RHT: Every student is aware of a balancing principle at work alongside the breaking of barriers. The exploring of male and female, height and depth, conscious and unconscious goes on and the hermaphroditic personality takes on many forms of unbalance before true balance is found. (Hart 1967) Whilst Pikes embraces the Wolfsohn-Hart voice work, as she has explained during the autobiographical section, she questioned many of the ways in which the androcentric aspects of Jungian depth psychology were employed by Hart, particularly in order to denigrate assertive women within the group and as a covert means for attempting to control members’ sexual relationships. Furthermore, following on from feminist post-Jungian scholars such as Wehr (1988), Pikes rejects Jung’s exclusive, gender-specific allocation of anima and animus to men and women, respectively. Interestingly, due to a perceived tendency towards anger and confrontation in contemporary society, Pikes focuses on getting her students, both men and women, in touch with the heart – the vocal source located in the pectoral region, which has a feeling-full, tender quality. This vocal source perhaps represents a syzygy, a union of anima and animus, since it is placed mid-way amongst the vocal sources, often corresponds in pitch to an alto/countertenor voice, and is thus somewhat hermaphroditic in nature.1 By starting off from this vocal space

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of vulnerability, students are encouraged to honour vocal sensitivity, rather than power. Consequently, given a shared belief in individuation as a process of gradual psychic integration and vocal development, there is no notion of a ‘natural voice’ in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition, in the sense of an originary, essentialised vocal quality or pre-linguistic vocal capacity to be liberated. Rather, vocal exploration in this tradition is a complex process of ongoing investigation and growth achieved through an active acceptance of the intermediate spaces between language, song and what Connor calls noise, the ‘vocal grit, gratin or roughage’ of sobs, hums, fricatives, stutters and growls on the edge of intelligibility (2014: 37). The extended voice is a barometer of psychic development in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition, but vocal exploration does not entail the recuperation of a pristine, ‘natural’ approach to sounding; rather it allows for a sense of becoming, achieved by painstakingly accepting the shadow aspects of the voice, recognising projections, tackling inflations and opening up to a sense of complex psychic and vocal wholeness.2 The student needs to accept and own the wide variety of voices that are there to be discovered. This underpins the work of Wolfsohn, Hart and Pikes, who will now reflect on her approach to ‘freeing’ the voice.

Notes 1 The etymological roots of the term syzygy derive from the Late Latin, syzygia, and from the Greek word  syzygos  meaning ‘conjunction.’ Syzygy literally means to be ‘yoked together.’ Jung used the term to denote an archetypal pairing of opposites, in particular the yoking of the conscious mind to the unconscious, contra-sexual archetypal content (i.e. the anima in men, and the animus in women). His use of the term derived from its earlier uses in Alchemy and Gnosticism. See Jung, Carl Gustav [1959] (1979) The Collected Works of C. G. Jung Volume 9, Part II: Aion. Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self. (trans. R. F. C. Hull). New Jersey: Princeton University Press, Chapter III. 2 In Jungian depth psychology, ‘inflation’ refers to an exaggerated sense of self-importance, brought about by the unconscious psychic expansion of the personality beyond its proper limits, through identification with an archetype or archetypal figure. This process often compensates for feelings of inferiority. See Jung, Carl Gustav (2014) Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 12: Psychology and Alchemy 2nd ed. (trans. Gerhard Adler and R. F. C. Hull). New Jersey: Princeton University Press, Epilogue, par. 563.

References Connor, Steven (2014) Beyond Words Sobs, Hums, Stutters and Other Vocalizations. London: Reaktion Books. Hart, Roy (1967) ‘How a Voice Gave Me a Conscience.’ [Online] Available at www.royhart.com/hvgmc.htm [Accessed on 9 September 2017]. Jung, Carl Gustav ([1953] 2014) Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 12: Psychology and Alchemy,  2nd ed.  (trans. Gerhard Adler and R. F. C. Hull). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jung, Carl Gustav ([1959] 1979) The Collected Works of C. G. Jung Volume 9, Part II: Aion. Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self (trans. R. F. C. Hull). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press

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Jung, Carl Gustav ([1959] 2009) The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Pikes, Noah (2004) DARK VOICES: The Genesis of Roy Hart Theatre Vol 1. New Orleans: Spring Journal Books. Wehr, Demaris S. (1988) Jung and Feminism – Liberating Archetypes. London: Routledge. Wolfsohn, Alfred ([1938] 2012) Orpheus, or the Way to a Mask (trans. Marita Günther; ed. Jay Livernois). Woodstock: Abraxas Publishing.

8 FREEING THE VOICE Margaret Pikes

Wolfsohn and Hart both believed that the voice could provide an expressive conduit for unconscious energies. They were interested in students not only opening up unconscious contents, but also learning how to understand and work with them: to integrate them into consciousness. Through sounding and singing in ways connected to feelings with their images and characters, and to sources in the body, the voice forms a kind of bridge between the unconscious and the conscious and can thus be a powerful tool for self-development. However, there is an important distinction between this kind of dynamic vocalizing and searching, and psychotherapeutic releasing through the voice. As noted in the first part of this book, Janov developed Primal Therapy as a way of healing neurosis partly through screaming, as a way of re-experiencing and expressing childhood trauma.1 Though it may give release, ‘Primal screaming’ is not directly aimed at building a more conscious awareness of the roots of the specific vocalization. Building this awareness is centrally important to the Wolfsohn-Hart approach to vocal discovery and contributes to developing artistic expression, whether speaking or singing. In the WolfsohnHart approach, the teacher uses a piano as a structured reference point to support the work of guiding the student to hear and feel her range of sounds (which may in fact very occasionally emerge as screams), with the accent on developing a deeper awareness of the vocal range and its psychophysical connections. Such use of the piano is one of the hallmarks of the Wolfsohn-Hart work. Strongly influenced by Jung’s ideas of individuation and the development of the self, this work of using the voice to integrate unconscious material into the conscious mind was central to Wolfsohn’s and Hart’s philosophy. As earlier outlined, in Part 1, for Jung, individuation was the goal of human life. It entails working to acquire self-knowledge through the arduous process of learning to recognise our unconscious impulses and drives, our complexes and the archetypes that control our lives. As a result of this work, we separate ourselves in a way, from these

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powerful unconscious forces and so develop fully as the individual, unique person we are potentially at birth. Wolfsohn’s work on the voice had enabled him to heal the traumatic psychological experience he had lived through in World War I. He discovered how deeply the human voice is connected to our archaic psychophysical roots and how, by re-contacting those sounds and images consciously and carefully, in a protected and reflective context, their terrible power could be harnessed and transformed into a positive life force. In this sense, Wolfsohn’s legacy was to uniquely bequeath to contemporary culture the way to use our voices as a powerful tool, not only in personal development but also in artistic expression. As already discussed, one of the main ideas within the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition is that developing the ability to sound on a wider range in both pitch and quality, is a way of learning how to synthesise opposites in the psyche (synthesising opposites is an essential part of Jung’s metapsychology). Students are guided to find vocal sounds that extend both higher and lower than the usual soprano or female range, or than the usual male bass baritone range, using the support of the body, breath and the imagination. These sounds are not made in abstract – they express focused energy and can be a way of exploring characters and feelings that lie outside of the vocalist’s usual persona. By connecting bodily and meaningfully to these atypical voices and including them in her conscious repertoire, the vocalist thus encompasses sources that are psychologically opposite to what might be thought of as her ‘natural’ vocal range. The characters voiced in this way, may be linked to Jung’s concepts of the archetypes or they may represent more personal themes. Within Jungian depth psychology, archetypes are psychosomatic concepts, linking body and psyche, instinct and image. The concept of the archetypes was developed by Jung over his lifetime and has come to be understood as referring to innate psychological structures and patterns which are inherited. These patterns are observable in our behaviour and can manifest as figures in our inner lives and dreams which are often charged with powerful psychic energy. Examples which I myself sometimes work with in vocal exploration are the queen, the king, the hero, the child, and also the anima and the animus.

Reflections on gender in Wolfsohn-Hart voice work In Part 1, Chapter 6: ‘Some reflections,’ I referred to the way the androcentric bias of not only Wolfsohn and Hart but also Jung himself led to a misleading and damaging interpretation of these last two images. Anima and animus are archetypes which refer respectively to key principles within the individual psyche. Wolfsohn and Hart, following Jung, called these principles ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine.’ For all three men, these gendered adjectives had a historical context. In many longstanding spiritual belief systems, feminine and masculine principals have been seen as dynamically intertwined in each person’s psyche. Following ancient Chinese philosophy these energy sources are also known as Yin (the receptive principle)

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and Yang (the active principle.) In Hinduism, Shakti symbolises the feminine principle, the activating power and energy, and Shiva, consciousness, is the masculine principle. When finally brought together, these pairs represent a potential for wholeness. For Jung this reunion of opposites, expressed symbolically in alchemy, was the coniunctio or the aim of the process of individuation in psychotherapy (Jung 1970). This is also very close to what Wolfsohn and Hart were both seeking in their exploration of the range of the human voice and its potential to raise consciousness. However, Jung himself and both Wolfsohn and Hart tended to confuse and conflate these dynamically contrasting principles with the individual’s physical birth-given sex. Thus, someone born as an anatomically sexed female would be expected to be dominated by the feminine principle and hence need to integrate her contra-sexual archetype, the animus (and vice versa for someone born as an anatomically sexed male). As I explained in Part 1, Chapter 6, I experienced this confused expectation as an invisible and incorrect judgement of my own identity: the judgement that somehow my physical sex should define my psychological nature felt false to me, though at the time I could not articulate this problem. I now believe, in alignment with feminist post-Jungians such as Demaris S. Wehr (1988) that every individual psyche has potentially an archetypal anima and animus. I remember how I enjoyed very much working with the words ‘anima viva’ when asked to by my voice teacher, who I believe was using the phrase to mean soul rather than referring to the archetype. But while sounding this image, I was touched by and felt a longing towards the feminine principal that it also signified. In my own voice teaching, I work from the basis that each vocalist is unique and so we navigate and explore vocally their own inner balance, which may include addressing principles of femininity and masculinity. Wherever an individual identifies on the gender spectrum they can explore a range of voices and characters on their journey to develop a deeper connection to their centre and to wholeness. As Mills and Stoneham (2017) note: ‘Pitch is only one aspect of voice change, and it is the interrelationship with resonance and expressive intonation that are significant’ (ibid.: 66). I might suggest that a student explore among others, the archetypes of the queen and the king, the giant or the child or even the animus and anima, as ways to stimulate the imaginative connection to contrasting and perhaps undiscovered voices. Furthermore, if a student does not in any way relate to binary notions of gender, it is important to re-emphasise that working with the polarity of the archetypes such as anima and animus served to enable Wolfsohn and Hart, and voice teachers in that tradition, to help students transcend their gender-normative, socially inculcated vocal ranges. The self is not singularly gendered but can be encountered by working to better recognise in oneself the influence of other archetypes. Perhaps using contrasting vocal sources and the characters or images that any particular individual might choose to associate with them, can be a useful way to reconceptualise what at times is referred to as animus and anima within this book and can

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aid the student to integrate and own differing aspects of self through a vocal process of exploration and discovery. An important archetypal figure that transcends gender is the shadow. The shadow reveals characteristics that are diametrically opposed to a person’s more obvious personality traits. Through this archetype the psyche shows the dark side of its acceptable persona. In creatively channelled and protected voice work, expressing the shadow is part of integrating contrasting vocal dimensions. In one of our RHT performances (And) we presented a section known as ‘Beauty and the Beast’: a vocal demonstration of powerful human roaring and growling as the shadow of vocal beauty or purity.2 (I sometimes include this as group work with advanced students.) However, archetypal images are manifold, and working vocally with personal themes often gives rise to characters and an infinite variety of other archetypal images. Sometimes these characters or themes appear in dreams and we can use the memory of the dream to find a connection to their voices. This work can thus be a way to: [O]wn [our] unconscious ‘cast of characters’ well enough to avoid identification with them and the ensuing enactment (‘acting out’) of their voices in a destructive mode. (Wehr 1988: 50) Wehr here uses ‘voices’ to mean the influence of these characters, but, interestingly, literally voicing or sounding them is an extremely effective way of coming to own them.

To what extent is my work concerned with ‘freeing’ the voice? In the sense that the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition seeks to go not just beyond but also below and behind a student’s vocal limitations, it could be said to free the voice. Part of my work has long been concerned with this kind of liberation. Many voice teachers, including Cicely Berry (1973), Patsy Rodenburg (1999) and Kristen Linklater (2006) speak of freeing the voice as their aim and it is perhaps instructive to examine what is actually meant by this general use of the idea of unblocking or ‘freeing’ of the voice. Whilst I understand it in terms of working to remove or transform constraining habits, both physical and mental, the invitation simply to ‘free’ the voice, is a rather vague and seductive one. To free something or someone conjures up images of heroic deeds against oppression, or perhaps uplifting acts in support of maltreated animals. When considering more carefully what it might mean to liberate the voice, it is important to clarify that although the image of a dolphin re-finding the wide ocean after being caught in a net is heart-warming, freeing the voice is another matter. Is ‘the voice’ in fact a distinct entity? Paul Barker describes trying to understand the voice as separate from the body and the person which create it, as like trying

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to examine the life of a fish by taking it out of the water – an action which will in fact, result in its death: My voice in my body might be usefully compared to the fish in the water . . . our voice shares a relationship to ourselves as the water does to the fish: both are the medium with which we communicate with our worlds. (Barker in Thomaidis and Macpherson 2015: xvi) The voice has rather been described by Cavarero (2005: 12), following Paul Zumthor (1990: 44), as ‘vocality.’ This seems to be a more abstract characterisation, but it leads to an understanding of the voice as a psychophysical activity as opposed to a singular ‘thing’ that might need to be freed. Furthermore, Cavarero (ibid.: 7) points out that a person using their voice to speak also communicates their individuality through their vocal interaction with aural space. From this point of view, the invisible complexity of vocalising is made obvious. The limitations in the vocal range with which an individual might struggle, will inevitably be connected with the vocalist’s physical, emotional and intellectual inhibitions or unconscious habits. This complexity of vocal expression is referred to sometimes as ‘in-betweenness’ (Thomaidis 2015: 3) and Wolfsohn’s pioneering work with the voice as a way to build a conscious bridge with the unconscious, already recognised this fundamentally liminal nature of the voice (Wolfsohn 1947). So removing vocal restrictions usually takes time and patience and is rarely permanently arrived at by miraculously ‘freeing’ the voice as if it were some kind of wild animal caught in a trap. In my work, based on what Hart and Wolfsohn taught, I aim at something more than this, since vocal freedom is both tied to and can lead to a deepening knowledge of the self and greater self-confidence, as we separate ourselves from the powerful unconscious forces that limit our vocal repertoire. Part of this journey does obviously include overcoming complex constraints and rooting the voice in an embodied way which might be described as eventually freeing the voice. I have devised many strategies to help students in this aspect of the work, to help allow a more authentic vocal connection. These praxical elements will be described in detail later in this chapter. Another commonly accepted view is that the ‘natural’ voice is of central value to voice work (Linklater 2006; Armstrong 1992). Interestingly, in recent years, Armstrong’s Natural Voice Network has in fact warned that ‘there is a danger that the term itself is becoming a catch-all phrase of convenience’ (Rowbry 2010: online). Having elucidated that the voice is not an entity isolated from our complete selves, but rather a nexus at the intersection of multiple layers of psychophysical, instinctual and more conscious vocal expression, the question also arises as to what in fact is meant by the ‘natural’ voice? When something is described as ‘natural’ it is felt to be more wholesome, less controlled and more authentic for example: when we speak of natural medicine or the natural beauty of the forest. This implies a judgement which is generally positive. But when ‘natural’ is invoked in the context of voice work, a certain unclarity creeps in. There is a tension between an idealised

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‘naturalness’ and the richly complex reality of the human psyche, which is always seeking growth. How do we recognise this ‘natural’ voice when it emerges? Who judges it to be ‘natural?’ What is an unnatural voice? A voice that we feel to be ‘natural’ may in fact have been created as a result of unhelpful cultural education and so may potentially be hindering vocal development. Sarah Weston, referring to Rodenburg’s description of the relationship between class and vocal habits, describes ‘[t]he open vocal release and freedom . . . the extravagant range and confidence’ (2019: 312) of the boys she taught at Eton who had received no vocal training, as contrasted to the equally ‘natural’ voices and speech of her students in a school in a depressed area of London whose ‘voices and speech’ were ‘held, tight and pushed’ (ibid.). To what extent the students at Eton were aware of the way they used their voices any more than of the way they use their privileged backgrounds is another question. Both Wolfsohn and Hart believed that the range of the human voice is generally much wider than is culturally permitted. Teaching exploration of the whole range of the human voice, implies a certain amount of facilitating personal development, and is quite different from what some voice training styles call ‘freeing the natural voice.’ It is important to note that both Wolfsohn and Hart originally developed their work in the context of a supportive community focused on vocal exploration linked with increased personal awareness and consciousness. In the absence of the particular environment of a closed commune, an important part of my methodology is establishing an ongoing and professional relationship of trust with students generally. This is important because guiding a student to really experience exploring vocally beyond their constraining habits, can release powerful energies. Emotional release can be a vital stage of the journey to contacting the body, it can also be challenging, in that it may require a kind of ‘letting go’ or change of attitude to self-control. Allowing the voice to flow, to connect with its physical sources and with the imagination can mean changing your idea of what you ‘should’ sound like. Through the work, including with breathing and listening, the kind of control that is needed for a fuller personal and vocal presence can be developed. This work also requires careful and responsible guidance by the teacher.3

Scenarios to help to begin to express unhabitual sounds – to extend the vocal range 1.  Building trust The aim: to link a full inbreath with movement, image and sound while listening •

Every teacher will have their own way to put their student at ease at the start of a lesson so that the student will feel encouraged and supported to explore and to focus on her own experience. One way could be to exchange with the

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student, asking her how she is and if she has any specific expectations for the lesson. She could be told that she can ask questions during the lesson if she wishes to. (Students with an overly cerebral attitude can later be encouraged to focus on experiencing the work rather than over-analysing.) After the short initial physical warm-up (which can be demonstrated by the teacher simultaneously to help the student feel less exposed), the student begins with the invitation to stand with weight on both feet, hands on belly just below the navel, and to breathe calmly and deeply from the abdomen. She should close her eyes and focus on relaxing as she breathes in. There is a pause for this to be experienced. She should then drop her arms, open her eyes while trying to keep awareness of the relaxed inbreath. On the outbreath, the teacher invites the student to send out a sound on ‘Ah’ and to accompany it with a big gesture as if she is displaying a wide landscape. The sound must be held till the end of her breath and she imagines that she can see the landscape. The teacher guides the student to allow as full a sound as possible to emerge. The teacher picks up the pitch of the sound on the piano and asks the student to repeat it with the piano. She is given time to breathe in. The teacher might need to explain that she should hold the sound on that pitch rather than sliding up or down with a kind of glissando. If she has a problem with this, or with hearing the pitch, the teacher de-dramatises this by saying that it doesn’t matter at this point, even though the student may worry that it does matter. The teacher explains that you will work together with that issue later and that she should just concentrate on bringing out the sound.4 If she can’t follow the pitch, the teacher can also work with sounding on a glissando. If she can follow, then the teacher raises or lowers the pitch on the piano (deciding which will be more helpful) and she is encouraged to take a full inbreath, to continue the gestures and to allow her imagination to play as she sounds. The teacher may suggest an image or a character. After some sounds, the teacher finds ways to bring movement more dynamically into play. Maybe (many other appropriate possibilities can be found by the teacher), she can trace with a hand and arm, a complete, big circle like a world stretching as high and as far in front and behind as possible, starting from and coming around and down again to the floor (bend the knees, touch the floor) with each sound. She should alternate hands. Bending to touch the floor can help her to engage with her central body. The aim is to continue to guide the student to allow a full sound rooted in the body to emerge. After some sounding in this way, identify the source of the sound. The teacher asks her where she feels her sound is coming from and how does she feel? Did she have an image as she did this? From here the teacher can decide how to proceed – which vocal source, character or image perhaps from the student’s input, to aim to develop and how.

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2. Opening to a deeper vocal source – perhaps for a student who habitually engages vocally in an overly tense way. (see Video Sample 5. http://www.routledge.com/cw/pikes) The aim: to guide the student to playfully relax her habitual control over vocal production as a preparation to eventually developing a strong support for sounding from this source. •

After some initial warming up, the teacher invites the student to try to walk like a lazy giant. She may then give instructions like: Use big steps, have heavy limbs. You are amiable and not especially clever. As you walk allow the voice of this character to emerge with your lower jaw relaxed, mouth open. Take your time to breathe in fully through a small mouth or nose, as you need to. Hold the sounds till the end of your breath.

The teacher works with the student in this way for a few moments. She then says: Bring the sound to the pitch that you hear from the piano.5 Maintain this character and quality of sound and follow the changes of pitch given by the piano. • •

The teacher plays a new pitch (ascending or descending a tone) on the piano for each outbreath. If the student loses contact with the source of the sound the teacher brings yawning into the work, suggesting that: The giant is slowly waking up and each sound turns into a yawn. She is singing-yawning. The student plays with this character and the teacher encourages her to observe what is happening to his (the giant’s) voice and to feel its source.

3. Painting with the voice – perhaps for a beginner whose voice sounds thin and tends to come mainly from the head. (see Video Sample 6. http://www.routledge.com/cw/pikes)6 The aim: to guide the student to begin exploring new sources and qualities of voice. •

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After a short warm-up, the teacher begins perhaps with the following instructions: Give yourself time to breathe in fully from the belly. On the outbreath, bring in vocal sound and imagine you are painting with your voice on a canvass that is two metres wide and two metres high. You must fill the canvass with your marks and keep sounding till the end of your breath. Stretch up to the top corners and down to the edge on the floor as you sound. Sometimes use your other hand to paint. The teacher may have to encourage the student to look at her hand and at the canvas as she sounds and paints. She may ask: What colours are you using? and then use this information to encourage the student to bring contrasting energies to the work. At some point, the teacher picks up the pitch that the student has chosen and asks her to try to sound on the musical pitches that she will now suggest.7

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If appropriate, the teacher could play a new pitch on the piano for each outbreath, (maybe ascending or descending a tone). Try to maintain the pitch given by the piano.8 Encourage the student to engage more dynamically. The teacher could suggest that it is a Jackson Pollok/Expressionist-style painting. If the student struggles to keep the sound because of getting out of breath: Use the easier breathless sound even if it doesn’t last long. After working with this: Now leave the painting and just make an open gesture with your arms, sending out your voice powerfully to the horizon and to the end of your breath. Perhaps imagine you are a king who is proud to show the extent of his land. Teacher guides the student if the deeper source of the sound is not maintained. Engage your whole body, keeping your feet anchored both to the floor and to your centre. After working in this way for some time, the teacher encourages the student to observe where in her body the sound is coming from and remain connected to how she is producing this.

Notes 1 Chapter 2 of Part 1. 2 See Figure 6.5. 3 The role of the teacher in leading this work will be discussed more fully in the next chapter, but I am concerned here with simply acknowledging the deep impact that working dynamically to overcome psychophysical limits to vocal expression can have, and the need for the teacher’s recognition of a duty of care in regard to this. 4 See Chapter 9 ‘The role of the teacher,’ section ‘Finding the note.’ 5 See end of Chapter 9 ‘The role of the teacher,’ section ‘Finding the note’. 6 In fact, the scenario filmed develops differently from the scenario described as Pikes follows the student’s interpretation of the instructions. 7 See end of Chapter 9 ‘The role of the teacher,’ section ‘Finding the note.’ 8 See end of Chapter 9 ‘The role of the teacher,’ section ‘Finding the note.’

References Armstrong, Frankie (1992) As Far as the Eye Can Sing (ed. Jenny Pearson). London: The Women’s Press Ltd. Barker, Paul (2015) ‘With One Voice: Disambiguating Sung and Spoken Voices through a Composer’s Experience.’ Foreword to Thomaidis, Konstantinos and MacPherson, Ben (eds.) Voice Studies: Critical Approaches to Process, Performance and Experience. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. xvi–xxvi. Berry, Cicely (1973) Voice and the Actor. London: Harrap. Cavarero Adriana. 2005) For More Than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression (trans. P. A. Kottman). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Freeing the Voice (1999) Directed by Patsy Rodenburg [Film] UK: Arts Documentation Unit. Jung, Carl Gustav (1970) Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 14. Mysterium Coniunctionis, 2nd ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Linklater, Kristen (2006) Freeing the Natural Voice. London: Nick Hern Books. Mills, Matthew and Stoneham, Gillie (2017) The Voice Book for Trans and Non-Binary People: A Practical Guide to Creating and Sustaining Authentic Voice and Communication. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

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Rowbry, Chris (2010) ‘The Natural Voice Approach to Singing.’ [Online] Available at https://blog.chrisrowbury.com/2010/06/natural-voice-approach-to-singing.html [Accessed on 12 July 2020]. Thomaidis, Konstantinos (2015) ‘Introduction.’ Thomaidis, Konstantinos and MacPherson, Ben (eds.) Voice Studies: Critical Approaches to Process, Performance and Experience. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 3–9. Wehr, Demaris S. (1988) Jung and Feminism – Liberating Archetypes. London: Routledge. Weston, Sarah (2019) ‘Answer the Question – Voice Training, Habitus and Political Intervention.’ Theatre Dance and Performance Training, Vol. 10, No. 3. Wolfsohn, Alfred (1947) Die Brücke. Unpublished manuscript. Copies held in the Roy Hart Theatre archives in Malérargues, France; the Leo Baeck Centre at the Berlin Jewish Museum and in the Joods Historisch Museum, Amsterdam. Zumthor, Paul (1990) Oral Poetry: An Introduction (trans. Katherine Murphy-Judy). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER – A PREFACE Patrick Campbell

According to Wolfsohn: To be a teacher means to be a guardian and representative of creative life. If the development of psychological factors of life goes well, then one says about on whom this gift is bestowed that one is ‘called’; and the guiding star above this ‘call’ is a ‘vocation.’ (2012: 137) Teaching has always been an integral aspect of the Wolfsohn–Hart tradition, as we have seen from Pikes’ autobiographical account. Even during the period when the Roy Hart Theatre (RHT) were developing and touring performances, internal lessons held within the closed environment of the Studio segued into open workshops for the general public. This way of working was further developed and refined in the wake of the tragic death of Roy Hart, his wife Dorothy and Vivienne Young, when RHT members opened their approach to teaching large groups of people as well as offering one-to-one lessons as a means of income generation and continuing research through practice. Thus, teaching is not an addendum to performance within the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition; it is a vocation and the key way in which this praxis is transmitted and maintained. Pikes makes a very powerful point in this chapter when she questions the extent to which work on vocal exploration and development overlaps with psychotherapy. In the autobiographical section, she reveals the ways in which these disciplinary boundaries were blurred at times within the RHT, sometimes to damaging effect. It is true that vocal exploration taps into layers of psychosomatic affect; the work is challenging emotionally, as the student works with pre-linguistic sounding that connects to affective content and at times deep-seated trauma. It is essential for the teacher to create an atmosphere of trust with the student, and part of this work is

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being vigilant for dyadic processes such as projection, transference, countertransference and inflation, which just as in psychotherapy, can also assail the teacherstudent dyad in Wolfsohn-Hart voice work. Jung wrote at length on the phenomenon of the transference which he believed, along with Freud, was an integral aspect of the therapeutic or analytical process. He suggests that, whilst unconscious contents are initially projected onto close family members, such as the contrasexual parent or sibling, within the therapeutic context, the neurotic patient will often project this infantile relationship onto the therapist, with all of its initial affective charge (Jung [1966]1985: 170). For Jung, transference is so powerful because it reflects the archetype of the coniunctio, the holy marriage, which manifests in religion as the union of Christ with the Church, or the mystic with the divine (ibid.: 169). Given its archetypal weight, the transference becomes a key part of the therapeutic process, since it gives rise to a mixtum compositum of the patient’s neurosis and the therapist’s mental health and can lead, eventually, to the patient’s cure. The projected content of the transference is also archetypal in nature, yet the symbolic form of the archetype is often libidinal, charged by the instinctual drives, and the therapist’s exposure to this unconscious content can be overpowering. As Jung warns: The patient, by bringing an activated unconscious content to bear on the doctor, constellates the corresponding unconscious material in him . . . Doctor and patient thus find themselves in a relationship founded on mutual unconsciousness. (ibid.: 172) This ‘psychic infection’ (ibid.: 174) is the countertransference, which on the one hand can be dangerous for the therapist, as it can also induce mental ill health. However, on the other hand, it is frequently very useful to the therapeutic process, as the therapist is conscious of the workings of her own psyche and thus is able to mitigate the damaging potential of the unconscious content whilst engaging more deeply on a personal level with the patient, developing an increased sense of empathy and emotional engagement with the case. This complex process is common in pedagogical situations, and particularly in the intimate setting of a Wolfsohn-Hart vocal lesson.1 The voice teacher must have one foot in the world of the student’s unconscious – through pre-verbal sounding and dream work – whilst also maintaining the other foot firmly in reality by attending to the rigours of piano scales, song melodies and the artistic endeavour of linking the expanded voice to aesthetic expression. It is vital that the teacher is mindful of establishing and upholding an empathetic yet boundaried relationship with the student, maintaining awareness of the student’s possible psychic projections as well as their own potential countertransference. Achieving this balance requires transparency, professional skill and integrity. It is one of the more complex aspects of the vocal work in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition, especially

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perhaps because this psychotherapeutic aspect has not always been sufficiently acknowledged. Whilst a great deal of the work involves building the student’s confidence and contributing towards their process of individuation through an integration of the psychosomatic vocal sources and an expansion of their expressive range, the teacher also needs to be aware of another danger – inflation. Inflation can take place through the subjugation of the ego by an unconscious content, such as the shadow (the repressed, negative aspects of the personal unconscious), the animus or anima (contrasexual archetypes, often coloured by the patient’s relationship with the father or mother, respectively) or the self (the archetype of wholeness) (ibid.). These archetypes can resonate with different aspects and different stages of the development of the extended voice, and care has to be taken for the more advanced practitioner not to allow virtuoso vocal extension and expressivity to translate into egoic aggrandisement. This can be a trap for both the student and the teacher, particularly given the guru-like status projected onto accomplished practitioners in the performing arts. As well as a vocation, teaching in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition of vocal exploration is an art, one that is akin to the alchemical processes that so fascinated Jung and inspired his theorising.2 Pikes will now delve into the complexities of her own pedagogical praxis, revealing the ways in which she charts this complex psychic and expressive territory in her work with students.

Notes 1 For further information on the role of transference and countertransference in voice pedagogy and therapeutic vocal exploration, see Austin, Diane (2009) The Theory and Practice of Vocal Psychotherapy: Songs of the Self. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Yvon Bonenfant also analyses his interpersonal relationship with his voice teacher Frank Baker in terms of transference and countertransference. See Macpherson, Ben, Burrows, George, Lancker Sidtis, Diana Van, et al. (2015) ‘What is Voice Studies?’ Thomaidis, Konstantinos and MacPherson, Ben (eds.) (2015) Voice Studies: Critical Approaches to Process, Performance and Experience. Abingdon: Routledge, p. 207. 2 For further details on the ways in which Jung drew on alchemy as a source for his conceptualisation of depth psychology, see Jung, Carl Gustav (2014) Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 12: Psychology and Alchemy 2nd ed. (trans. Gerhard Adler and R. F. C. Hull); and Jung, Carl Gustav, (1970) Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 14. Mysterium Coniunctionis, 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

References Austin, Diane (2009) The Theory and Practice of Vocal Psychotherapy: Songs of the Self. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Jung, Carl Gustav ([1953] 2014) Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 12: Psychology and Alchemy,  2nd ed.  (trans. Gerhard Adler and R. F. C. Hull). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jung, Carl Gustav ([1966] 1985) Practice of Psychotherapy: Essays on the Psychology of the Transference and Other Subjects. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Jung, Carl Gustav (1970) Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 14. Mysterium Coniunctionis, 2nd ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Macpherson, Ben, Burrows, George, Lancker Sidtis, Diana Van, et al. (2015) ‘What is Voice Studies?’ Thomaidis, Konstantinos and MacPherson, Ben (eds.) Voice Studies: Critical Approaches to Process, Performance and Experience. Abingdon: Routledge. Wolfsohn, Alfred ([1938] 2012) Orpheus, or the Way to a Mask (trans. Marita Günther; ed. Jay Livernois). Woodstock: Abraxas Publishing.

9 THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER Margaret Pikes

Vocal discovery in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition requires a guide or teacher, especially in the early stages, because we need an experienced external ear to guide us in our explorations. Without this we are not able to make the confrontations with our habits and their deep roots that are necessary for real vocal development to happen. The teacher must have the ability to listen using the experience of actually having done the work and gone through the process personally. With this experience and way of listening, it is possible to guide the student to finding a path through the lesson that corresponds to her individual creativity, rather than imposing a predetermined set of exercises. Working with and building connections to the vocal sources over a lengthy period leads inevitably to the development of an enhanced ability to listen to one’s own and to others’ voices, that is based on feeling (in both the physical and affective sense). This skill in ‘dynamic’ listening is integral to the Wolfsohn-Hart approach. The use of specific musical pitches played on the piano supports this work: the notes provide a point of reference for sounding. This means that it is very useful for a voice teacher in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition to have some ability to play the piano, and certainly she should be able to generally recognise musical pitch. The establishment of a relationship of trust between the voice teacher and the student is especially important in the realm of voice work. This is because, as has already been underlined, our voices are so intrinsically part of the psychophysical complexity of being human that when we start to explore our vocal worlds, we can easily feel exposed and vulnerable. Indeed, when our sounds connect with feeling-full sources the experience can be cathartic. For this reason, the teacher has a serious duty of care towards her students, which begins by building and maintaining trust. This means having the sensitivity and experience to recognise a student’s boundaries and how, with the student’s consent, to creatively extend them without doing psychological (or physical) damage. This means that the work

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is fundamentally for adults. I do not offer this work for children, who are by their nature still developing and thus have, in some way, the need to continue to experience life unconsciously. Trust is also important because sometimes vocal exploration will be helped if the student allows the emergence of ‘weak’ or ‘tender’ sounds, or voices contrasting gender-normative vocal ranges. In many cultures these characteristics are considered shameful, so the student can feel embarrassed and challenged by allowing them to be voiced, while in fact they can open deeper connections to the body and the emotional world. It is surprising what a powerful effect this kind of work can have, because the insistence on the need to develop only vocal volume and power seems to be so deeply embedded (Pikes 2019). The question of trust and the role of the teacher links to what is at the heart of an issue which I believe is central to all discussion about approaches to voice teaching which recognise that vocal exploration and development are intrinsically linked with the student’s physical, emotional and psychological being. I would say that there is almost an elephant in the room in this discussion which is: to what extent do we acknowledge the overlap with psychotherapy? It is as if this possibility somehow demeans the professional authenticity of developing the skills that voice work should be focused on. Whereas, if work is to be done on connecting head and body, then it must be born in mind that the body is the seat of our emotional world and many tensions and vocal habits stem from there. When Linklater (2006: 41) for example encourages students to ‘remove unnecessary tensions so that the muscles are free to respond to impulse without the short circuiting created by habit,’ there seems to be no reference here to the power of the underlying emotional causes for these tensions and that to ‘remove’ them could necessitate work on awareness of these inner psychological causes. A psychotherapeutic work in fact. Writing about using the ‘middle range’ of the voice Linklater also explains that: [T]he pure connection of thought and feeling energy with breath, vibration, and resonating response underlies this exploration of range. You can do it by treating the voice as a musical instrument, sound only, divorced from feeling, but you can also open your mind to the marriage of feeling with sound, and allow feeling and sound to be mutually stimulating. (ibid.: 247) We are then given a series of exercises to work on the muscles of the face. This avoids including reference to the psychological work implied by the idea of marrying feeling and sound. The wonderful detail given by Linklater concerning the muscles and organs involved in sounding is indeed extremely informative. However, I would suggest that to tell a student to open her mind or to simply become ‘emotionally connected to the truth’ (ibid.: 139) is not enough. In order to really achieve such an opening or connection it may well be necessary to guide the student into some dynamic and active physical and imaginative sounding, which would probably involve contacting and experiencing feeling energy or real emotion.

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My point is not to insist that voice teachers should be psychotherapists. On the contrary, I hope simply to raise awareness of this aspect of the work: to make more transparent exactly what is the nature of the ‘major effort’ needed to ‘imagine what lies behind language’ (ibid.: 345).1 I am not a trained psychotherapist, but my years of experience in psychotherapy have informed my way of guiding students. That experience has not only helped to develop my capacity for empathy, but it also revealed useful strategies for foregrounding the student’s process rather than my own wish to ‘teach.’ I also very much appreciate the clear protective guidelines to which psychotherapists normally nowadays adhere and which I believe could apply to voice teachers. These include, firstly, that sexual relationship between the therapist and client is simply not allowed. Secondly, that the therapist takes care to support the client after deep and possibly cathartic openings have been made during the work, and thirdly that the therapeutic environment is protective and supportive. Although the voice teacher is not a psychotherapist, as mentioned in the Preface to this chapter, she is in a position of responsibility for the forces of transference and countertransference that often arise. The temptation to seduce or be seduced by a student is precluded by the first of these guidelines, so that both the student and the teacher are protected from what would amount to a kind of abuse (even if both are adults.) The second two rules provide for necessary care for the student’s healthy ongoing vocal (and personal) developmental process. I work with relatively small groups, of around 12 people, in which I encourage an atmosphere of supportive listening amongst my students at all times. Furthermore, studio spaces are carefully chosen so that students feel uninhibited to engage in loud vocal exploration. Very early on, by experience and observation, I develop an awareness of each participant’s individual themes and exploratory limits, and tailor my work accordingly. If it becomes clear that a participant is very challenged, I will find a moment to suggest to them that certain issues may well be better resolved within a psychotherapeutic context. I do have an ongoing communication with many of my students, and therefore am able to follow through with any breakthroughs. Because of these considerations, any psychophysical voice work which deals with emotional release or pushing students’ boundaries, endows the role of voice teacher with a particular power. This power can be used transparently so that the role becomes one of a responsible, experienced guide, or it can be used opaquely to inflate the ego of the teacher who positions her/himself as a kind of guru with spiritually superior knowledge (and this seems to happen all too frequently, unfortunately). The role of the voice teacher is a role and it is important for both the student and the teacher, that the teacher avoids misusing the power of the voice work and remains grounded in her own artistry, professionalism and humanity.

Using archetypal characters As a guide working in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition towards enabling the student to discover the wide range of her voice, you may well encourage her to play and voice

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archetypal characters. This is one of the ways in which the voice work can connect the unconscious with the conscious. Being and sounding as, a giant, a queen, a witch, a fool or a hero (among many possibilities) are playful ways of letting go of habitual control of the persona and allowing undiscovered sounds to emerge. By voicing them (pre-verbally or with a short phrase), the student becomes better acquainted with them and so builds the link to including their qualities in her repertoire. Your job as the teacher is to encourage her, to keep her on track and give guidance about the source of her voice. This can enable the student to feel safe as she lets go of her habitual control and learns more about the extent of her vocal range.

Using dream images If, in the context of ongoing voice classes, a student suggests using a dream as a theme for voice work, the teacher should be aware that this implies accessing the student’s unconscious. The student should tell the dream carefully and be given the chance to speak about what it means to her. The teacher must listen attentively and with an open mind. If not in agreement with the student’s interpretation, it is not necessary to say so directly, but alternatives might be carefully suggested. Let the student re-tell the dream as a story using her voice and body expressively. Then the teacher or the student can pick out images which seem central and the student plays and improvises with them theatrically and vocally. If there are other students present, they can role play if all are willing. As central themes emerge more clearly, discuss briefly with the student how she feels and thinks about these and suggest ways she can improvise with them (using a given vocal source and/or character). You are not seeking a defined ‘interpretation,’ rather the possibility for the student to experience the dream in a state of wakefulness and, through vocalising, to travel through it in a creative, lateral (as opposed to a literal) way. This may directly or indirectly lead to the discovery of new vocal sources or areas of vocal expression and it will probably be necessary to allow time for discussion.

Scenarios 1.  Working with resistance Obviously, as constraining habits can have deep psychological roots, helping students to let go of a habit can be a delicate enterprise. However, sometimes working with resistance can lead to important breakthroughs if navigated creatively and within the context of a transparent relationship between the teacher and the student. When you recognise resistance in a student, your response will be based on your knowledge of and relationship with the student, and so there are obviously a wide range of possible strategies. The aim is to help the student overcome her resistance and, though direct confrontation can occasionally be helpful, it is often more

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useful to help the student understand the reasons for her refusal. There is a kind of mediation that needs to intervene, and the strategies are multiple. A workshop participant once complained to me that she couldn’t join in the group improvisations that we were making because she was bored. She asked what she could do. I told her simply and gently that she should just stop having such a negative attitude. She then joined in these classes for the next days with enthusiasm and creativity! (I would not have given this advice to everybody, but I felt in this instance that she was ready to hear it.) •

It could be that transference is at work and you will have to take into account your own capacity for countertransference. Briefly: try not to react defensively! Take the time to ask warmly and patiently if the student recognises the issue, and if so, can she explain why or what it is that is blocking her? • Bear in mind that she may challenge your authority. In this case, it is wise to listen and even to agree that she may be right – that you are not perfect and may have got something wrong. You might explain why you were taking the path that she finds challenging and discuss her views about that. Based on that discussion you might be able to approach the vocal research another way. • Suggest that she expresses her complaining attitude, or her anger or fear vocally, first saying that this is part of the voice work and that you will both be listening to the sources of the sounds and to their characters. If she agrees, you can follow this path developing the characters and staying true to the vocal sources, but taking time to talk and explain what you are doing and why, and taking account of her responses. • Move on to another aspect of the lesson, when you feel the time is right. • If she does not wish to express the feeling behind her resistance, just take note of it for the future, and change direction by asking her how she would prefer to work or by suggesting yourself something less challenging. • Later when the situation appears easier for her, you may be able to help her understand her resistance better and to find the way to overcome it. • If there is another student present, and if they are willing, you could ask this student to model the work that student is resisting, so that a more playful atmosphere is created.

2. Finding the note When a student cannot accurately sound on a musical pitch given by the piano, she may be able to pick it up more easily if the teacher or another student sounds it to her. However, the danger is that she also copies the vocal source rather than producing it with a more personal connection. •

As the teacher, you can approach helping the student to learn to ‘hear’ and to sound on pitch, by using bodily engagement. Start with movement improvisation and/or playful theatrical situations for example exploring the studio in

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some way. Into this you invite the student to bring sounds held to the end of her breath, at first without your playing notes on the piano. • At some point, ask the student to sustain a sound without ‘sliding’ or making a glissando. She might find it helpful to mime this physically while sounding. As you pick up her pitch on the piano, explain that she is sounding not singing. This can help to lower her expectations: she is not being asked to do something she already knows is challenging for her. Also explain that she is leading, and you are following with the notes. • Repeat this work a few times, and as she continues with the movement improvisation, you can lightly suggest she now follows the piano as you play a note, perhaps at an interval of a major third from the one she just sounded. If she is simultaneously engaged physically and imaginatively with another task, it is probable that she will pick up the correct note. If she does, congratulate her! And repeat the same note a few times. • If she doesn’t, encourage and help her to sound a little higher or lower in ways that seem appropriate to you, either replaying the note, and/or singing it till she gets it even approximately. • Work around this idea, slowly using the intervals of a major (or minor) arpeggio. These are often easier for the ear than consecutive or chromatic intervals, though the notes of a major scale might also work. • She should continue to be engaged in physically and imaginatively moving during this work on listening and sounding. • To enjoy the feeling of tuneful-ness, you might invite her to sing some lines of melody from a children’s song – without or with the piano accompanying, whichever you feel to be the most helpful for her confidence. • At a later point, it can be helpful to bring the student to the piano and invite her to play for herself a note in the middle of the range (maybe C4 or E3) and to sound it. This can help demystify the use of the instrument and ultimately encourage the student to begin to ‘hear’ and sound on suggested pitches.

Note 1 Linklater is citing A. Damasio (2000) The Feeling of What Happens London: Vintage Books, pp:107–108.

References Damasio, Antonio R. (2000) The Feeling of What Happens. London: Vintage Books. Linklater, Kristen (2006) Freeing the Natural Voice. London: Nick Hern Books. Pikes, Margaret (2019) ‘Tenderness as Strength in Vocal Development.’ Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 459–460.

CONNECTING HEAD TO BODY – A PREFACE Patrick Campbell

In 1974, Hart suggested that: In Roy Hart Theatre, both men and women push their voices beyond bass and soprano, in search of the human voice, as opposed to the specialised voice. ‘L’inégalité’ is the first political statement – direct reflection on the sense of hierarchy between the head and the body, the visceral and intellectual functions which influence each other, but which need theatre in order to become complete in a creative synthesis of the extremes – thus nerves are necessary for they put the artist’s body into a state of wakefulness. (1974: 17) The Wolfsohn-Hart approach to extended voice recognises and aims to heal the body-mind divide that is central to rationalist empiricism and the physical sciences. Visceral sounding and conscious integration of psychosomatic experience form a balanced complementarity, refuting the primacy of logos over phone. Whilst Wolfsohn’s ‘singing lessons’ were highly embodied activities – he would often encourage his students to root into their bodies whilst singing, by pushing against the ‘bashing board’ on the wall – it was Hart who really foregrounded the importance of physical expressivity by encouraging sporting activities during the six years that the Roy Hart Theatre (RHT) spent at the Hampstead Squash Club and incorporating dance and movement classes into the RHT members’ daily training. As Kevin Crawford1 and Noah Pikes suggest, the collective training sessions developed by Hart from the late 1960s onwards ‘emphasized intense physical and vocal plasticity – a literal unchaining of the performer’s potential’ (2019: 6). Like Hart, Margaret Pikes emphasises the important role that movement and physical expressivity play in terms of allowing students to develop a rooted, grounded connection to the voice, which is viewed as an extension of the psychophysical

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soma. There is a resonance here with Thatcher and Galbreath’s (2019) notion of a corporeal voice. They suggest that: We propose an alternative view on the power of a voice: even when a body is not visible, the voice is powerful because it is direct physical contact from a body. It is the inherence of the body, not its absence, in the sound that causes that sound to register so powerfully in our perception. . . . Material vocal sound creates physical contact between the subjective bodies of performers, augmenting first-person knowing into intersubjective creativity. (Thatcher and Galbreath 2019: 355) The power of voice resides in its physical rootedness and its capacity to bridge the gap both between the conscious and unconscious layers of the individual psyche and between subjective lived experience and interpersonal encounters. The Wolfsohn-Hart approach is predicated on cultivating the corporeal voice and this practice has profound philosophical ramifications. In order to contextualise her integrated approach to voice work, Pikes begins this chapter with a succinct overview of Cartesian dualism, the presumed split between the mutually exclusive mental (res cogitans) and material substances (res extensa) mapped out by Descartes, which paved the way in seventeenth-century Europe for revolutionary advances in scientific knowledge. As Gullatz and Gildersleeve (2018) have suggested, the scientifically elaborated res extensa began to take precedence in Western science to the detriment of the psychic plane of the res cogitans (which was linked by Descartes to the soul). The res cogitans was progressively devalued, and any notion of the psyche and materiality as a continuum (such as Spinoza’s notion of a ‘dual-aspect monism’) gradually fell out of favour amongst the hard sciences, with their empiricist epistemology. In the West, however, Cartesian thought was also taken in a very different direction in the twentieth century by the philosophical field of phenomenology, the study of subjective consciousness and the objects of direct experience. Husserl, a founding figure of the field, initially suggested that his transcendental phenomenology was ‘a new, twentieth-century Cartesianism’ (Husserl [1929] 1964: 3), in the sense that his theorising provocatively rearticulated the cogito as lived, subjective experience. Knowledge of lived experience is achieved through the epoché, or ‘phenomenological reduction.’ The epoché refers to a refocussing of attention by which the meditating philosopher suspends judgment, placing her belief in the existence of the external world ‘in brackets’ whilst analysing phenomena as they are given to consciousness. Phenomenology represents a challenge to empiricism by foregrounding a body-mind continuum: Husserl suggested that his phenomenology was ‘transcendental,’ in the sense that he placed the very objectivity of the world in brackets. Objective reality and our subjective experience of it are indelibly linked: the reality of distinctive entities is but a synthesis of our subjective experience of phenomena. Thus, Descartes’ mental and material substances are, according

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to phenomenology, inextricably bound, rather than inherently divided from one another. One of Husserl’s successors, Michel Henry, would go a step further by arguing that the intentionality of phenomenology, the relation of a subject to objects of experience, is not grounded in transcendence, but rather immanence. In contrast to Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology, Henry would develop a material phenomenology, predicated upon the notion that, prior to the objects of thought, representation or reflection (noema), the materiality of auto-affectivity (hyle) – forms the bedrock of our experience of self, other and world. Henry speaks of ‘the pathetic immediacy in which life experiences itself ’ (Henry 2008: 2). This pathetic immediacy (ipseity, or selfhood) is pure auto-affection, the invisible reality of life, understood as a primordial force or drive.2 By eschewing logos and taking us into the heart of affect, voice work in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition brings us back to ‘the pathetic immediacy’ (ibid.) of life that obscures any dualist body/mind schism. There is a play in the work between the self-reflection required in order to hone one’s craft by listening to self and others and moments of deep contact with the feeling-full core of our existence. The voice, particularly the pre-semantic, pre-verbal voice, is a conduit that leads us back to this grounding in being, through its primordial link to our affective universe. There is a resonance here with Julia Kristeva’s (1980) concept of the semiotic, the pre-verbal, affective order underpinning language that is at one and the same time developmental (diachronic) and a layer of (un)conscious content (synchronic). The Wolfsohn-Hart tradition allows for these unconscious zones to be vocalised and incorporated into consciousness, which can be highly cathartic. Equally, this process of touching on affective content through the voice can allow the student to broaden her vocal potential, and discover colours, range and nuances that were previously unknown. The objective work with the teacher at the piano enables this process of craft, as it develops precision, an attendance to sonorous quality, and the ek-static experience of ‘observing’ the moments when affective material is touched upon during vocalisation. Sounds are named, imaginary characters are evoked, and incrementally, these new vocal colours, textures and qualities become a part of the singer’s repertoire. This process is akin to Henry’s (2008) concept of growth, the irrevocable movement of life underpinning all subjectivity. Importantly, in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition, psychic growth and vocal extension are connected to a cultivated sense of the voice’s rootedness in the body. Vocal exploration is highly physical, and involves a complex integration of movement, sounding, imagination and sensation. The Wolfsohn-Hart approach to voice work as developed by Pikes, is a holistic, somatic practice that gives space to both growth and the pathos of life: the immediacy of embodied experience that confounds rational dualist notions of a body – mind divide. Pikes will now elaborate on the pragmatic ways in which focus is given to connecting body and mind in her praxis, through an attention to movement, feeling and affect.

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Notes 1 Kevin Crawford was a founder member of the RHT, participating in the group’s early performances and going on to become a respected voice teacher, with an MA in Voice Studies from Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London (UK). In 2004, he was engaged by the Accademia dell’Arte in Arezzo, Italy where, until 2018, he directed the MFA in physical theatre in partnership with Mississippi University for Women. 2 For a further example of the application of Henry’s material phenomenology to voice work, see Järviö, Päivi (2015) ‘The singularity of experience in the voice studio: A dialogue with Michel Henry.’ Thomaidis, Konstantinos and MacPherson, Ben (eds.) Voice Studies: Critical Approaches to Process, Performance and Experience. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 25–37.

References Crawford, Kevin and Pikes, Noah (2019) ‘Vocal Traditions: The Roy Hart Tradition.’ Voice and Speech Review, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 237–248. Gullatz, Stefan and Gildersleeve, Matthew (2018) ‘Freedom and the Psychoanalytic Ontology of Quantum Physics.’ Journal of Analytical Psychology, Vol. 63, No. 1, pp. 85–105. Hart, Roy (1974) ‘Untitled Essay.’ Roy Hart Theatre Journal, Vol. 1, No. 4, p. 2, April, London: Belsize Park. Henry, Michel (2008) Material Phenomenology. New York: Fordham University Press. Husserl, Edmund ([1929] 1964) The Paris Lectures. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Järviö, Päivi (2015) ‘The Singularity of Experience in the Voice Studio: A Dialogue with Michel Henry.’ Thomaidis, Konstantinos and MacPherson, Ben (eds.) Voice Studies: Critical Approaches to Process, Performance and Experience. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 25–37. Kristeva, Julia (1980) Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Thatcher, Gavin and Galbreath, Daniel (2019) ‘Singing Bodies: Reconsidering and Retraining the Corporeal Voice.’ Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 349–364.

10 CONNECTING HEAD TO BODY – THE IMPORTANCE OF MOVEMENT Margaret Pikes

Cartesian binarism or the idea of a mind-body split was articulated by the seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes, who famously wrote that his existence was defined by his ability to use his conscious mind: ‘I think, therefore I am’ (Descartes 1960: 19). He distinguished between the res cogitans, which referred to the mind, soul or that which thinks, and the res extensa, which referred to that which occupies space or more simply, the body. His emphasis on thought, put the brain at the centre of meaning in human life rather than bodily awareness. However, as the brain or central nervous system is physiologically part of and intrinsically connected to our bodies, there can be no literal split between brain and body. What is in question is the balance between an approach to life based on rationality, calculation and inner reflection, attributed to the brain, the mind or ‘the head’ and an approach which is governed by bodily sensibility, impulse and feeling attributed to ‘the body.’ The former is held to be superior in than it represents a more spiritual and conscious attitude than the latter, which seems to be too close to animality. In the context of the patriarchal atmosphere of the original Wolfsohn-Hart communities and as discussed in the first part of this book, this value-loaded distinction also lay behind some of the deeply biased attitudes within those groups to the fundamental characters of men and women. There was a largely unspoken assumption that by their very nature, women generally tended more towards having the less spiritual attributes of ‘the body,’ while men were assumed by nature to have more access to the spiritual. So that when men worked vocally to integrate ‘the feminine,’ this was often conflated with working to link head and body. There is obviously a need for society to regulate the expression of animal impulses to some extent and the power of rational thought and language is undeniable. However, it is possible to work to integrate these two apparently conflictual approaches to life so that not only is balance created but greater consciousness is developed. In this context, ‘consciousness’ means more than the simple awareness

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of being alive. In psychoanalysis, it is contrasted with the ‘unconscious’ in which many bodily impulses and reactions are rooted. Throughout human history, spiritual pathways have been followed with the aim of achieving higher levels of consciousness (or ‘enlightenment’) by integrating body and mind; these include among many others Tai chi; the various traditions of yoga which are found in Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism and Buddhism;1 the teachings of Gurdjieff (as mentioned in the first part of this book) and some contemporary somatic practices (such as Body Mind Centering, Rolfing, Movement Medicine, Voice Movement Integration, and Shin Somatic, amongst others). Wolfsohn and Hart also believed that there was a need to link what they referred to as ‘head’ and ‘body.’ Exploring the full, extended range of the human voice was for them a way of building that bridge, with a voice that is more embodied. For Hart especially, this in turn was intended to enable the performer to be more powerfully authentic on stage. He wrote that while studying acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he began working with Wolfsohn because: I had known for some time that my voice was not rooted, not literally embodied; that the varied roles I was considered to perform so well were actually only figments of my imagination with no connection with my body. (Hart 1967) He went on to discover that, ‘I could not develop an attribute so specifically human as the voice without studying life itself ’ (ibid.). Hart did not see connecting the head with the body as simply the need to be more physically active. His work towards embodying his voice led him to a more holistic work in which personality, psychology and body or soma are inextricably linked. At the time he was teaching in the 1960s and early 1970s, this was quite a revolutionary attitude to take in respect to voice work.2 Now, over two generations later, there is more recognition and acceptance of the importance of ‘body-mind’ psychophysical approaches and of the positive effects of body (including voice) work as part of psychotherapeutic practices. However, Western culture has traditionally encouraged the dominance of the head as the source of vocal production and this still seems often to be the case. I believe that this reflects the ongoing cultural fear of the body’s unpredictable power and of the world of feeling. It is also perhaps simply easier to teach vocal production in this limited way, rather than entering into a more holistic, responsible educational relationship with each individual student. In education in general, more value tends to be given to abstract, intellectual activity and achievement, rather than to physically expressive, manual or practical skills and the creative arts. In my view, the concomitant challenges to mental health including the prevalence of eating disorders and self-harming (both suggesting a distorted relationship to the body and feeling), among young people, could point to a worrying cultural environment of mind-body imbalance. I would also like to comment on the phenomenon of ‘vocal fry,’ a vocal affectation which has become fashionable in the past decade, whereby the speaker

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constricts the way she uses breath and resonance so that the sound used seems dry and thin. It has been described as the lowest register of the human voice (Anderson, et al. 2014). However, I believe that, despite a possible perceived lowering of pitch, the source of sound of ‘vocal fry,’ (perhaps by its willed nature), is in the head and is driven by an attempt to achieve a deeper sound without the necessary work to embody this wish. It demonstrates yet again a fear or rejection of linking vocally with the body.3 How does exploring the vocal range work in the process of linking body and mind? Because the voice is so fundamentally rooted in both physiology and in the psyche, it is uniquely positioned within the human expressive repertoire as the tool for linking these two worlds. It is perhaps significant that the larynx and the vocal folds, the preliminary doorways to vocal expression, are actually located in the throat, between the head and the body. The physical act of producing sustained vocal sound affects the body significantly and positively and this has been the subject of a variety of scientific studies in the past years (Kreutz et al. (2004) and Stone et al. [2018]). Contacting vocal sources can induce a feeling of cellular stimulation in the areas producing the sound, though this is more of an energising sensation than a specific ‘vibration’ as is sometimes described. Furthermore, through the way that the outbreath is both fully engaged when sounding and by so doing provokes a deep inbreath, the whole body is oxygenated and energised. During the work, this physiological stimulation is combined with the engagement of the mind as the vocalist connects actively with the feelings evoked by the sounds. These feelings are either initiated by the body when emotions such as sadness, joy or anger, for example, are stimulated directly by the work, or initiated by the imagination as the student allows and uses characters (possibly archetypal), feelings, or colours to engage creatively with the act of sounding. Recognition of the power of the voice to link body and mind goes back into ancient human history and up to our own time across geographical and cultural frontiers. The ‘Om’ practised by yogis; shamanic power songs; lamentations and other sounding and songs as part of rituals intended to cope with momentous passages through life: the list of examples is long. These practices may be surrounded by very different cultural concepts and teaching traditions, but there is a clear sense that they are concerned with uniting body and mind or soul, in some way. The teacher plays an important role in this work as a mirror or outside presence. The role is significant because as social animals, our image of who we are is at least in part, supported or undermined by other people. The teacher’s presence and also that of other students when working in a group, can even silently, helpfully support and confirm the inner connection which the student is exploring. The work of connecting head or mind, and body in vocal exploration is helped, especially initially, by movement work, which encourages full, deep breathing. Sedentary occupations in daily life frequently cut us off from our bodies and even when on our feet, we are often preoccupied with stressful jobs which cause tension and a cerebral rather than a physical focus. So, to awaken bodily awareness, it is important to engage with dynamic and aerobic exercises which will oxygenate and

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energise the body and brain. When these exercises are leavened with playfulness, they can also stimulate the imagination and so open a connection with feelings and the emotional world. In the same way, the use of suitable atmospheric music, whether energetic or meditative can be very helpful. Disciplined and quiet physical practices like yoga and relaxation techniques, that connect us more calmly with our bodies, our breathing and our inner worlds, are also very valuable in developing a stronger link between cerebral and physical energy. Despite this, in the specific domain of voice training, physiologically mechanistic, technical approaches to voice production and the dominance of developing head resonance are still very current.4 There remains an ingrained reluctance to accept in practice, that in order to develop and explore our vocal range we must really engage dynamically with the body and the imagination, in combination with careful listening and guidance. This, at least until the capacity to connect with our deep vocal sources, becomes, after enough practice, embodied. No amount of reading about or listening to and intellectually ‘understanding’ a voice-training method, can substitute for the work needed to bring about this embodiment. I frequently work with students who have carefully followed through training programs in textbooks yet who, when sounding, demonstrate no apparent practical knowledge of their voices, of vocal flexibility or range of sources. Using physical effort to help bring the voice from a deeper source in the body is a classic Wolfsohn-Hart practice. A student can be guided to bring first the breath and then the sound from deep in the abdominal area (the belly). This can begin with the scenario Opening into and Connecting with a Belly Voice described in Chapter 7. This work is based on developing an awareness of the spine in voice work. Using this deeply connected voice more strongly can be developed by working in pairs, using physical resistance and if helpful, images of strong emotions.5 In my work with Hart and with other voice teachers at the beginning of my training, I was regularly asked to push against either another student or against the immovable piano, sometimes with my lower back, sometimes with my upper body as I sounded, searching and digging into more rooted sources of my voice. The effect is to engage deeper muscles so that the vocal source drops and expands. The effort can also engender not only deeper breathing but also feelings of frustration and aggression which are channelled into this striving to connect with the body and the emotional world. Listening to and holding the sound on a musical pitch from the piano helps in containing and using the energy of these feelings creatively. Sometimes we worked with two students kneeling and pulling back on the pelvic bones of the vocalist, thus giving a strong force of resistance at the centre of her body, for her to work against. Less forceful, but also physically demanding, is the work to build a connection with the spine and the subtle spaces within the body, while sounding. The scenario Breath and Voice in the Spine described at the end of this chapter is a way of working physically with a partner to develop awareness of the many levels of vocal sources. These spaces are as much imaginative images as physiologically ‘real,’ but

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working in this way opens access to vocal qualities and sources that we might not find easily if we refuse to work with our imaginations as well as our bodies. As I explained in Chapter 7, working with sounds that express weakness or tenderness can reveal a rich seam of vocal resource. In contrast to using effort to build stronger connections between vocal sound and physical bodily sources, it can also be very valuable to work with relaxation. This can be a way to release habitual tensions, especially a kind of cerebral ‘head’ control, so that the voice drops into deeper sources. Relaxation while sounding requires work, even if it is not of the obviously strenuous kind. Yawning and stretching while the student is lying on her back (if possible, on a soft mat), can be part of this. Yawns are apparently instinctive and there is no agreed scientific explanation for this behaviour. But it is interesting to note that yawning affects the middle ear as it induces a contraction of the tensor tympani muscle, as if clearing the way for an improved level of listening. There is also a clearly stimulating effect on the diaphragm, on breathing and on releasing and opening the jaws. Perhaps psychologically, also in the context of vocal exploration, it helps the student to let go of a level of inhibition by entering a less polite, reserved way of behaving. Besides yawning, when there are two or more students present, they can work as a pair with massage combined with sounding, either on the mat or standing. This work should happen in the context of an ongoing, committed and supportive group who know and trust each other. I sometimes use what I call the human armchair, where such a group of students, standing behind the vocalist, each put a hand carefully and in a sensitive way, on the back of her head and/or neck; the upper and lower back; legs and feet to give warmth with perhaps very gentle massage or simply a feeling of presence. The student, who is encouraged to enjoy this experience and to allow the contact to help her relax, continues to vocalise, seeking sustained sounds from a source probably deep in the chest and/or belly. (Attention should be given to the ‘armchair’ to ensure that each hand is connected to the vocalist with an alive and sensitive presence.) Linking sounding with movement as a way to experience our voices as ‘out there’ in space is also an enriching element in the work. Linking the inner world to the outer can be another way of linking head and body. This perhaps recalls Descartes’ res cogitans and res extensa, in that we are working with the extension of ourselves out into space. The scenario described at the end of this chapter, Movement and Voice: Using Movement to Enliven the Connection Between Voice and Body and to Develop Listening Skills, is one of several in which two students explore together both movement or dance inspired by vocal improvisation and vice versa: movement or dance which leads or inspires vocal improvisation. This can also be developed as a basis for one performer to work with their own voice and movement as a solo. In the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition working with movement is an important part of accessing the dynamic vocal sources physically and thus linking head and body. In my own teaching, I focus particularly on the fact that this work helps students to connect with their voices in a way that feels deeper, more connected and more

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authentic. This seems more meaningful to me than striving to attain mastery of the extremes of the range of the human voice, although experiencing producing these sounds can be an important and vital part of the journey.

Scenarios 1. To bring more support and strength to the belly voice (see Video Sample 4 http://www.routledge.com/cw/ pikes). (Working with 2 students) •

•

•

•

•

Begin with finding that deep, yet gentle belly voice. The teacher accompanies this with a fairly deeply pitched note on the piano (perhaps E3 or A2 depending on the student’s natural range). One student can give sustained support to help the other student to bring strength to the belly voice. Student A stands directly behind Student B with both hands just below her partner’s waist and as Student B sounds (with mouth fully open), Student A pushes firmly but mindfully, giving a strong resistance for Student B to push against, whilst holding her voice down and seeking to take it to a deeper source as strongly as possible. The level of resistance needed can be modelled by the teacher. When A pushes back, B keeps her knees flexible and feet flat on the floor as she tries to push from her centre, from her pelvis and lower back, perhaps by slightly rocking her pelvis under. When they both breathe in, Student A stops pushing but maintains contact. The teacher guides from the piano with pitch and possibly images – sometimes perhaps a tree’s roots growing down, or a big animal roaring, can be appropriate. Care should be taken that Student B is sounding through a relaxed open mouth and not pushing from the throat. Also, that she is not simply leaning on Student A, but is working to connect to her belly and centre. (The students can then change roles.) This work can be continued in either of the following ways:

Student B works alone. Teacher suggests perhaps: I.

Keep the connection to your centre and bring in some anger. Express the anger also physically. The student can achieve this by punching the air and/or by running on the spot using short fast steps (like a child having a tantrum). Feel and try to define the character or image that helps you. Keep the sound on the pitch – don’t go up. After each inbreath, the teacher takes the pitch up a half or a whole tone, encouraging the student to keep the character and deep source of the sound. The student may produce a broken sound like a roar (it must come from the body and not the throat!) She should try to keep this on the note given by the teacher. Perhaps use a word with this vocal source, for example, Go). Or (see Video Sample 7 http://www.routledge.com/cw/pikes)

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II. If anger is not appropriate: Be a very serious authoritarian character. (Perhaps a king.) Send out your voice as if you are giving orders or laying down the law. Keep your feet well planted on the floor. The knees should be flexible, not locked. Keep your centre, your pelvis and spine engaged. Feel and try to define the character or image that helps you. Keep the sound on the pitch – don’t go up. Again, after each inbreath, change the pitch half or a whole tone up, encouraging the student to keep the character and deep source of the sound. Perhaps use one word with this vocal source, for example, Go!

2. Breath and voice in the spine (see Video Sample 8 http:// www.routledge.com/cw/pikes) Working in pairs The teacher explains that, working in pairs, one student (B) will help the other student (A) to bring first her outbreath then her voice, from different sources starting low down in the belly and finishing in the head. These sources are partly anatomically based and partly imaginary. The teacher’s guidance during this work will depend on what she feels will be helpful for these particular students. •

•

•

Student A places hands loosely on bent knees in order to flexibly offer her back and spine to student B. They stand close to each other so that B can hear A’s inbreath and they will try to breath in and out at the same time. B puts one hand horizontally across A’s sacrum and breathing in, then out in synchronicity with A, B applies gentle pressure to A’s sacrum. A imagines that she is sending her breath out through her sacrum and into B’s hand. She shows this by moving and pushing quite dynamically against B’s hand almost as if she were making a lump in her spine at this place. The source of the breath will correspond to the space in A’s body beneath B’s hand, i.e. the belly. If A is clearly moving some other part of her body rather that the sacrum, B can lightly tap on that place to indicate unnecessary movement, to help A focus on the place where B’s hand currently gives pressure. When the outbreath is finished A and B breathe in together and B places her hand at the place on A’s spine just above where her hand was before on the sacrum. A then moves and responds to B’s hand by imagining and moving as if she were pushing her breath out into B’s hand from this place in her spine. The source of the breath will correspond to the space in A’s body which is now beneath B’s hand, i.e. now the upper belly (roughly at the waistline). As before, B can help A to focus on the current space by tapping lightly on movement elsewhere that is unnecessary. B continues in this way, with every new outbreath placing her hand on the place on A’s spine just above where her hand was before. Each time A pushes her outbreath into B’s hand while seeking to source this outbreath from the space between B’s hand and the corresponding place in the front of her body. So, she moves from belly, to upper belly, to lower chest, to middle chest, to higher chest and finally to the head.

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• •

The journey is repeated adding voice to breath. They change roles.

3. Movement and voice: using movement to enliven the connection between voice and body, and to develop listening skills (see Video Sample 9 http://www.routledge. com/cw/pikes) Working in pairs •

The teacher explains that Student A, while mostly standing in one place, will move as if to her own imaginary extended vocal music which she wants B to express with her voice. Student B will stand behind her and copy exactly A’s movements while sounding. The teacher intervenes occasionally to guide, encouraging A to be aware that: 1 she is also vocalising internally (but silently) 2 she should avoid sudden movements 3 while A is composing and so in some sense ‘leading,’ she can respond to sounds coming from B that could enrich her (A’s) composition

•

They change roles

Notes 1 W. L. King suggests: ‘Though Buddhism recognizes a polarity between mental and physical constituents of sentient beings, it never sharply divides them but on the contrary strongly emphasizes the close relationship of all mental and physical states.’ (1964: 19). 2 It is however interesting to note that Clara Schlaffhorst and Hedwig Andersen had also developed a holistic approach to voice, breathing, posture, movement and psyche in the early 1900s in Germany, which has been increasingly recognised, especially in Germany, ever since. See, for example, Lang, Antoni and Saatweber, Margarete (2011) Stimme und Atmung Kernbegriffe und Methoden des Konzeptes Schlaffhorst-Andersen und ihre anatomischphysiologische Erklärung. [Online] www.cjd-schlaffhorst-andersen.de/buecher/stimmeund-atmung-fachbuch/. [Accessed on Friday 21 February 2020]. 3 In terms of the perception of vocal fry as ‘the lowest register,’ Anderson et al. (2014) state that ‘[t]his quality of speech occurs typically when speakers lower their vocal pitch to the lowest register they are capable of producing’ (2014: 1). The authors again suggest (among other reasons for adopting this affectation), ‘that young American females believe that vocal fry can be used to reap the benefits that accrue to a deep voice’ (2014: 6). 4 One could argue that Kristen Linklater’s work is heavily weighted towards developing vocal resonance in the head (see Linklater 2006: 245–279), as is Gillyanne Kayes’ exposition of Estill Voice Craft (see Kayes 2000: 43–119). 5 This scenario is described at the end of this chapter: To bring more support and strength to the belly voice (working with 2 students).

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References Anderson, Rindy C., Klofstad, Casey A., Mayew, William J. and Venkatachalam, Mohan (2014) ‘Vocal Fry May Undermine the Success of Young Women in the Labor Market.’ PLoS ONE, Vol. 9, No. 5, pp. 1–8. Descartes, Rene (1960). Discourse on Method and Meditations (trans. Laurence J. Lafleur). New York: The Liberal Arts Press. Hart, Roy (1967) ‘How a Voice Gave Me a Conscience.’ [Online] Available at www.royhart.com/hvgmc.htm [Accessed on 9 September 2017]. Kayes, Gillyanne (2000) Singing and The Actor. London: A&C Black. King, Winston J. (1964) A Thousand Lives Away: Buddhism in Contemporary Burma. Fremont: Asian Humanities Press. Kreutz, Gunter, Bongard, Stephen, Rohrmann, Sonja, Hodapp, Volker and Grebe, Dorothee (2004) ‘Effects of Choir Singing or Listening on Secretory Immunoglobulin A, Cortisol, and Emotional State.’ Journal of Behavioural Medicine, Vol. 27, No. 6, pp. 623–635. Lang, Antoni and Saatweber, Margarete (2011) ‘Stimme und Atmung Kernbegriffe und Methoden des Konzeptes Schlaffhorst-Andersen und ihre anatomisch-physiologische Erklärung.’ [Online] www.cjd-schlaffhorst-andersen.de/buecher/stimme-und-atmung-fachbuch/. [Accessed on Friday 21February 2020]. Linklater, Kristen (2006) Freeing the Natural Voice. London: Nick Hern Books. Stone, Nicole L., Millar, Sophie A., Herrod, Philip J. J., Barrett, David A., Ortori, Catharine A., Mellon, Valerie A. and O’Sullivan, Saoirse E. (2018) ‘An Analysis of Endocannabinoid Concentrations and Mood Following Singing and Exercise in Healthy Volunteers.’ Frontiers in Behavioural Neuroscience, No. 12, pp. 1–10, 26 November.

GROUP WORK – A PREFACE Patrick Campbell

When, after Hart’s death, the Roy Hart Theatre (RHT) members began to offer public-facing workshops, it was expedient to develop a range of different group scenarios and exercises. Devised primarily for workshop settings, Pikes continued developing these strategies for ensemble vocalisation from the mid-1970s onwards, many of which have gone on to become staples employed by voice teachers around the world. Beyond their pragmatic value, there is a political efficacy to group work which is worth emphasising. Concerned by the resurgence of demagogic political models, especially amongst the Right, and the emergence of ‘Post-truth,’ Adriana Cavarero questions in a recent interview with Thomaidis and Pinna (2018) whether or not twentieth-century political lexicon such as ‘the mass,’ ‘the crowd’ or ‘the mob’ should transmute today into a pluriphony, understood as a plurality of voices that conserve the uniqueness of each individual. According to Cavarero: My thesis is that the voice of plurality signals, in terms of sonicity, the germinal stage of democracy: it is as if the soundscape of a democracy-inthe-making could express the experience of human plurality in its original happiness, as basic and pluriphonic experience of politics. (2018: 84) To an extent, group work in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition can cultivate a sense of pluriphony; the non-judgmental, inquisitive approach to vocal expressivity offers space to the unique capacity and range of each individual human voice in the ensemble. By working alongside peers, the student is able to transcend her own intimate relationship with her voice by listening to the sounding of the others. This ensemble activity promotes careful listening and empathy, and is also very valuable, as there is much that can be learnt from working and voicing with other people

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in a structured context and safe environment. Students can offer sounding peers physical support through touch, enabling their colleagues to root down into their bodies by providing physical resistance to engage their central body or pushing against their hands. Peers can reflect sounds back to one another, increasing their own expressive range whilst supporting the ensemble. This way of being together through sound flies in the face of the competitiveness and alienation of late, mediatised, digital capitalism, and offers a fleeting micropolitical space to workshop participants, an opportunity to experience a supportive vocal community. In 1974, Hart suggested that: The human relationship of two people, not in competition, but in cooperation – that is the couple in the most sacred sense of the word – is the basis of relationships with others, actors then audience. In Roy Hart Theatre we give a great importance to human dialogue . . . because it is a source of creative substance for our performances which in turn make our so-called private life richer. (1974: 23) Group workshops in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition perhaps capture something of the countercultural spirit of the RHT, replicating on a short-term basis the ways of working that became a way of life for group members. Furthermore, vocal exploration invites us to encounter the arch-alterity inside ourselves, the Other voices that we have repressed or disowned, or are perhaps unaware of. As Yvon Bonenfant suggests: After all, if we are all capable of a wider range of voicings than we emit, the question of what each of us does not voice is raised. If there is a kind of Freudian-derived series of ‘repressed voicings’ inside each of us that comes into dialogue with the cultural operation of power structures, with all its permissions and silencings . . . we have to ask whether there are voices inside all of us that will not, or cannot, or dare not come out. Asking this question, and sitting with it, requires us to let these sounds’ implications and vibrations sink in to our own bodies, and then, if anyone else is around and/or listening, into a wider relational and cultural space, and to reflect on the nature of our relationship to its soundings. (2018: 108; original emphasis) Bonenfant’s invitation here is to embrace the abject voices and the repudiated aspects of ourselves as a political act, by sounding out and raising the full range of our vocal expressive potential. Importantly, he stresses that the next step in this process is to reach out into the wider community in a dialogic fashion, adding our voices to calls for greater equality whilst ‘confront(ing) our own expectations around the rules that police voice use in culture’ (ibid.). If, as Hart suggested in 1967 that ‘voice gave him a conscience,’ perhaps the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition can

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still contribute to raising consciousness by fostering a deeper connection to both self and other whilst cultivating an appreciation for the pluriphony of voices that each one of us carries within.

References Bonenfant, Yvon (2018) ‘Voice, Identity, Contact.’ Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 107–113. Cavarero, Adriana, Thomaidis, Konstantinos, Pinna, Ilaria (2018) ‘Towards a Hopeful Plurality of Democracy: An Interview on Vocal Ontology with Adriana Cavarero.’ Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 81–93. Hart, Roy (1967) ‘How a Voice Gave Me a Conscience.’ [Online] Available at www.royhart.com/hvgmc.htm [Accessed on 9 September 2017]. Hart, Roy (1974) ‘Untitled Essay.’ Roy Hart Theatre Journal, Vol. 1, No. 4, p. 23, London: Belsize Park.

11 GROUP WORK Margaret Pikes

Whilst the previous chapters all relate to both individual and group classes, in this chapter I will be presenting more specifically the way I work with groups of students. This context offers slightly different but interesting and rewarding possibilities for vocal discovery. What is taught during a group class will depend on the context: whether it is a stand-alone workshop or part of a series of classes in an on-going course, the aims and outcomes of each class will be determined by the amount of time available. So, in this chapter I will try to give a basic outline of what for me are the fundamental considerations when teaching a group as opposed to giving an individual lesson. As already mentioned, Hart himself rarely worked with groups when he led workshops, but rather gave a long and intensive individual lesson to one individual, from which the rest of the group learned through watching and listening actively and empathetically. In contrast, the strategies, scenarios and exercises that I, along with some Roy Hart Theatre (RHT) founder members developed, allow all the participants in the group to engage actively in the voice work as much as possible, during group classes. There is a sense in which groups create the possibility for more theatrical situations, and participants mutually inspire and support each other. It is again important to sustain a trusting and supportive environment, so that the feeling of being exposed and vulnerable when exploring the vocal range is recognised and adequately protected. This is especially true when first beginning the work and even more so for classes of young students within an educational institution. These strategies are also designed to address the issue which arises in group classes, of how to hear and guide individual students when there are many voices sounding in the acoustic atmosphere. They also address ways for students who have embodied the voice work to some extent, to take the work into devising and composing collectively.

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I begin all group classes with a warm-up aimed at awakening awareness of the body (especially the spine), the imagination and inner and outer space. This will involve some aerobic physical exercises, some more quiet work on stretching, breathing and vocalizing and some games to bring the imagination alive. Some parts of this warm-up will use recorded music to bring in the dimensions of listening and connecting with the inner world. Any of these exercises, but especially the more playful moments, will include meetings and exchanges with other participants. Beginning the class in this way can already help to establish a feeling of trust. It is important that any games proposed have some rules which the teacher is seen to uphold clearly if humorously: so that the freedom offered by the game is felt nevertheless to be held within a disciplined context. This background vigilance can contribute to participants feeling that they are in a safe place. There are multiple ways of establishing a supportive atmosphere as the group class progresses and using games linked with movement and/or vocalizing can be very useful. As a very simple example, to help concentration in a playful way as the group walks or dances in the space, I sometimes use variations of the game where I call numbers which carry an instruction. 1 means stop; 2 means move in the opposite direction; 3 means lie down. After hearing the number, the students should immediately carry out the action then continue walking or dancing.1 If they make a mistake, it doesn’t matter: there’s no external judgement – they should just ask themselves, ‘Why?’ This, and plenty of other games suitable for helping students to feel relaxed, focused and creative during movement work are now popularly used in many ‘drama’ classes. Teachers can adapt them in their own way, and I do not think it is necessary for me to outline more here.

Playful initial scenarios 1.  Name and gesture Including improvisations that have a ludic aspect is also helpful as a way of establishing an atmosphere of creativity that feels open and safe. I am going to describe now how my work builds up over the first hours of working with a group. As a way of working with listening and vocal exploration, I often suggest an improvisation based on the students’ names: •

• •

The group stands in a circle and, on a regular beat which is established by simply listening, each student sounds their name while simultaneously performing a gesture. I encourage them to explore the vowels and consonants of their names spontaneously as their turn comes, without too much prior preparation. The beat must not slow down or speed up. After a few turns round the circle, I change the pattern so that it becomes calland-response. Each student sounds their name and performs their gesture on that regular beat and on the next beat all the group imitate them. They must

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•

•

•

sound the student’s name with the same voice and simultaneously imitate the exact same gesture. It is important that the rhythm or beat does not slow down or accelerate – or have long pauses while someone thinks about what a great choreography they are going to do! After some turns around the circle with this call-and-response pattern, I suggest that the group drop their names and simply make a sound when it comes to their turn. They must still make a simultaneous gesture – and as big a one as possible. The group answers, imitating the sound and gesture as before.

The next stage might be to develop this into a creative group improvisation based on focusing on the sources and qualities of the sounds, repeating the neighbour’s sound and so building atmospheric ‘stories’ or ‘journeys.’ For instance, an atmosphere might be built around an initial gasp (preferably on an outbreath), which could then develop around the circle into a suggestive sonic narrative of shock and horror, whilst each participant maintains the same vocal source of sound. There are several outcomes to this improvisation. Students develop the ability to: • •

present themselves in a non-verbal and playful way improve listening skills, a part of developing vocal awareness through hearing and imitating other voices and observing bodies in action dynamically • maintain the rhythmic beat and simply sound and move without having time to analyse or prejudge themselves • experience sounding with some awareness of vowels and consonants used while simultaneously moving • learn about the vocal sources in an active way • experience how the teacher leads this work! For the teacher, this improvisation provides a wonderful possibility to hear and see each student’s voices and basic approach to the work, and their basic themes. I try to make note of particular basic supportive work that will benefit each student during the course of my work with them. For example, loosening the jaw and opening the mouth to sound; or allowing a full inbreath; or not sounding from a physically blocked position. The list is, of course, as long as individuality is unique! But often the student immediately recognises their theme when I suggest it. Even if perceived perhaps in a simplistic way and with broad brush strokes, in my experience these observations can be very useful as the teacher takes the work deeper over time. Even during the warm-up, it is possible to begin to detect those for whom contact with others, following instructions or moving in rhythm, for example, is challenging. Already at this stage, it can be helpful to find ways of encouraging and supporting such participants. During group improvisations when a participant is not able to really engage with the work, which may therefore be preventing

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collaborative progress, the teacher can suggest that they sit out and watch for a while. The teacher might then quietly and creatively suggest helpful points to watch for because watching and listening from the outside can be inspiring. Or the group can take a moment to discuss how things are going, which will give an opportunity for some exchanges which may help. (It is up to the teacher to avoid lengthy group intellectualizations.)

2. Water – earth – air: journeying between chest, belly and head (see Video Sample 10 http://www.routledge.com/ cw/pikes) At the end of the warm-up, I often lead some basic vocal work with the whole group from the piano: • •

•

•

•

•

• •

•

The teacher begins: Allow a full inbreath, then gently move your shoulders on the outbreath imagining the breath comes from your chest. Work with this for a few moments. Shake your shoulders and chest and allow the voice to come out from your chest, with this movement. Keep an open, relaxed mouth and hold the sound till the end of your breath. Relax on the inbreath. Work with this for a few moments. Look for a warm, open, maybe emotional sound from deep in your chest. Use the ‘sob’ place if it helps. Allow the sound to be almost out of control – it can wobble and respond to your movement. The teacher suggests a pitch from the piano, probably around A3. They repeat this several times perhaps moving 1 or 2 tones up then down again. Keep this source and bring in the word ‘water.’ Play with the vowels. The teacher then invites the students: Now allow the source to drop down into your belly. Activate your lower spine and sacrum, as you search. Look for an open, dark, reptile, dirty or angry sound – or whatever image helps you to go to that place. Allow your lower jaw to stay as relaxed as possible. Hold the sound to the end of your breath. Work with this for a few moments. Don’t necessarily look immediately for power in the sound – we are looking to open a connection. The teacher plays perhaps E3 on the piano and asks the students to sound on this pitch while maintaining the connection to the vocal source in the lower body/belly. Keep this source and bring in the word ‘earth.’ Play with the vowels. The pitch moves 1 or 2 half tones down then up to A3. Again, while continuing when necessary to give the pitch (A3) from the piano, the teacher then invites the students: Keeping the same pitch now take the source back to ‘water.’ Be flexible and present in your upper spine. They repeat this several times perhaps moving 1 or 2 tones up then down again. The teacher then invites the students: Keeping the same pitch, now take the source up to the head. Look for a vulgar or very childlike or witchy sound – or whatever image helps you to go to that place. The teacher continues to play the pitch from the

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piano (probably around A3). They repeat this several times perhaps moving 1 or 2 tones up then down again. Keep this source and bring in the word ‘air.’ Play with the vowel. During this work, the teacher listens carefully to each student and will often ask to hear single voices either as models or, if the student is not able to find the source clearly, to guide them individually. Once again, this is an opportunity for the teacher to indicate personal vocal themes.

3.  The vocal mirror There is no doubt that vocal discovery in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition requires that the individual receives personal guidance. This means that in a group class, the teacher must take responsibility for listening to and guiding each participant at some point and as I rarely work with groups of more than 14 participants (usually only 12), it is possible to do this, however briefly. When a group is sounding together, guiding individual voices is challenging. It can be equally difficult for the students to hear themselves when sounding within a large group. This can lead not only to their being unable to identify the source of their own sound but also to being pushed into simply increasing their vocal volume in the attempt to compete with the surrounding voices. Of the various scenarios which allow for individual voices to be heard and worked with, while the rest of the group is also actively engaged in vocalising, one example is the Vocal Mirror: •

• •

•

•

One student faces the rest of the group, who stand in two or three small rows to make a compact group. They will play a kind of mirror for the person in front, who moves and sounds (simultaneously and in a connected way) in short phrases. The group sends this phrase back, vocally and physically, as precisely as possible like a mirror delayed in time, while the individual vocalist watches and listens. The moving sounder continues as soon as the group has finished, so that a kind of call and response pattern is established. She is encouraged to explore her vocal range and to vary the length of her phrases – sometimes really short and sometimes longer – and to keep her movements facing the ‘mirror’ group and not too complex. The teacher may help her (or she may herself) develop this into phrases expressed by a particular character. To stimulate imaginations, I sometimes offer suggestions like, be a magician or a market trader of beautiful materials, or a big bear who can sing or a giant waking up. When making these suggestions, I have in mind characters whose voices and movements might help with the theme of the student who is sounding individually. I may also pause the improvisation briefly to guide her to connect with deeper or clearer vocal sources while the mirror group watches and listens. This gives

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•

another opportunity for those students to use the observation of body language to inform their listening experience. After some work like this, individuals within the mirror are allowed very occasionally to respond with a non-mirrored sound of the same duration as the sound they have been given. The person in front must try to hear and respond to this.

During the whole of this improvisation, the teacher should encourage all the group to inhabit their sounds fully, and to listen to the effect of their collective voices sounding together.

Group improvisations I have described some pair work in Chapter 10, which is a useful way of working in a group.2 This can be developed so that students take ownership of their vocal work to create a composition à deux using body and voice. (It can be interesting to focus on which partner leads, whether movement leads voice or vice versa.) This composition work can be shared with the group and can also be an opportunity for the teacher to work more individually, or with the two partners together, to take their vocal journey deeper. Archetypal characters can be explored, and the presence of the group employed theatrically as a chorus to support the vocalist’s research and to amplify the imaginative context. A way to practise transforming sounds using different vocal sources, is an exercise in which I first participated during my early days in the RHT. It was called Passing the Sound. My version of it is described at the end of this chapter, with a group of four students. Once students have begun to discover and use the extended range of their voices, group classes are a wonderful opportunity to make creative group improvisations. Dividing the class into pairs, trios or small groups of four, five or six can be useful in this work. These groupings can allow also for working with solos, duets and trios – either pre-verbally or with texts, and either musically or theatrically, or both. Each teacher may find structures for improvisations during which, through vocalising and listening, students begin to feel that they own their voices as they contribute to collective compositions.

4.  Sounding and exploring different parts of the body An improvisation which links movement and voice while also providing a context for students to interact vocally in a playful way with others in the group is as follows: •

The group works with the idea of energy being focused in one part of the body for example the shoulders. Students explore the different dynamics and

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• •

•

•

ways of moving the shoulders with big or small, combined with fast or slow, movements. Perhaps also becoming aware of how these movements affect the rest of the body. They bring awareness also to their outbreath while doing this and, at some point, are asked to bring vocal sound with the movements. After some exploration, this develops into working in front of another student and together, they have a kind of preverbal conversation led by the shoulders. The students are encouraged to behave as in a real conversation: for example, the two do not sound at once, but listen as the other expounds (with shoulders and voice), then comes a response (with shoulders and voice). While working/playing like this the students are encouraged to listen for the source of the sounds and to use this as an opportunity to bring the voice from the chest. Later the body part can change perhaps to the hips, and this develops also into a pre-verbal conversation with another partner. In this case, the students are encouraged to listen for the source of the sounds and to use this as an opportunity to bring the voice from the belly.

During such an improvisation, I usually take some time for the group to watch and listen to each pair working briefly and so allow a moment where the individual voices can be more easily heard.

5. Passing the sound: changing the source and character of the sound in a playful way (see Video Sample 11 http:// www.routledge.com/cw/pikes) •

• • • • •

The teacher explains that the improvisation is based on the idea that the vocal sound is an object held in the hands and/or that it belongs to an imaginary character. The teacher’s guidance during the improvisation will depend on what she feels will be helpful for the students. Student A sounds and shows the sound in her hands. The sound is held to the end of the breath and does not slide/make a glissando. Student A hears and defines the vocal source of her sound and exaggerates this, allowing the character of its owner to develop and to move expressively. Throughout this scenario, the other students respond physically as if they are also working identically vocally. (In other words, they remain present and fully engaged.) Over the course of several outbreaths, Student A changes the pitch in any way she wants but keeps the vocal source and character. Then Student A begins to move her sound progressively to another source, slowly while carefully observing the vocal journey and playing with this and the unexpected voices that may involuntarily emerge. Maybe it moves from hard chest/tenor to head over the course of eight to ten outbreaths.

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• •

Having clearly defined and made obvious the vocal source and pitch she has now arrived at, A gives it to another Student B, into her hands. Student B must take exactly the same sound: vocal source, pitch and character, and continues the journey of transformation similar to that of Student A.

Notes 1 I learned this game from Marie-Paule Marthe! (See Part 1 Chapter 4.) 2 See Video Sample 9.

WORKING WITH SONG – A PREFACE Patrick Campbell

As Spatz and Mills suggest, [W]e are drawn to song, which seems to cut right across so many of the dualisms that structure modern Western thought and practice: between text and melody, rationality and emotion, individual and collective, form and content. . . . How is it that so many disparate elements – rhythm, vibration, melody, language, narrative, image, culture, affect – can bind together in those malleable yet seemingly indestructible beings we call songs? Is there an indissoluble link between song and the human, or between song and life? (2019: 1; original emphasis) Working with songs, which Spatz and Mills call songworks, or songing, is a process of ‘bringing worlds into being,’ thanks to the unique ways in which each song fuses poetry, melody, rhythm, and images together through an embodied, relational vocal practice (ibid.). This dynamic, creative approach to songwork lies at the heart of Pikes’ approach to the craft of singing. In this chapter, Pikes speaks of the important social role that popular music continues to play in our lives, and the rich, evocative ways in which working on love songs can help us to connect to our inner worlds of affect and imagination. The singer’s ability to listen, improvise and connect to the vocal sources whilst respecting the structure of the melody requires a high level of motor coordination and musical ability. Singing is also an important way of externalising the inner universe charted through vocal exploration: it obliges the person singing to connect to an audience and thus requires a grounded sense of confidence, linked to a deep connection to the body. In many ways, songwork provides a frame that encapsulates a great deal of the complex technique underpinning the Wolfsohn-Hart vocal tradition.

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In terms of working on song in Wolfsohn-Hart voice work, a number of key skills are employed by both teacher and student alike. Dynamic listening grounds the work of both teacher and student; this listening is not just aural, but multisensorial. The teacher is able to guide the student through songwork and encourage her to connect with the vocal sources whilst singing by drawing on her own tacit knowledge, the kinaesthetic awareness honed and developed through her own period of training and exploration. Singing in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition is thus a thick event, to paraphrase Eidsheim (2015): it is a complex sensory phenomenon, both for the student and the teacher, and one that is as tactile, spatial, physical, and material as it is aural. Eidsheim’s re-emphasis of music as a vibrational practice, as a concrete manifestation of the vital materiality running through and across bodies, resonates with the living praxis informing the teacher-student dyad in the Wolfsohn-Hart approach to work on song. Singing in this tradition of vocal exploration is not characterised by fidelity to a sonorous ideal (perhaps informed by the vocal registers of bel canto or the expectations of pop music): Wolfsohn-Hart voice work allows for the human voice in its material complexity and temporal congruence to come to the fore, and is as much concerned with the vibrational potency of the voice, its connection to the vocal source, as it is with sonorous precision. There is a caveat here, however. The dyadic relationship between teacher and student in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition of vocal exploration is facilitated greatly by a cultivated sense of musicality. This musicality is based on a dialectic between the expressive potential of the extended voice on the one hand (with its cracks and breaks, growls and peep-sounds) and by the containing formality of the piano, on the other, with its notes, scales and classical arpeggios. Thus, there is a creative tension between a sense of vocal experimentation, on the one hand, and an encounter with and attending to the rigour of (Western) musical tradition, on the other, particularly in songwork. Roy Hart Theatre (RHT) founder members Kevin Crawford and Noah Pikes explain, in relation to what they call the ‘Roy Hart tradition,’ that: Students are offered the possibility of testing their vocal extremes, not only in terms of pitch, but also of volume, intensity, and timbre. Students access vocal areas that require an intense concentration of energies: the scream, lamentation, and chorded or double-stopping sounds, and the students explore a spectrum of sound that stretches from the darkest growl to bird-like ‘flutey’ pitches, well below and above ‘normal’ ranges. (Crawford and Pikes, 2019: 7) However, at one and the same time: Teachers often use the piano as an objective reference for their work and, depending on their musical skills, this can include basic work on pitch, range, and timbre, but also may serve as an accompaniment and stimulus for improvisation with vocal sound or song interpretation. (ibid.)

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Hence, there is an appreciation within the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition of the human voice’s broad expressive potential, which contributes not only towards an extended vocal range, but also an expanded, vibrational notion of what musicality can be: one that can both encompass and enlarge upon the tenets of classical western music. The hermeneutics of voice characterising the Wolfsohn-Hart approach to vocal exploration is an attempt to listen to the voice and understand it in all its complexity, but with individuation in mind. The student is encouraged to bring into conscious control the multivalent expressive potential, the musicality of the extended voice, via a concomitant encounter with the scalar system of western music. Thus, the teacher is constantly making choices: listening out for habits, difficulties and censorship in the student’s voice work whilst guiding her towards a vocal event – the eruption of a new expressive potentiality. The student, in turn, draws on the tacit knowledge garnered from previous work whilst opening up to the hic et nunc of the lesson, honouring her current physiological and emotional state, focusing wholly on sounding into singing. This holistic approach to vocal musicality resonates to a certain extent with the ways in which Włodzimierz Staniewski, the founder and artistic director of the Centre for Theatre Practices Gardzienice, has re-envisioned the concept of musicality in terms of his unique approach to sung theatre. For Staniewski, musicality or musica vitae is contrasted with music, which is understood as the codified, western system of notated, classical music, whilst: [e]verything that sounds beyond the edges of the codified system is musicality . . . [including] shouts and cries but also all the phenomena sitting inside of us. (2004: 64) Staniewski’s performances contain both moments of music and musicality, often juxtaposed with one another and thus maintained in a creative state of tension. There are obvious similarities here with the expanded sense of musicality in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition of vocal exploration, but a series of provisos are also necessary: Gardzienice’s praxis has been characterised as ‘ethno-oratorio’ (ibid.) and draws on the traditional vocal techniques of folk singers and on songs of tradition. The Polish theatre group’s approach to voice and song work, influenced by Polish Romanticism, does not resonate with the vocal praxis of the majority of the members of the RHT, including Pikes. The Wolfsohn-Hart tradition neither reifies traditional forms of singing nor rejects classical music (although it does dismiss as inadequate normative voice classification systems). Rather traditional, popular, folkloric and classical repertoires alike have been consistently revisited and subverted by the RHT members themselves and their students, and systematically used as a starting point for vocal, and personal, development during voice lessons. The conceptual tenet underpinning this practice is the notion of owning the song, of making it yours, and is seen as an integral part of an ongoing process of individuation. This is particularly the case in Pikes’ pedagogical praxis, since she, perhaps more than any other founder member of the RHT, has continued to consider herself

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primarily as a singer, as well as a teacher. Thus, a balance is struck in her teaching between an exploration of the extended voice, with its rich range of timbral, vibrational potential linked to the different vocal sources, and an attendance to chromatic, tempered scalar systems of pitch, linked to the western tonal system. The latter is maintained by rigorous work at the piano, often leading into work with songs. The way in which Pikes works with students thus cultivates both extended, affective vocal expressivity and the ability to pitch match whilst relating to rhythm and tempo, paving the way for the development of a subtle and complex sense of expanded musicality that allows for play and experimentation as well as an appreciation for lyricism and melodic precision. In this way, whilst respect for scalar sound systems is maintained, the WolfsohnHart tradition also pioneered the ways in which ‘music’s ontological status can be changed from an external, knowable object to an unfolding phenomenon that arises through complex material interactions’ (Eidsheim 2015: 2). The WolfsohnHart tradition combines both the vibrational practice of music championed by Eidsheim and a concurrent respect for the culturally specific expectations of the Western music system. This reflects both the tradition’s development in Western Europe, its cultural rootedness in the musical traditions of the continent and the flexibility and pioneering capacity of the Wolfsohn-Hart community to appreciate music and song as vocal extensions of the soma that can be transmitted from one body to the other. The piano remains an integral part of the Wolfsohn-Hart methodological tool-kit, acting as an important compass for teacher and student alike on the vocal journey: a framework containing the student’s experience of sounding through the extended range, linking new vocal qualities to different pitches up and down the scale, preparing the way into work on song whilst encouraging a greater level of vocal integration and expressive dexterity. The particular ways in which the dyadic relationship between teacher and student can be channelled into work on song will now be unpacked in greater detail by Pikes.

References Crawford, Kevin and Pikes, Noah (2019) ‘Vocal Traditions: The Roy Hart Tradition.’ Voice and Speech Review, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 237–248. Eidsheim, Nina Sun (2015) Sensing Sound: Singing and Listening as Vibrational Practice. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Spatz, Ben and Mills, Joan (2019) ‘Editorial: On Song.’ Performance Research, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 1–6. Staniewski, Włodzimierz with Hodge, Alison (2004) Hidden Territories: The Theatre of Gardzienice. London: Routledge.

12 WORKING WITH SONG Margaret Pikes

When, in the 1980s, I began offering workshops linking the exploration of the extended voice with singing songs, I had already become interested in the rise in popularity of ‘amateur’ singing. I continue to be fascinated by the way this sociological vocal phenomenon is developing. Be it in choirs, Karaoke sessions, televised competitions or home-made videos on the internet, singing and listening to songs, seems in some way to counterbalance the increasingly impersonal and materialistic demands of western society. My own personal connection with singing songs goes back to my childhood, as I have described in the first section of this book. The success of pop groups and singer songwriters of the 1960s and 1970s began to democratise and model the possibility for anyone who had enough feeling, talent and confidence to go out and sing in front of an audience. Furthermore, recordings, microphones and headphones created the possibility to bring the songs interpreted by these voices directly into the intimate audio space of each individual, like a personal message delivered to the inner world of each listener. The music industry has been exploiting the power of song for the past century, but only in the past 25 years or so has its potential for the expression of personal individuality been taken up in such a widespread manner. Songs are a meeting point between the theatrical and the musical, allowing for the interpretation of words within a musical context. The lyrics of many popular songs are of course about relationship and love. Since this is a subject which is often privately central to our busy adult lives (however we might feel obliged to pretend otherwise), it tends to immediately evoke an emotional identification in both the singer and the listener. This in turn can allow the vocalist to explore a more personal engagement with the song and can be the key to a vocally richer and more authentic interpretation.

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However, not only love songs, but songs that tell stories evoking situations or existential sensibilities, are also fertile material for vocal exploration. Lyrics are a kind of poetry ranging from the Wanderlieder of Wilhelm Müller set to music by Franz Schubert in his song cycle Die Winterreise, to Bob Dylan’s oeuvre, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 2016, ‘for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.’ (Online 2016). Indeed, although the superficial theme of Die Winterreise is lost love, the cycle can be heard on a deeper level as an expression of existential melancholy, resignation or anger.1 The language used in a song can serve as a vehicle for extended vocal work, which can be channeled into the pre-existing structure of the song, allowing for a uniquely individual interpretation. I find myself wondering about the link between Schubert’s ‘Der Leiermann’ and Dylan’s ‘Hey, Mr Tambourine Man’. Dylan’s ‘untrained,’ nasal, tired, young, defiant yet fragile voice (especially on early recordings) expresses the humanity and anguish of the lyrics so much more authentically for me than the virile tenors or baritones singing Müller’s words to Schubert’s powerfully expressive music. I note that this is only possible, however, because Dylan had access to a microphone and Schubert’s songs were composed before the invention of this technology. Should this prevent contemporary singers from using amplification to interpret these songs now? Bruce Springsteen’s songs and the way he sings are examples of the way popular songs sung with an authentic vocal connection can powerfully express and touch the feelings of millions of listeners. Many scholarly papers have now been written about his work, among which Julie Lyons’ and George H. Lewis’ ‘The price you pay: The life and lyrics of Bruce Springsteen’ (2008). They observe: [I]t is a welcomed treat to hear music being played from the heart, for Springsteen has lived his music, and more importantly lives for his music. (ibid.: 13) Springsteen’s use of broken sounds within his songs is quite remarkable. For instance, in his performance of ‘Drive All Night’ where, on the word ‘heart,’ he descends a complete octave slowly and within the rhythm of the song, on one outbreath maintaining a visceral vocal connection to a broken sound which is deeply emotive. Because the power of a song lies not only in its lyrics but also in its melody and accompanying harmonies, the singer becomes an instrument and a performer, and thus a slightly different identity can emerge. This metamorphosis is perhaps the root of both the fear and the thrill of singing, and such a liminal space can be fruitful territory for vocal expression and development. Since by definition singing is a musical activity, the vocalist is obliged to listen both to herself and perhaps to an accompanist, being as in tune as possible whilst staying connected to the feelingfull source of the sound. In the case of singing simple polyphonic harmonies in

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group contexts, this listening is again fundamental, as the singer relinquishes her ego to the ensemble. Certain song structures like the blues form, have traditionally lent themselves to vocal improvisation. The often simple and repetitive lyrics derive a deeper significance from the set rhythm and harmonic structure of the blues. But the equally if not more important ingredient is the quality of the singer’s voice. It is this combination of voice, musical structure and lyrics which makes the blues such an infectious and moving form of song. Using this form as a beginning ground for vocal exploration can often be fun and surprisingly fruitful, as a way to bridge sounding and singing within a traditional musical frame of reference. I usually begin the work on linking vocal exploration and interpreting a song by asking the student to sing the song a few times. We listen to the way the lyrics and the music (melodic line, rhythm and harmonies) work together, as well as taking into account the overall structure of the song. This includes how to relate to repetitions of phrases. The singer can then be guided to play with using different vocal qualities to hear and to feel how this can help her to connect more deeply with the song. Sometimes movement and theatrical ideas of character or situation can help release the vocalist from the straight jacket of the traditional way of delivering the song. Slowly a new personal interpretation is discovered and developed. The need to find the best places to breathe and any problems with rhythm or tuning can be addressed at this stage. When a vocalist interprets a song, it is usually intended for others to hear and so the singer becomes an actor or performer. As a step towards owning our voices, this opportunity to work on bridging the inner and the outer is very valuable. The vocalist tries to remain connected with her inner world of feeling for what the song means to her as she communicates this to her audience, while maintaining a clear hold on the basic musical framework of the song. While practising, the student will usually not be using a microphone. If she wishes to take her interpretation into a context where the microphone is necessary, she will adapt her performance using distance from the microphone to control volume. The work on vocal sources will remain invaluable and she should be able to use the monitor to continue to listen to herself and where applicable to her accompaniment. Although the microphone is useful to permit the vocalist to use a bigger range of both nuance and vocal source, it also amplifies any tendency to be off key or to be disconnected from a rooted bodily source. For this reason, the work on really embodying a connection to vocal sources is so helpful when it comes to using a microphone to interpret songs and for that matter, texts and speaking generally. If it is on a stand or hand-held, the microphone can also become a prop for the vocalist/actor to use as required. Certainly, like the guitar, it has served in some cases, for singers to hide behind: it is not for nothing that we speak of the ‘naked’ voice. My experience with encouraging children to sing has been, interestingly, that little boys especially are often embarrassed when encouraged to sing, until they are given permission to use something as an imaginary microphone! So, part of

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developing access to the range of vocal sources while singing a song, is the work on how to ‘be’ in front of an audience. If the song is part of a piece of musical theatre, there may well be choreography or defined staging to be followed. In a less formal context or in a recital or concert, it is often the case that once the singer has really contacted her connection with the song, she simultaneously finds how to present it. Such is the power of this connection between inner and outer, that it suffices for the audience to feel it and nothing more than what emerges from this authentic connection is really required. This does not mean that the singer will not move or express herself physically. But the actions will be generated by the connection with the song. However, as this connection is not always achieved, it can be helpful for the singer to receive some direction as to how to ‘occupy the stage.’ For example, the student/singer can be encouraged to ‘hold the floor’ with her feet rather than to float about (unless this is part of the song’s nature). This helps also to maintain a good centred attitude. She can also be encouraged to keep a contact with her audience as much as possible: to include them in her mind and to show this through not closing her eyes for too long or too often, even when engaging intensely with her inner feeling. She can also be encouraged to observe and practise what body language feels authentic so as to avoid tension and the unconscious attempt to replace genuine connection with phony gestures. Like any performance, the repetition of a structure such as a song, can lead to a diminishing engagement with its originally felt significance. Practising the connection with the imaginary and physical sources of the voice is a discipline that can provide a strong foundation which will work against this potential draining of authentic, in-the-moment content. Each time the song is sung, it is like the way we invest anew when we repeat a prayer.

1. Exploring vocal sources within a song (see Video Sample 12 http://www.routledge.com/cw/pikes) This is one of many possible ways of linking the exploration of pre-verbal vocal sources to finding a more physically connected and authentic interpretation – in this case, though focusing on using a range from deep warm contralto to bright hard tenor chest sounds. The student begins by exploring space with movement, breath and pre-verbal sound and some words from the song, perhaps also connecting in her mind with what the song means to her. •

•

The teacher picks up the pitch where she is vocalising and guides the student to focus on taking this to an open warm, dark chest (or contralto) source on the pitch which the teacher is suggesting. (This may be related to the key of the song.) The student could experiment with sounding one of the words she used at the beginning while maintaining the warm, dark chest source. The suggested pitch could progressively become arpeggios guiding the student to hold the source of the sound over the range of an octave or more.

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•

•

•

•

•

The teacher then invites the student to bring more power into the sound using both the head source and support from the belly. They work on these bright hard (or tenor sounds) possibly also with words from the song, on the same pitches as the previous work. The teacher now asks the student to re-find the open, warm chest source she had earlier and, then, during one outbreath to transform the sound from this darker source to the brighter tenor source. This means progressively bringing head and belly into the dark chest source. Perhaps the student can use the word soleil extending it so that the vowels help the change of sources. The teacher plays the same notes as in the previous work for the student to follow. The teacher then invites the student to sing a phrase of song using the dark chest source. They work on holding the deep vocal source despite the possible tendency to go into the head when words are used. The student is now invited to sing her song while exploring both ‘contralto’ and tenor sounds when she wants to, to improvise using both vocal qualities and sources. After working in this way and if appropriate, the student could explore other qualities and sources. The teacher listens carefully and encourages the student to listen to herself and to feel which sources help her to connect in the most authentic way with her song.

Our meetings in The Studio when I first began working with Hart always ended with the assembled group moving amongst each other in the small space and singing songs, perhaps the spiritual ‘Going Home,’ or ‘Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes,’ as Hart accompanied on the piano and we did look into each others’ eyes. They were sentimental songs, but after the often confrontational and intense work that we had been through in the past three hours or so, they made a kind of gentle preparation for the ‘outside world.’ Songs can have so many functions, but singing a song connects us through our voices’ roots in our archaic musical brain, to our basic humanity.

Note 1 Die Winterreise – Auf dem Flusse:‘ Mein Herz, in diesem Bache, erkennst du nun dein Bild? Ob’s unter seiner Rinde Wohl auch so reißend schwillt?‘ (My heart, in this [frozen] stream can you now see your image? If under the ice there also is a boiling torrent?) (Author’s translation).

References Lyons, Julie and Lewis, George H. (2008) ‘The Price You Pay: The Life and Lyrics of Bruce Springsteen.’ Popular Music and Society, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 13–24. Nobel Prize (2016) ‘The Nobel Prize in Literature 2016 was Awarded to Bob Dylan “for Having Created New Poetic Expressions within the Great American Song Tradition.’ [Online] Available at www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2016/summary/ [Accessed on 30 June 2020].

CONCLUSION Owning our voices – a pluriphony Patrick Campbell

Rather than a conclusion, the final chapter of this publication is a flowering, a broadening of scope. The Wolfsohn-Hart approach, as developed by Pikes, is primarily a pedagogic tradition: processes of creative transmission, empowerment and the enabling of others to own their voices lie at the heart of this mode of vocal exploration and discovery. Thus, we have decided to dedicate the ‘Conclusion’ to the voices of some of Pikes’ students: practitioners and pedagogues who have worked with her in a meaningful way over the past 40 years, adapting her methodology within a variety of creative contexts. In so doing, we are emphasising the inherently interpersonal, relational nature of the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition, whilst opening to a genealogical appreciation of how this legacy is shifting over time. The philosophical practice of genealogy was advanced in the nineteenth century by Nietzsche ([1887] 2003), and in the twentieth century by Deleuze (1962) and Foucault (1977). Genealogy maps out the ways in which both contingency and often invisible socio-political and economic structures of power shape discourse and phenomena. Thus, a genealogical approach to historiography deconstructs patrilineal attempts at mapping out ‘truth.’ Genealogy is rather concerned with embracing the plural and contradictory ways in which the transmission and development of a particular phenomenon or tradition unfold. Hence, one could argue that this book maps the genealogy of Pikes’ particular re-inflection of the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition. Foucault’s work, in turn, has partly influenced Cavarero’s (2018) conceptualisation of a pluriphony: a critical cartography of pluralistic forms of political engagement with others, which can potentially inform a democratic way of beingin-the-world. According to Cavarero: I intend to pay attention to a plurality that far from singing hymns to the nation or to any other form of exclusionary identity, vocally expresses the

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experience of a direct and relational democracy in its surging phase (fase sorgiva). Many voices, each one unique, flowing into a sonority that is neither harmony nor cacophony. Rather, it is a pluriphony (plurifonia). (Cavarero, Thomaidis and Pinna 2018: 90) Whilst Cavarero is speaking of politics in a macro sense, Pikes has developed through her work what could arguably be called, following Deleuze and Guattari (1975), a minor-pluriphony: a micro-political, democratic ethos that imbues her praxical approach to vocal exploration within the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition. On the one hand, Pikes’ re-inflection of Wolfsohn’s and Hart’s legacies emphasises the responsibility of the individual towards the cultivation of her own unique voice and creative agency; on the other, her approach to teaching also foregrounds the need for the individual to listen deeply both to the multivalent potential of her own voice and that of others, establishing a caring and discerning approach to extended vocal work that is both rigorous and inclusive. Thus, this pluriphonic account will enable the reader to discern how Pikes’ re-elaboration of the hermeneutics of voice underpinning the Wolfsohn-Hart approach has inspired generations of artists, revealing the reach and impact of her work. A number of key students of Pikes have contributed interviews for this chapter. They include the four artists featured in the filmed footage of practice accompanying this publication: •

•

•

Kate Hilder – Hilder teaches and performs movement-based theatre improvisation. She has worked with both Ruth Zaporah, the founder of Action Theater™, and Sten Rudstrøm, in California, New Mexico and London. She teaches improvisation classes in London, Ireland and Berlin, and has performed internationally as a solo artist and as member of EAT, the European Action Theater Performance Collective. As well as her background in Action Theater™, Hilder is a qualified Feldenkrais practitioner. She began studying with Pikes in 2006 and has gone on to lead workshops with Pikes in London and Cologne. Neil Paris – Paris is an actor-director, dancer and choreographer and founder of SMITH Dancetheatre (UK). His work includes the critically acclaimed performance Agnes and Walter (2011), which featured Pikes as a solo singer. Paris was a core member of the renowned Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre (Ireland), performing in five productions with the ensemble, including The Rite of Spring (2009), developed in collaboration with the English National Opera. He has taught and performed with companies including WildWorks (UK), ProArt Company (Czech Republic) and Dan Canham/Still House (UK). He has collaborated with Pikes on voice and movement workshops in France, Germany and the UK since 2011. Sam Frankie Fox – Fox is an actress, singer and harpist, and was a founder member of KILN Ensemble (formerly Kindle Theatre) (UK). Having studied with Pikes in the 2000s, she introduced Pikes’ vocal methodology to the

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other members of KILN, which directly influenced two of the group’s performances: The Furies (2012), a heavy-metal inspired retelling of the myth of Clytemnestra, and Lady Go Go Goch (2014), a musical exploration of Welsh identity. Both performances toured nationally and internationally, to critical acclaim. More recently, Fox has worked as a musician with Kiriki Club (UK) and Dofadoquebrado (Portugal/UK), alongside her partner, Ricardo Rocha. Yuri Birte Anderson – Anderson is an actress, musician and director. In 2012, she joined the Young Ensemble of the Theaterlabor Bielefeld (Germany), a laboratory theatre group with a focus on physical expression, originally influenced by Grotowski, Barba and Commedia dell’Arte. She has gone on to act in and co-direct several of the group’s award-winning performances, touring internationally. She began training with Pikes in 2012, and has gone on to integrate Pikes’ approach to voice work within her own practice.

Three further renowned theatre directors and actors, whose encounters with Pikes have had a meaningful impact on their work, have also contributed to this concluding chapter: •

•

•

Jean-Yves Pénafiel – An actor, singer and director, Pénafiel first worked with Pikes in the 1980s when working with Théâtre du Lierre. Having toured across Latin America and Europe as an actor, he became Artistic Director of the Compagnie Circolombia (France) before founding a cappella vocal research group Mahna (France). He teaches masterclasses in vocal creation, improvisation and stage acting. Michael Keegan Dolan – Trained at the Central School of Ballet, awardwinning director and choreographer Dolan was Artistic and Executive Director of Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre (Ireland: 1991–2014). He formed Teac Damsa (Ireland) in 2016 and is an Associate Artist of Sadler’s Wells. Dolan invited Pikes to work with Fabulous Beast in the 2000s. Carran Waterfield – Award-winning performer, director and pedagogue, Carran Waterfield is founder and Co-Artistic Director of Triangle Theatre (UK). She first worked with Pikes in 2012 and went on to utilise aspects of Pikes’ approach to extended voice in her one-woman performance, Little Blue Man (2015).

We shall now turn to the pluriphonic voices of these artists, as they speak of their experiences of working with Pikes and how they have adapted her methodology to their own praxical needs.

Vocal discovery All of the artists affirmed that their initial encounter with Pikes had been revelatory. They made a number of discoveries in terms of vocal range and expressive qualities, sometimes after just one lesson, and gradually developed a new, embodied

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understanding of their voices. Their comments also foreground several of the key principles applied by Pikes in her teaching, such as embodied exploration, vocal sources and the soft chest voice or ‘heart’ as an important starting point for conscious, feeling-full vocal exploration. Kate Hilder first met Pikes in 2006. After initial solo lessons, she joined a vocal group Pikes was running at the time for experienced voice practitioners with recently trained Roy Hart Theatre (RHT) member John Wild at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts (ALRA), in London. Hilder explains that Pikes’ embodied approach to vocal exploration resonated with her own background in improvisation and body work. Pikes’ focus on vocal and physical improvisation was very important to Hilder, who was able to draw links between this approach and her experiences of Action Theater™, which also combines movement, body and text. What differentiated the two approaches, however, was Pikes’ emphasis on song and musicality, and the work at the piano, which always guided and grounded vocal exploration. A major discovery for Hilder during the initial phase of her work with Pikes was the concept of the vocal sources: Margaret’s work gave me an awareness of my strength as a vocalist and it opened up areas that really weren’t there at all. One thing that’s so great with Margaret’s teaching is that you always start where you are and then she leads you into new places. . . . So, this kind of low, broken voice, I was able to go there because she made me aware of it, as well as the very high ‘peep’ sounds. And there was this whole area, this chest voice, that wasn’t there at all. And so, through working with Margaret, in one-to-ones, that voice started to appear. (Hilder 2020) Sam Frankie Fox was also struck with Pikes’ notion of the vocal sources during her first one-to-one voice lesson. Fox had prepared a song, not knowing what to expect. She recalls Pikes asking her, ‘Where are you singing from?’ to which Fox responded, ‘My mouth?’ She remembers spending the rest of the lesson crawling around the floor as if stuck in mud and then sounding out like a bear, from deep in her belly. She finished the session by singing a song sensitively and beautifully with a clear, pure tone. From then on, she was hooked. As she explains: This was my first window into this idea of the voice being vertical and kind of living in my body. That was my first experience. I remember her telling me to ‘Keep moving Sam!’ (Fox 2020) Fox had sung in choirs since her childhood, and around this time she had a very strong, internal image of a chorister with a ruff on her cassock that suddenly began to fall away. This reflected her deep, embodied sensation that her voice was no longer just coming from the neck, but was connected to the pluriphony of vocal

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sources located throughout her body. As she explains, ‘I had this sense that I could get into the mud with my voice, as well’ (Fox 2020). Another praxical principle key to Pikes work that Fox mentions is the notion of ‘vocal characters’; suggestive imaginary figures that Pikes uses to promote a connection between vocal sources, body and archetype. For Fox, the vocal characters were an important gateway into the extended vocal work because of her interdisciplinary background in theatre and music. She recalls working with vocal characters as a ‘lightbulb moment’ in her work with Pikes (ibid.). For Fox, they offered a way to combine theatre and musicality and explore this through the voice. As she explains: It doesn’t really inspire me to think what my soft palate might be doing. That’s not the same for everyone, but for me, to think about butterflies or about digging for treasure . . . through these physical actions I was finding new things vocally. It was really exciting. (ibid.) Choreographer and director Michael Keegan Dolan was first introduced to Pikes by his partner Rachel Poirier, a dancer and performer. In 2006, Poirier wanted to learn more about voice work and singing and discovered Pikes’ work. Both Poirier and Dolan worked together with Pikes in London, later inviting her to work with Fabulous Beast in Ireland. Dolan explains that he was working with a very interesting, formidable group of performers at the time, and still remembers vividly how Pikes negotiated the ensemble and how she pinpointed a number of obstacles that the performers were constructing and putting in between themselves and their work. Dolan remembers one particular moment when Pikes was working with one performer trained in martial arts, trying to get him to sound and look at her: She just said ‘Look at me!’ And he said ‘I can see you! I’m using my peripheral vision.’ And she said ‘No, look at me.’ I remember the fearlessness of her approach. (Dolan 2020) Following on from this experience, Dolan travelled with the Fabulous Beast ensemble to Malérargues to train with Pikes and other RHT members. Dolan found it beautiful and memorable, but some members of the ensemble found the work very challenging. As he explains: It was an unforgiving, relentless searching for truth. . . . It was startling. I was much younger – this was thirteen or fourteen years ago – and I remember just being amazed. We associate that kind of discomfort when someone is asking so much of us as an annoyance, but I began to realise that there is a love there, a kind of maternal, creative love. You’re trying to get people to realise what they could be, what they’re not and what they’re putting up to

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prevent them from being a fully-realised version of themselves and that work can manifest through the voice. (Dolan 2020) Neil Paris was a member of the Fabulous Beast ensemble during that period, and he first met Pikes in 2006 when she led the intensive voice workshop in Ireland. Paris reveals that the work with Pikes felt very familiar from the beginning, due to his interdisciplinary background in dance and theatre.1 Pikes was able to create a safe, contained working environment that allowed the members of Fabulous Beast to take creative risks and really explore hitherto uncharted vocal territory together. Like Fox, the imaginative nature of the work on vocal characters resonated with Paris’ theatrical background and he felt that this creative approach to voice work served to balance the other, more formal vocal work in bel canto style that company members had received up until that point, which had been geared towards helping them to pitch and sing in tune during public performances. Pikes, in contrast, brought a very personal, somatic, exploratory approach to voice work; her methodology was freeing, but, like Dolan, Paris is also very clear that she: [H]eld the reins. Margaret knew what she was looking for. It was not just about screaming in wild abandon. Later on, the work at the piano really helped in that regard. (Paris 2020) Like Fox and Paris, Yuri Birte Anderson was also working as a professional actress, with German based theatre company Theaterlabor in Bielefeld, when she first contacted Pikes for one-to-one lessons. She had come across the work of the RHT before, as one of the company directors had worked with Marita Günther in the 1980s. However, she explains that: It all fell into place when I met Margaret. The difference with her approach is that she looks at the different vocal sources and works with the soft, watery place in the voice, the heart, not just extreme, growly voices. (Anderson 2020) Importantly, Anderson foregrounds the ways in which Pikes promotes vocal tenderness and emotional connectivity by grounding students’ vocal exploration in an encounter with the soft chest-voice. Due to her previous experiences with Theaterlabor, Anderson had expected that work with Pikes would, instead, focus on very powerful, strident vocal expressivity. In contrast, Anderson learnt that [G]entleness can be powerful too. This ‘feminine’ space has a political impact today. From the soft chest-voice you can go anywhere, and this is often neglected. (ibid.)

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Through her work with Pikes, Anderson learnt that one can work with vocal fragility and tenderness and still be present on stage. She suggests that Pikes’ unique approach to the feeling-full dimensions of vocal expressivity has made a major impact on her own development as an actress, director and teacher. Pikes’ sensitivity as a pedagogue was also important to Carran Waterfield. Professional performer and director, Waterfield first heard of Pikes through Enrique Pardo and Venice Manley of Pantheatre in Paris, and later joined a workshop led by Pikes, continuing with individual work in the 2010s. Waterfield was making the performance Little Blue Man at the time, a one-woman show based on the life of her father who had recently passed away. The work with Pikes reflected and accommodated this complex space between artistic creativity and deeply personal loss. According to Waterfield, Pikes had: [A] very hands-on approach. It was very physical work. She always said ‘I’m not a physical performer’, but she did work in a very body-based way. (Waterfield 2020) Waterfield also expresses how important it was for her vocal development to have a pedagogical relationship with a strong female artist. Waterfield suggests that Pikes’ way of working with students generates the energy of a vocal collective; the work itself inspires continuity, and in some ways, presupposes the structure of a vocal community. Waterfield links this to the RHT’s status as a Third Theatre group, in reference to the transnational constellation of laboratory group theatres first identified by Eugenio Barba in the 1970s, many of whom had a collective ethos which influenced their praxes on all levels (Barba 1999). Even after 40 years, Jean Yves Pénafiel still has vivid memories of the ways in which Pikes led group workshops. As a young actor, he was very interested in the liminal space between acting and singing. At that point, he felt that the RHT members were the only people able to connect extended voice work and song in a systematic way. He recalls Pikes’ work as ‘a place for discovery beyond vocal technique. A place to be yourself through art’ (Pénafiel 2020). In terms of the novel aspects of Pikes’ work, the link between corporeal exploration, improvisation and song made a lasting impact on Pénafiel’s praxis. Pikes’ methodological approach to vocal exploration offered Pénafiel essential tools on his journey to uncover this ‘language of the voice,’ which he has explored to great effect subsequently in his work with a cappella quintet Mahna.

Individual and group work The majority of the interviewees had experience of working with Pikes as students in both individual classes and group workshops, and were able to identify the different ways in which these distinct pedagogical contexts had enriched their vocal journeys and challenged them to tackle personal resistances and emotional blocks. Jean Yves

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Pénafiel made a number of insightful remarks about the ways in which individual and group work overlap and inform one another within the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition.2 He argues that both individual and group work are always predicated on a dyad: [W]e are always sounding for an other, be that the teacher or a partner, and furthermore, we are sounding to reveal something. The group builds on the dyad and establishes a number of witnesses to the vocal act. This is the basis of a vocal community, because there will always be a plurality of affective and intellectual responses to the work developing in the space. (Pénafiel 2020) A vocal community or collective seems often to be almost engendered by the Wolfsohn-Hart voice work because the artist’s personal research on the self is always already socialised through the interpersonal dynamics and relationships – with the teacher and/or peers – that characterise this pedagogical approach to vocal exploration.3 Pénafiel argues that the artist’s drive – which many people suggest is simply egotistical – is, in fact a longing to know and to be in the world (ibid.). It is thus epistemic and ontic in nature and is a quest to chart new territory and discover new ways of relating to the world and to others. Furthermore, as previously suggested, one could argue that, following Cavarero, Thomaidis and Pinna (2018), vocal exploration in the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition is inherently pluriphonic: by focusing on yourself and your own personal development in the context of a group workshop with Pikes, you contribute to the whole collective, as your vocal discoveries oblige others to approach and or confront areas of the psyche that remain hidden on a daily basis. This, in turn, connects back to the notion of the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition as a hermeneutics of voice: an almost three-dimensional, embodied approach to interpretative listening is as important as sounding out yourself.4 This hermeneutics is resolutely embodied: the student learns to listen and interpret vocal sources on a deeply feeling-full level, connecting the sounds that others make to their own tacit experience of exploratory vocalising. The voice teacher, in turn, uses the voice as a compass to guide the student in charting new vocal territory. As Pénafiel suggests: Your almost mad gesture, your wild sounding, becomes justified by the group. The collective doesn’t take charge: it accepts what is offered, and in so doing proves to the person sounding that what they do is important for both them and the wider community. You run the risk of losing this ‘sense’ of the work if you only work alone. It is important that your voice is heard, and that there is this communal dimension to the work which, in a sense, legitimises the extended voice as a deeply personal, but also social act, especially since this work is not socially recognised or codified, in the way that opera is, for example. (ibid.)

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Pénafiel stresses that the other aspect of communal work – the shadow side of being in a group – is that the collective can devour the individual.5 He argues that a very delicate balance needs to be struck by the teacher, and that this becomes a micro-political question; the teacher needs to be able to manage the different energies in the room in an ethical fashion. A large group of people cannot act and behave as individuals alone. There is a need for equilibrium without the group ecology becoming dictatorial or totalitarian. If the right balance is struck, the collective can be a valuable tool for individual growth and creative expression. It is necessary that someone manages this process; hence, there is a need for a strong leader to hold the collective, even if this role shifts and is shared.6 Pénafiel asserts that the teacher’s rigour must be balanced with love both ‘for the work and in the work’ (2020). He suggests that this love for collective voicing, in all its complexity, fragility and potency, is a lasting legacy of Pikes’ practice. Reflecting on his work with Pikes four decades ago, he still recalls that: The group work was very touching. It was very full. It was a time of experimenting. It was the first time that I had encountered a group [the RHT] that was utterly galvanised by the voice. Working and improvising freely together without a text . . . the vocal expressivity came out of the physical action. Each person tried to find their own personal expression in the sound they were creating. . . . The tension between raw sound and sonority was important for developing meaning. (Pénafiel 2020) As well as participating in individual classes and group sessions, Carran Waterfield also organised a series of workshops that Pikes gave in Manchester and Salford in the UK.7 Her comments on all three experiences are revealing: Margaret’s ability to read a group is brilliant . . . . particularly in more consistent groups, like the workshop in France, where something really magical can happen . . . . she does remarkable stuff, in the sense of achieving what she does in the two or three hours that she gets . . . . people have a good time, but she really confronts you with what work you need to do. (Waterfield 2020) Michael Keegan Dolan also found Pikes’ approach to group work inspirational. As a choreographer and director, Dolan strives to create a horizontal structure which is more communal and collective in nature; thus, when Pikes taught the Fabulous Beast ensemble, he took part in the work as well, leading by example. He reveals that Pikes pushed him in the work to the same extent that she challenged the actors of the company, and that this role reversal in front of his performers was humbling. He also had one-to-one sessions separately and found these individual classes particularly important. As he explains: If you’re smart, you get a sense when you are in the company of a person who knows what they’re talking about. I intuitively sensed that there were

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good things in this work, so when Margaret was telling me something, I believed her. When Margaret asked me about my neck or why I was feeling a certain discomfort you felt that you were being asked by a person who had the potential to lead you to the outcome. (Dolan 2020) For Neil Paris, in contrast, one-to-one lessons were quite challenging, obliging him to confront negative feelings of being put on the spot. He links this sensation to his experiences of being a child at primary school and singing at the piano in the choir. Whilst he could be ‘professional’ about his feelings, it came to a point in his work with Pikes where he came face to face with the ‘difficulty of revealing my soul to another person, rather than just “performing” it’ (Paris 2020). Whilst today Paris has a professional, technical control of his extended vocal range, he has also become aware that there is a need to surrender to process. He suggests that a key lesson on his journey of vocal discovery alongside Pikes has been avoiding trying to achieve vocal effects, understood as extremes in vocal range. Rather, he has learnt to accept what his voice has to offer on any given day. Coming from a professional theatrical background, learning to focus on process rather than product has been liberating for Paris. He finds that he is able to let go of self-judgment when voicing by working on his physicality and honing in on the imaginative potency of the vocal sources. He explains: I find the more I just think, ‘legs, belly, breath,’ then my inner judgment just goes and it seems to produce results. I sometimes feel that I’m a bit objective about it. I’m not so ‘in’ it. It’s not such a cathartic experience for me. That’s been useful for me as a performer – I don’t need to get anything from it in terms of a release. (ibid.) In terms of group work, Paris states that watching and observing others in the group was incredibly important in terms of his own personal development as an artist and facilitator. He would always be struck by how ‘[s]uddenly it would go deep’ (ibid.) – often, major advances were made by students of Pikes’ as they connected to their bodies or imaginations whilst sounding, rather than consciously manipulating their voices. He links this progression to a growing, embodied understanding of the vocal source as a psychosomatic nexus. Kate Hilder also emphasises the interpersonal dynamics of group workshops led by Pikes. She explains that the work is not just about the individual voice; it is also inherently about improvising with and listening to others.8 According to Hilder: Even when Margaret is working with someone individually, she really is asking you to support, both through giving your attention and through using your hands or using your voice. She creates a real community feeling in the group. (Hilder 2020)

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For Yuri Birte Anderson, group work has been ‘immensely helpful’ (Anderson 2020). She is impressed by how Pikes is able to intuitively pick up on what a group needs at any one time. Anderson explains that she can now sense the person’s sounding in her own body – she has developed a sympathetic kinaesthetic response to voice work through her own embodied vocal exploration. This exploration inevitably touches on the inner psychic world of the individual: events from one’s personal life affect the voice and, inevitably, one goes deeper into the work by connecting vocal sources to feeling-full places. As Anderson explains: [Y]ou always go deeper. This way of working with the scenarios, it always shifts. The work is never the same from one day to the next. It’s not just a case of feeling a vibration; it has to do with the imagination and exploration. Working with Margaret is not just technical. It’s a deepening. (Anderson 2020) This holistic exploration of psychic depth and vocal extension is also being taken in new creative directions by Pikes’ students through both their pedagogic and performance practices, as we shall see in the following section.

A tradition in transformation Teaching Given its emergence as a pedagogic practice, it is hardly surprising that the Wolfsohn–Hart methodology, as espoused by Pikes, has directly influenced the teaching practices of her students. Both Kate Hilder and Sam Frankie Fox teach and offer workshops alongside their professional performance work, and both women have drawn on their experiences of working with Pikes. Whilst Action Theater™ training didn’t involve touch, Hilder finds having feedback from a partner useful and has developed a version of Pikes’ ‘Breath and Voice in the Spine’ scenario that she employs in improvisation classes (Hilder 2020). Fox is very inspired by the supportive way in which Pikes interacted with students and, also, employs a similar careful mode of listening when working with her students, drawing on principles such as vocal sources and characters to enable them to explore their vocal ranges (Fox 2020). But perhaps the person who has most actively supported Pikes’ pedagogical practice is Neil Paris. Over the past decade, Paris has co-taught with Pikes during regular workshops in voice and body work held in France, Germany and the UK. This partly came as a result of Paris’ work in Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre: up until 2010, when he left the company, he had been responsible for keeping Pikes’ approach alive within the group as a part of the ensemble’s daily training practice (Paris 2020). In 2010, Pikes invited Paris to work alongside her during a weeklong workshop in the South of France. Paris brought to the work an integrated body-based practice, drawing on elements of yoga, dance, physical theatre and clowning. His work is playful yet disciplined, and moves from individual exercises

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for warming up the body to partner work and ensemble exercises that galvanise participants’ embodied awareness and expressivity. This provides students with a strong sense of physical presence which can then support work on the voice. A lot of Paris’ praxical research alongside Pikes has been to strive to enable students to remain physically engaged and alive whilst staying connected to their voices (ibid.). Since the start of their collaboration, his approach to teaching has developed and he now treats the body and the voice as an integrated continuum. Working on those intensives I’ve had the opportunity to observe Margaret working and observe her working with people, and I’ve begun to know what she’s looking for. (ibid.) He suggests that his ongoing professional collaboration with Pikes has been ‘transformative’ for him as a pedagogue, and in turn he has introduced Pikes’ students to innovative ways of connecting to a sense of physical presence and groundedness, which is invaluable in this tradition of voice work (ibid.). Michael Keegan Dolan also reveals that he adapted and transformed several of Pikes’ pedagogical strategies for his work with the performers of Fabulous Beast and, more recently, his current company Teac Damsa. Dolan’s experience with and research into the Wolfsohn-Hart methodology has enabled him to facilitate dancers in an embodied process of developing musicality and deep listening, specifically as a result of working with live folk musicians. He learnt a number of strategies from Pikes; for example, the importance of polyphonic singing, which, he suggests, can create ‘a communal dynamic, a “glue”’ (ibid.) that the other performing arts can’t achieve in the same in-depth fashion. Pikes worked a lot in circles, and Dolan makes specific reference to the ‘Passing the Sound’ scenario, which has become a key principle employed in his own praxis. Dolan suggests that ‘[t]he interesting thing within that work is that it’s deceptively simple, but in that simplicity, the truth becomes exposed’ (ibid.). Dolan makes a number of very important comments regarding the deep, hermeneutical listening that Pikes’ praxical approach can encourage in performers: [L]istening is so multi-dimensional. It’s how you listen. You learn that through singing and vocalising much more acutely than you can through dancing. (ibid.) For Dolan, the embodied act of singing informs dancers kinaesthetically, and not just as an analogy or metaphor. Years before, someone had told Dolan that you needed to be a good singer to be a good dancer. At first, he thought that this was ridiculous, but over time he realised that: [I]f you can’t sing, it probably means you’re not hearing very well. You’re not engaging; there’s something between you and the vibration that is external to

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you, a string being plucked or, on a piano, a hammer hitting a string. I would wager that until you can hear and cultivate that degree of sensitivity to really hear and so to experience a vibration, you’re probably not, as a dancer, going to be able to manifest a vibration. Vibrations are movement, so a dancer is physically manifesting an interior experience, which is probably ‘energy.’ (Dolan 2020) The emphasis placed here on deep, feeling-full, interpretative listening connects to Eidsheim’s (2015) notion of music and vocalisation as vibrational practices, reflecting the ways in which Pikes’ approach to voice work is both highly embodied and energetically potent. We shall now shift from teaching and training to performance, in order to map out the ways in which Pikes’ methodological approach to voice work has been channelled by our featured artists into their practice.

Performance According to Jean Yves Pénafiel, the work of the RHT in the 1980s showed him concrete ways to transform ‘Dionysian affective impulses into Apollonian creation’ (Pénafiel 2020). Working with Pikes in particular helped Pénafiel to specify the path he was on. The organicity in her approach allowed him to ‘return to the source of the sound: the prima materia, the original noise, the clay of the voice’ (ibid.; original emphasis). The notion of the vocal sources gave him praxical references that justified the emerging vocal language that he had begun to discover by connecting deeply to his body and his own individual feelings and sensations (ibid.). Pénafiel reveals that he had been ‘inspired by the rigour of the RHT, who had found real meaning in the voice work and in sound’ (ibid.). For over 15 years, he worked with his own group Mahna in this fashion, mixing theatre and voice work whilst researching into world music as a source of inspiration. His interest in world music lay in the musicality of the voices rather than the semantic meaning of song lyrics – he drew on the tonal qualities of Pygmy music and Mongolian throat singing, amongst others, exploring the affective impact of these different sonorous qualities (ibid.). Whilst this musical research was the foundation of Mahna’s work, the Wolfsohn-Hart voice work remained a pillar of the group’s evolving methodology. Michael Keegan Dolan emphasises that the circular pedagogical structures that he took from Pikes – such as communal singing and Passing the Sound – helped develop within the ensembles of Fabulous Beast and Teac Damsa an attentive mode of listening that, he suggests, transcended ‘directorial modes’ of structural organisation, establishing a more democratic and horizontally-structured dynamic within both companies (Dolan 2020). He believes that this way of working through shared, communal sounding and deep listening instils a sense of connection and the sense that everyone is ‘in this together’ (ibid.). He goes on to suggest: It’s negotiating the art of connectivity, I guess. It’s what goes on when a dancer responds to a piece of music, between the dancer and the musician it’s

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‘the third thing’ that is truly exciting. And it’s when people witness ‘the third thing,’ that is when they get inspired. . . . I sent you a vibration, be it through dancing or moving air – dancing is moving air, singing is moving air, music is moving air that moves down into the auditorium and affects people. I think all that is in the RHT work. (ibid.) This notion of ‘the third thing’ resonates with Wolfsohn’s (2012) concept of ‘the it’: the inner alterity of the voice linked to the soma and the unconscious.9 Similarly, Dolan seeks this encounter with vibrational, energetic arch-alterity in his work as a choreographer: he seeks to take both performers and spectators to this encounter with the otherness within that can lead to true creative breakthroughs and expressive discoveries. Like Dolan, Sam Frankie Fox also integrated a number of Pikes’ praxical principles into her creative work with her company, KILN Ensemble. Fox was surprised at the time that Wolfsohn-Hart voice work was not being applied so much in performance work, particularly in the UK, given its rich expressive potential, and her desire to transpose aspects of Pikes’ practice to the stage began to influence KILN’s working methodology, particularly their critically acclaimed 2012 performance The Furies, a modern adaptation of the myth of Clytemnestra, performed as a live heavy-metal show (ibid.). The company invited Pikes to work with them on extended vocal exploration during the creative process, and went on to develop the resulting material independently. According to Fox, a great deal of the scenic material was based on vocal exploration, and the logic of the scenic composition reflected the work with Pikes, particularly her work on the vocal sources and vocal characters (ibid.). Fox went on in 2014 to make the solo show Lady Go Go Goch, a performance grounded in her skill at accessing vocal sources in a very crafted way. She collaborated on the piece with her multi-instrumentalist partner Ricardo Rocha, who accompanied her on stage. Adamant that it was the voice that would lead the dramaturgy, Fox elected to embody and then deconstruct a number of iconic Welsh figures, unravelling stereotypical depictions of Welsh identity. During the devising process, Fox and her colleagues realised that the transitions from one character to the next were particularly potent in scenic terms: these transitions took place on stage physically and vocally by employing the Welsh consonants and vowels, using a loop station on stage to capture these sounds digitally before replaying them in the space, using them as a sonorous catalyst for scenic transformation (ibid.). The theatrical characters in the piece were also inherently shaped by Pikes’ work with vocal characters, and Fox’s description of the devising process is revealing: I learnt not to rush – starting with breath and body moving, then going into sounds. Babbling away playing with pre-verbal sounds to begin with, before settling on something that felt authentic. I would continually be thinking: ‘Is this the King? Or the Old King, or the Ogre, or the Duchess, or the Princess, or Crone? Or is it . . .’ I used to have a butterfly voice that I had found

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with Margaret, which was a key sound of The Furies, that was the sound of the Furies cackling and I also used it in Lady Go Go Goch. I guess it’s become something of a signature sound for me! Technically, the glottis is moving, but I just think of butterflies and I can make that sound. (Fox 2020)10 Carran Waterfield has also drawn on aspects of Pikes’ practice in her performance work. She reveals that connecting to the ‘Duchess’ voice – the dark contralto linked to the chest in Pikes’ work – was a very important discovery in her training with Pikes. This deep, resonant vocal source was particularly useful in terms of her creative process as a performer at that point in time, as she worked on her autobiographical solo performance Little Blue Man. She reveals that: [I]t gave me permission to enter into what I would call my ‘posh voice,’ my operatic voice. And it came from a desire to sing like my dad. Because I was making Little Blue Man, which was a tribute to him, I wanted to sing like him, and I wanted Margaret to make the magic happen and turn me into my dad, I think! (ibid.) Thus, Pikes’ particular approach to vocal exploration allowed Waterfield to transcend vocal timbre and registers related to both class and sex, enabling her to develop the gender-bending performance of working-class masculinity that grounded her work on characters and personae in Little Blue Man. Furthermore, explorations linked to vocal sources had a personal resonance for Waterfield: I realise that that tenor voice, or that space I was trying to inhabit, helped me to find a more mature voice, so there was something going on psychologically, physically, in terms of memory and healing as well. So, there’s a lot going on in her approach – it operates at many levels. (ibid.) Importantly, Waterfield emphasises here the cathartic nature of Pikes’ practice, which allows for the complex confluences of personal need and creative expressivity that characterise the work of the laboratory theatre maker.11 Like Waterfield, Yuri Birte Anderson was already immersed in a laboratory tradition of theatre-making through her work with Theaterlabor and was used to developing characters through vocal exploration, improvisation and devising. However, Pikes’ insistence on maintaining a connection to the spine, and sounding from a deeply embodied place have become praxical mainstays that Anderson now employs in her directorial practice with actors. Anderson suggests that this is a constant process of active investigation: You always have to adapt. I can’t just say that this is a ‘tool kit’ – it’s not. You work organically with what the person needs at any point. It’s a tuning in to

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what is happening in the moment. But definitely, Margaret’s approach has influenced my work as a director and as a performer. (Anderson 2020) Anderson cites Neil Paris’ work and the psychophysical training approaches of the wider post-Grotowskian tradition as praxical elements that blend and inform the ways in which she has appropriated and adapted Pikes’ methodology. Working with pre-verbal sounds in connection to dramatic text has been very important. Anderson speaks of her work with actors, which consists, in part, of: [D]ancing with breath and then taking sound into text and taking the movement out. Taking a word and exploring this (or a phrase) in a pre-verbal way – that would be an example of a way I work in rehearsal that draws on Margaret’s approach. (ibid.) Anderson explains how on her recent, co-directed performance Last Days of Mankind (2018), based on the text by Kraus, she encouraged the actors to explore a cacophony of pre-verbal sounds and choreographic fragments in order to evoke the hellish nature of propaganda during times of war. However, the initial qualities of the vocal improvisations shifted once the performance debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe. The work with the ensemble allowed her to make several interesting observations concerning the, at times, fragile nature of the performer’s embodied connection to the vocal sources: It was very interesting because the performers tend to go to the shouty, powerful places. When you first work on it, they keep the different sources, but once you get to the performance . . . [i]t is very hard to keep the vocal source. So, in performance, people default to that heady, shouty vocal space. (ibid.) Like Anderson, Neil Paris also emphasises how difficult it can be to successfully transpose vocal discoveries made in the safe space of the workshop or rehearsal room onto the stage. However, he witnessed just how Pikes was able to do this herself during the performance Agnes and Walter (2011), which Paris directed and in which Pikes sang. Pikes’ role in the show came as the result of a dream: Paris was in the initial devising stage of the piece when he awoke one morning with the idea of a scenic interlude with a solo singer. Paris knew that the singer had to be Pikes. Pikes went on to participate in Agnes and Walter, a piece about love and age, performing songs in French, Spanish and English during scenic interludes. Paris reveals that Pikes’ singing would frequently bring audience members to tears during the UK tour of the show. Paris was impressed by Pikes’ ability to generate such a response in a systematic way; he emphasised that she was not ‘exploring vocal pyrotechnics, it was pitched singing’ (Paris 2020). It was Pikes’ emotional connection to a deep-seated, feeling-full place that touched spectators

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on an affective level. He also commended the ways in which Pikes was able to deal with some very stressful situations on tour due to bad acoustics in the rural theatre spaces they had to perform in. He suggests that: [T]he idea of staying with yourself and not relying on what you’re getting back in terms of amped feedback is real embodied knowledge, and in a whole range of venues – it was really challenging work at times. (ibid.) It was Pikes’ deep embodied knowledge of the vocal sources and her skill as a professional singer that allowed her to work on kinaesthetic awareness alone when aural feedback became a problem.

Lasting legacy All of the artists interviewed not only valued Pikes’ praxis in terms of their own personal development, but also felt that this holistic way of engaging body, voice and imagination as a creative continuum was of importance to the performing arts in broader terms. Jean Yves Pénafiel (2020) suggested that the importance of Pikes’ re-inflection of the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition of vocal discovery lies in the fact that people today still feel a need for the deep emotional connection that this approach to voice work offers.12 He believes that Pikes’ work is not just useful for young artists at the start of their careers; even professional actors, performers and singers need to reconnect on a holistic level to a sense of the voice as an extension of the self. He suggests that artists reach a point in their careers where they no longer develop and something closes down. Thus, they seek out this work to return to the tenderness of the voice, before setting out on their vocal path once again. As he explains: It’s not just a case of making extended vocal sounds, which is an aesthetic that can become a trap. It is about the emotional connection and the inspiration that the vocal exploration can offer. (ibid.) Pénafiel suggests that the continued importance of Wolfsohn–Hart voice work is to show that there exists this possibility of deep, consistent research on the voice: that this way of working is feasible. It is not just a case of using the extended voice in performance, necessarily: what is important is that you experience this expressive possibility and that experience remains with you in your working life. If you do find a way of translating this into your aesthetic work, then that is not necessarily a problem. Pénafiel warns against congealing Pikes’ approach to the Wolfsohn–Hart tradition into a ‘technique’: he believes that techniques are dangerous, as the organic impulses underpinning a living creative approach can become sterile and predictable (ibid.). For Kate Hilder, whilst the work has a technical aspect to it – and Pikes has a great deal of technical knowledge as a singer – vocal exploration and discovery is

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really about your inner work, the personal journey you are willing to undertake and the ‘humanness’ of that endeavour (Hilder 2020). She believes, in terms of performance, that spectators recognise on a tacit level this continuity of engagement with the practice, which makes it very special. Through her work with Pikes, she feels that she has been able to: [T]ouch my own inner riches – the grief and the pain and the joy that make for a really honest form of expression. (ibid.) Hilder suggests that, in improvisation, the focus is not just on the semantic meaning of what is said on stage during performance, but also on the vocal quality itself: ‘it’s about who you are being, not just what you say’ (ibid.). The richness of the voice comes to the fore in improvisational work, and Pikes’ praxis has really guided her in this sense, helping both to generate and colour improvised text, through a focus on body and imagination. Hilder affirms that the more involved you are in your physical experience the more surprises you will uncover as a performer: ‘You don’t want to be in your head as an improviser: you want to work on this visceral level’ (ibid.). Sam Frankie Fox foregrounds Pikes’ skill as a pedagogue and her ability to really listen to students on a deeply embodied level. Importantly, she contrasts this careful, sensitive form of listening to the more aggressive approaches that continue to haunt contemporary theatre practice. For Fox, many other (predominantly male) practitioners of a similar professional stature do not ‘coax’ in the same way, and Pikes’ gentler approach is, she believes, highly successful and greatly needed (ibid.). Neil Paris also reiterates Pikes’ determination and ethical integrity as a pedagogue: Talk about bravery! When you watch Margaret working with people, they can be on the verge of tears, but she just won’t budge. She’s got the ability to hold them and push them gently through, and then allow them to open up. ‘Is there anything you want to say?’ And I’d be like ‘My God!’ (Paris 2020) Paris has learnt from Pikes the importance of working softly: he recalls her insistence on starting and staying with the soft chest voice rather than going to the ‘adrenaline rush of belting’ (ibid.). Paris suggests that there is a softness and a vulnerability in this vocal source that Pikes is not afraid to work with. Moving forwards, Paris believes that ‘time’ will be an issue, as the journey of vocal discovery is a long one: Looking back at Margaret’s journey, it’s been a life. If you think about the intensity of Malérargues, working on the voice every day. You can’t just roll up and take a course and say ‘well, I’ve done that.’ (ibid.)

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Paris affirms that other vocal practitioners, even other RHT members, do not work in the same way as Pikes, and therefore it is important that her approach to the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition is recognised: It’s not all about technique and anatomy; it can’t be codified and measured. The work is so personal to Margaret; no one is going to pick up the book and just do it. Some people will keep elements of the work going. (ibid.) Yuri Birte Anderson echoes Paris, and suggests that the current relevance of Pikes’ work has been underestimated and not given the value it deserves. A relevant example of this would be a recent attempt by Anderson to secure funding for research and development: I was applying for a residency project with a colleague, and we used Roy Hart, Artaud and Grotowski as points of reference, in terms of mapping out what we wanted to go and explore in the space. We got feedback from the jury: they liked the project a lot, but the criticism was that people like Grotowski, Artaud and Roy Hart are outdated, old fashioned. Not contemporary enough. Which is okay – we will keep on doing what we are doing. But in terms of funding, particularly where we applied, they go for a lot of discourse-driven theatre, a lot of text. I call it brain-massaging. Very intellectual. These are trends and tendencies. So, what I notice is that if you want to do this work (Wolfsohn-Hart vocal exploration) and research it, it’s tricky. (Anderson 2020) Anderson is speaking from the perspective of one particular experience within the cultural material context of contemporary German theatre and arts funding, however it does reflect the ways in which non-conceptually led laboratory approaches to theatre are disregarded in some quarters. It is interesting to contrast Anderson’s lived experience with Michael Keegan Dolan’s view of the lasting importance of Pikes’ approach to the Wolfsohn-Hart legacy. He suggests that: Now more than ever, the principles of the practice that Margaret shared with me are profoundly important. There is this esoteric idea that the Covid virus is in some way here to reset the barometer in society. We had acknowledged that we needed to change society and hadn’t done much about it. But now it’s going to have to change. Those qualities which encourage one to be the most fully realised version of themselves that they can be in the world are going to be the only place it’s at now. . . . The kind of work that people are going to come to in their droves, I think, will be populated by fully-realised, integrated individuals. (Dolan 2020)

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This is not some utopian vision of a sanitised version of self-realisation: Dolan recognises the shadow aspects of personal development and saw this in practice during Pikes’ work on the extended voice, when she would encourage people to unveil the shadow and sound it out. Rather, it is a call for a profoundly human theatre, with the range and depth of Wolfsohn’s original vision of the unchained human voice. As Dolan argues: Those qualities of listening, of being sensitive, of being adaptable, of being fully alive, of being capable, like Wolfsohn said, of accessing the full range of the voice, that’s about being fully-realised, from the bass and the bottom all the way to the top and the ether, up to the sky. Being fully-realised. . . . And the theatre that I want to make – hopefully, if and when the world recovers – is based on the same ideas that Margaret practices and shared with me fifteen years ago. (ibid.) Dolan foregrounds the important impact that Pikes has had on his artistic trajectory: Margaret sowed all of those seeds with me. My connection with her wasn’t over a long period of time . . . in my kind of ‘pantheon’ of people who taught me, there’s probably between four or five people and Margaret is definitely one of them. She is someone who taught me something of great importance. (ibid.) Finally, Carran Waterfield, lucidly and presciently, articulates the feminist impact of Pikes’ contribution to the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition, and thus the importance of her work to the fields of theatre and performance as a whole: I always liked the fact that Margaret said ‘I was one of the original [RHT] members’ and the fact that she was there at the beginning and has maintained that purity of practice that is her own. It was great for me to find a ‘sister,’ let’s say, part of a ‘sisterhood’ – and a ‘brotherhood’ – of artists doing it all on the margins of the set institutions that get all the glory and the praise. I like to think that she’s somewhere in France, or somewhere in Germany, doing that ‘thing’ that is her own, that actually belongs to this thing that is this patriarchal institution, but she has made it her own . . . These women’s voices get hushed up. . . . The little people who are part of a ‘big thing’ or at the start of something very important often get forgotten, and I think it’s very important to give them voice. And Margaret giving voice is really important. (Waterfield 2020) Thus, we come to the end of this conclusion and this book, which perhaps usher in a renewed, genealogical appreciation of the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition in all its pluriphonic complexity. This tradition has been lovingly yet critically embraced

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and disseminated by Margaret Pikes, a female founder member of the Roy Hart Theatre, who for 50 years has fought to protect the sounding spirit at the heart of Wolfsohn’s and Hart’s pedagogical praxes. Her life and work are testament to the fact that, in order to follow the ideal of the ‘unchained human voice,’ we must be open to transforming old relationships and sounding ourselves truly into being. It is only through this process of individuation that we will truly ‘own our voices.’ This is the lesson that Margaret Pikes has passed on, and that her many students will continue to share.

Notes 1 It is interesting to note that Paris trained at Dartington College of Arts in the UK, a renowned training centre in performing arts, where Pikes had given workshops to staff members in the early 1980s together with Boris Moore. He recalls that there were elements akin to Wolfsohn-Hart voice work in the theatre training he received there. 2 See Chapter 9: ‘The role of the teacher,’ and the section entitled ‘Teacher as mirror.’ Also refer to Chapter 11. 3 See Chapter 6: ‘Some reflections.’ 4 See Chapter 11: ‘Group work.’ 5 See Chapter 6: ‘Some reflections.’ 6 Refer back to Chapter 11: ‘Group work.’ 7 Kate Hilder has played an integral role organising workshops for Pikes in London. 8 See Chapter 11: ‘Group work.’ 9 See: Part 2: ‘Preface to methodology.’ 10 This is a very evocative example of what Pikes mean when she talks about connecting voice and imagination in Chapter 7: ‘Pre-verbal voice.’ 11 See Chapter 9: ‘The role of the teacher.’ 12 See Chapter 10: ‘Connecting head to body – the importance of movement.’

References Anderson, Yuri Birte (2020) Interview with Yuri Birte Anderson. Conducted by Patrick Campbell, 11 February. Barba, Eugenio (1999) Theatre: Solitude, Craft, Revolt (trans. Judy Barba; ed. Masgrau, Luís). Aberystwyth: Black Mountain Press. Cavarero, Adriana, Thomaidis, Konstantinos and Pinna, Ilaria (2018) ‘Towards a Hopeful Plurality of Democracy: An Interview on Vocal Ontology with Adriana Cavarero.’ Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 81–93. Deleuze, Gilles ([1962] 2006) Nietzsche and Philosophy. London: Continuum Impacts. Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix (1975) Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Dolan, Michael Keegan (2020) Interview with Michael Keegan Dolan. Conducted by Patrick Campbell, 24 March. Eidsheim, Nina Sun (2015) Sensing Sound: Singing and Listening as Vibrational Practice. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Foucault, Michel (1977) ‘Nietzsce, Genealogy, History.’ Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews (ed. D. F. Bouchard). Ithaca: Cornell, pp. 139–164. Fox, Sam Frankie (2020) Interview with Sam “Frankie” Fox. Conducted by Patrick Campbell, 16 February.

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Hilder, Kate (2020) Interview with Kate Hilder. Conducted by Patrick Campbell, 14 January. Nietzsche, Friedrich [1887] (2003) The Genealogy of Morals, (trans. Horace Barnett Samuel). New York: Courier Dover Publications. Paris, Neil (2020) Interview with Neil Paris. Conducted by Patrick Campbell, 14 January. Pénafiel, Jean Yves (2020) Interview with Jean Yves Pénafiel. Conducted by Patrick Campbell, 14 February. Waterfield, Carran (2020) Interview with Carran Waterfield. Conducted by Patrick Campbell, 26 March. Wolfsohn, Alfred ([1938] 2012) Orpheus, or the Way to a Mask (trans. Marita Günther; ed. Jay Livernois). Woodstock: Abraxas Publishing. 

EPILOGUE: A DIALOGUE

margaret: 

Well Patrick, we’ve got to the end of the book, apparently. What can I do with all that I didn’t include? patrick:  I suppose that, paraphrasing Brazilian singer-songwriter Caetano Veloso, the pain and the delight that each of us experience individually in life can never actually be shared. margaret:  Are you really sure about that? I feel that we have been on a journey together. Like setting sail onto the ocean. At times, I’ve felt that, when I threw out my net, I caught your thoughts and sometimes, equally, you’ve caught mine. patrick  Yes, you’re right. There have certainly been moments when I felt the presence of the people who have impacted upon you in your life. I have had the sense of a kind of ghostly pluriphony – these voices from the past almost sounding through your words and in your practice. margaret:  Like sea breezes or currents in the ocean. patrick:  It is nice to think of the past and the present as liquid, somehow, flowing into and through one another. margaret: And with the rolling of the tides you come back to where you came from. As T. S. Eliot wrote: We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. (Eliot [1944] (1986): 48)

Reference Eliot, Thomas Stearns ([1944] 1986) Four Quartets. London: Faber and Faber.

INDEX

Note: page numbers in italics indicate a figure. Abbate, Carolyn 7 Academy of Live and Recorded Arts in Wandsworth (London) 12n1, 177 Accroche Note, music ensemble 61 Action Theater™ 175, 177, 184 Agnes and Walter: A Little Love Story (Neil Paris) 74, 75n10, 175, 189 Allen, Jennifer 47, 53n2 alterity: encounter with vocal exploration 96, 155; as key aspect of Wolfsohn-Hart voice work 2; linking to the soma and unconscious 187; underpinning of feminist autobiography 19 Andersen, Hedwig 162n2 Andersen, Kaya: as founding member of RHT 43n2; Pikes’ voice lessons with 32, 33; voice lessons given by 32–33, 36 Anderson, Linda 18 Anderson, Yuri Birte 11, 100, 176, 179–180, 184, 188, 192 And performance 48, 49, 51, 88 Andrews, Gaël 44n7 androcentric nature of Wolfsohn-Hart philosophies 78–82 Anglo-American vocal training 103–104 Anima, jazz trio 11, 71–72, 79, 91 anima and animus archetypes 3; archetype and 41; Hart’s definition of anima 79; Hart’s effort at understanding 82–83; Hart’s projection of anima 51; Jung on

79–80; love, sex, and 82–85; syzygy and 118–119, 119n1; use of in voice work 3, 7; Wolfsohn and 33 Arbatz, Michel 74n1 archetypes: ‘contrasexual’ psycho-somatic archetypes 3; definition 122; Hart’s use of 40; link with collective unconscious 44n17; monster king archetype 110; role in acquisition of knowledge 121–122; self, gender, and 123; term derivation 40–41; use of archetypal characters in teaching 137–138 see also anima and animus Arendt, Hannah 2 Armstrong, Richard 28, 30n11, 47, 51, 59 arpeggios 103, 166, 172 Artaud, Antonin 46, 192 ‘auras’ 6 autobiographies: feminist theory’s approaches to 17–20; links to intersubjectivity 18; present-day ubiquitousness of 17; types of 17 see also life-writings; personal narratives Bacchae as the Frontae, The 43, 46, 106 Baez, Joan 25 Barba, Eugenio 18, 176, 180 Barker, Paul 124–125 Barrault, Jean Louis 49, 53n3 Barthes, Roland 8, 95 Beatles 29n1

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Beckett, Samuel 61, 89, 90 Beckett de Trois Côtés performance (Roy Hart Theatre) 11, 61, 89 bel canto 102–103, 166, 179 belly voice 110, 113–114, 148, 150–151, 152n5 Bernard, Michèle 69–70, 74–75n6 Berne, Eric 78, 85n4 Berry, Cicely 103, 124 Biography of an Idea. London 1943–1960, The (Wolfsohn) 10 blogs 17 Bocandé, Edu 71 Body Mind Centering 146 Bolt, Barbara 93 Bonenfant, Yvon 133n1, 155 Braggins, Sheila 3, 10, 12n5, 81, 85n5 Breath and Voice in the Spine scenario 148–149, 184 Brecht, Bertolt 46 ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ (Simon and Garfunkel) 62 broken voice 3, 177 Brook, Peter 46 Buddhism 146, 162n1 Canto General oratorio (Theodorakis) 11, 61–62, 65n13, 90 Canto General poems (Neruda) 65n13 ‘care-full-ness’ of Hart 6 Carroll, Berenice A. 20 Cartesian dualism (binarism) 142, 145 Cascando, radio play 61 Cavarero, Adriana 93–95; on human plurality 154; influence of Foucault on 174; on language 107; on pluriphony 174–175; on the voice 8, 125 Central School of Speech and Drama (London) 72 Centre for Theatre Practices Gardzienice 100n2, 167 chansons françaises 69 chest voice: deep 114; soft 177, 179, 191 choirs 64, 169, 177 Cixous, Hélène 7 Clément, Catherine 49 collective unconscious (Jung) 40–41, 44n17 Collett, Nicola 12n1 Cologne, Germany 73–74 Commedia dell’Arte 176 Compagnie Circolombia (France) 176 connecting head to body 141–152; scenarios 148, 150–152; somatic

practices 146; spiritual pathways 146; ‘vocal fry’ phenomenon 146–147, 152n3 ‘conscious schizophrenia’ 79 ‘contrasexual’ psycho-somatic archetypes 3 Coo, Joe 72 corporeal voice notion (Thatcher and Galbreath) 141–142 Crawford, Kevin 141, 144n1, 166 Crawford, Monty (known also as Davide) 54, 64n1 Croner, Alice 3 culture of truth 41 Dan Canham/Still House (UK) 175 DARK VOICES: The Genesis of Roy Hart Theatre (N.D. Pikes) 30n8 deep chest voice 114 Deleuze, Gilles 174–175 depth psychology (Jung): archetypes and 122; ‘inflation’ concept 119n2; influence on Hart 40; influence on Wolfsohn-Hart voice work 98, 117–118; links with voice work 58 see also anima and animus archetypes; archetypes Derrida, Jacques 8 Descartes, Rene 142–143, 145, 149 Des Nuits Noires de Monde (Bernard) 69–70 De Vive Voix performance (Roy Hart Theatre) 11, 58 Die Brücke (Wolfsohn) 10 “Dimensions of the Morning, The” (Patchen) 61 Dofadoquebrado (Portugal/UK) 176 Dolan, Michael Keegan 11, 75n9; background 176; directorial role for Fabulous Beast Dance Company 73; influence of Pikes on 176, 178, 182, 185–186, 192 dream images 6, 138 ‘Drive All Night’ (Springsteen) 170 ‘dual-aspect monism’ (of Spinoza) 142 dyadic relationship between student and teacher 99, 132, 166, 168 Dylan, Bob 28, 62; awarding of Nobel Prize for literature 170; ‘Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall’ 26; ‘Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man’ 170; ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’ 49 dynamic listening 135, 166 ‘dynamic’ listening, by Wolfsohn-Hart teachers 135 eating disorders 146 écriture feminine 7, 9 Eidsheim, Nina Sun 166, 168

Index  199

eight-octave voice 4, 6, 104 Eight Songs for a Mad King performance 51 Ellington, Edward Kennedy (Duke) 72 elocution techniques 103–104 embodied voice 106 Enfield, Charles 24–25, 78, 81 Enfield, Sylvia 24–25, 55, 81 English National Opera 175 enlightenment methods 146 Escribano, Maria 57, 65n4 European Action Theater Performance Collective 175 Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre company (Ireland) 73, 175, 176, 178, 179 facial muscle exercises 136 falsetto 102, 114 Farantouri, Maria 62, 65n14 Fellow Teachers (Rieff) 41 Female Eunuch, The (Greer) 85n6 Feminine Mystique, The (Friedan) 85n6 Feminine Psychology (Horney) 85n6 femininity/feminist considerations: anima and 79; approaches to autobiography 17–20; of Wolfsohn-Hart voice work 7–9 finding the note scenario 139–140 Findlay, Dorothy 29n5 Fitzmaurice, Catherine 103, 104 Fogerty, Elsie 103 Foucault, Michel 174 Fourth way teaching (Gurdjieff) 39, 40 Fox, Sam Frankie 11, 12n1, 100, 175–179, 184, 187 freeing the voice 121–129; Barker on 124–125; Berry, Rodenburg, and Linklater on 124; ‘natural voice’ viewpoint 125–126; removing vocal restrictions 125; scenarios to extend vocal range 126–129 Freud, Sigmund 40 Friedan, Betty 85n6 Furies, The 176 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 97–98, 100n1 Galbreath, Daniel 104, 142 Games People Play (Berne) 78 Garfunkel, Art 62 George, Nadine 47, 53n1 Gestalt Therapy 78, 85n3 Gildersleeve, Matthew 142 Goodman, Paul 85n3 Goon Show, The, radio comedy programme 29n1

Grease 72 Greer, Germaine 85n6 Grotowski, Jerzy: influence on Yuri Birte Anderson 176; Laboratory Theatre of 46, 77, 100n, 103; ‘physiovocality’ tradition of 100n2, 103; vocal resonators notion 103; vocal resonators of 103; Workcentre of 100n2 group work 11, 52, 154–164; establishing a supportive atmosphere 158; group improvisations 162–164; individual work and 180–184; playful initial scenarios 158–162; pluriphony and 154; political efficacy of 154; warm-up sessions 158 growth concept (of Henry) 143 Guattari, Félix 175 Gullatz, Stefan 142 Günther, Martha 3, 10, 12n4, 32, 33, 60, 179 Gurdjieff, G. I.: influence on Hart’s work 39–40; Sacred Dances 44n13; teachings of 39–40, 146 Hart, Dorothy: car crash death of 7, 53; funeral ceremony in Malérargues 54; giving of voice ‘singing’ lessons 33, 36; teaching Wolfsohn-Hart voice work 131 Hart, Jonathan 24–25, 30n6 Hart, Roy: androcentricity of 78–82; background 5–7; belief in the importance of individual consciousness 37, 40; beliefs on the range of the human voice 126; ‘care-full-ness’ of 6; choice of The Bacchae for first performance 43; creation of the Roy Hart Theatre (RHT) 5; death of 7, 11, 53; definition of ‘the feminine’ and anima 79; description of communal life by 376; efforts at understanding anima and animus 82–83; embrace of Jung’s individuation concept 81; Enfield’s description of 78; on the Fourth way 40; funeral ceremony in Malérargues 54; Gurdjieff’s influence on 39–40; holistic approach to voice 19; influence on the reproductive rights of female RHT members 7–9; inheritance of The Studio 18; interest in philosophical, sociological, scientific ideas 41; interest in the pathology of growth 41–42; Jung’s influence on 39–43, 78–79; marriage to Dorothy Findlay 29–30n5; The Objective Voice 48; photo with Vivienne Young 87; Pikes’ thoughts on leadership of 76–78;

200 Index

projection of anima 51; reference to ‘conscious schizophrenia’ 79; referencing of the god Abraxas 40; rehearsal at the Abraxas Club 87; renouncing of his body 80–81; role of psychotherapy in approach of 78; studies at Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts 5, 77, 103–104; supposed ‘death wish’ of 54; unconscious patriarchal bias of 80; use of ‘auras’ in judging people 6; verbal attack and humiliation teaching strategy 81; on voice and body connection 35–36; on voice work with Wolfsohn 77 see also Roy Hart Theatre (RHT) Harvey, Robert 33, 47 Harvey, Robert Mcfarlane 43n4 Hatha Yoga 113 head voice 110–111 Henry, Michel 143, 144n2 hermeneutics of the voice 97–100, 100n1, 167, 175, 181, 185 Hesse, Hemann 58 Higher School of Dramatic Art (Madrid, Spain) 48–49, 51–52 Hilder, Kate 11, 12n1, 100, 175, 177, 183–184, 190–191 Hillman, James 58, 65n6 Hinduism 146 Horney, Karen 85n6 Husserl, Edmund 142–143 Huxley, Aldous 4 Huxley, Julian 4 Illich, Ivan 37 ‘Imagine’ (Lennon and Ono) 62 individuation concept (Jung) 40, 48, 78–79, 81, 117–118 In Search of the Miraculous (Ouspensky) 39 International Centre for Voice (London) 72 intersubjectivity 18, 97–98 Irwin, Barry 33–34, 38, 43n5, 47 Jainism 146 Janov, Arthur 44n9, 121 see also Primal Therapy Jarrett, Keith 74 Jesus Christ Superstar 72 Johnson, Jack 12n6 Johnson, James 3 Johnson, Jenny 4, 12n6 Johnson, Jill 4, 12n6 Joule, Allain 61 Jung, Carl Gustav: acausal synchronicity concept 42; collaboration with Freud 40; collective unconscious concept

40–41, 44n17; dialogue with Wolfsohn 12n3; on the ‘feminine’ and the anima 79; individuation concept 40, 48, 78–79, 81, 117–118; influence on Hart’s work 39–43, 78–79; influence on Wolfsohn 78–79; interpretation of dreams 40–41; persona concept 43, 64, 122, 124, 138; Pikes’ reference to Jungian paradigms 117; on psychological theory 41; the shadow notion of 3–4; transcendent function concept 40; on transference and countertransference 132; wholeness goal of 48; written works of 44n14 see also depth psychology (Jung) Karaoke 169 King, W. L. 162n1 Kiriki Club (UK) 176 Kristeva, Julia 143 Laboratory Theatre (of Grotowski) 46, 77, 100n Lady Go Go Goch 176 lamentations 177 Language is dead: long live the voice performance 47 leadership problems, at Roy Hart Theatre 57–58 L’Economiste performance 50, 52, 55 Lee, Jan 12n1 Lennon, John 62 Lessac, Arthur 103, 104 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 8 Lewis, George H. 170 life-writings (personal narratives) 18–20 see also autobiographies Linklater, Kristin 103, 104, 124, 136 Little Blue Man 176, 180 Living Theatre 46, 77 Loche, Hervé 67 Lombard, Christophe 67 Lombard, Jean Baptiste 61, 65n10 love and sex (in the Wolfsohn-Hart community) 82–85 Lyons, Julie 170 Magic Chord, The 47, 88 Magic Flute, The (Mozart) 6, 41 Mahna vocal research group (France) 176 Malérargues, France 54–64; challenges of living in 56–57; funerals for Hart, Hart, and Young in 54; performing, teaching, and travelling 58–60; Pikes’ leaving the RHT community in 18; RHT’s move to

Index  201

6–7; RHT workshops 59–60; Roy Hart Theatre Archives location 10 Manley, Venice 64, 65n18, 71, 180 Mariage de Lux performance 50–51 Marthe, Marie-Paule 60, 65n8 Mayer, Elizabeth 33, 43n3, 51–52 mental health 35, 42, 132, 146 Method Acting 77 methodology: in-the-moment listening and looking 93; pre-verbal voice 95, 106–115; Research through Practice (RtP) strategy 99; scenarios 84, 93–94, 112–115, 126–129 Mezza voce (middle registers) 102–103 Midderigh, Ivan 56, 65n3, 87, 88, 89 Miller, Nancy 20 Miller’s taxonomy 102–103 Milligan, Spike 29n1 Mills, Joan 165 mind-body split (Cartesian dualism) 142, 145 Le Miroir à Musique (Joule) 61 Monleón, José 48–49, 53n4 Montague, Kate 12n1 Monty Python 29n1 Moore, Boris 55, 58, 60–61, 64n2, 89 Moore, Thomas 42 Moses, Paul 4 movement: Pikes’ emphasis on importance of 145–152; Schlaffhorst and Andersen’s holistic approach 152n2 Movement and Voice: Using Movement to Enliven the Connection Between Voice and Body and to Develop Listening Skills scenario 149 Movement Medicine 146 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 6–7, 41 Müller, Wilhelm 170 musicality: Pénafiel’s interest in 186; Pikes’ focus on 9, 168, 177–178; Staniewski on 167; teacher-student relationship and 166–167; vocal expression and 2; Wolfsohn’s understanding of 4 Music for Marsyas (Roy Hart Theatre) 11 Musiques pour Marsyas 61, 63 ‘My Father’s House’ (Springsteen) 74 Mystery Behind the Voice, The (Braggins) 12n5 name and gesture scenario 158–160 Natural Voice Network 125–126 Nelson, Robin 97, 99 Neruda, Pablo 61–62, 65n12 Nietzsche, Friedrich 174

Objective Voice, The (Hart) 48 Odin Teatret 100n2 Oliver 72 Oliveros, Pauline 100n2 ‘Om’ yogic practice 177 Onken, Michael 115n7 Ono, Yoko 62 Ontological-Hysteric Theatre 58, 65n7 Opening Into and Connecting with a Belly Voice scenario 113, 148 Orpheus, or the way to a mask (Wolfsohn) 9–10 Other concept 96, 100n1, 155 Ouspensky, Peter D. 39 ownership, defined 15 Pandis, Petros 62, 65n15 PANTHEATRE 43n3 Pardo, Enrique 10, 43n3, 58, 65n5, 180 Paris, France: performances in 49, 61, 69–70; Roy Hart Theatre activities in 60–61 Paris, Neil 11, 12n1, 100, 175, 179–180, 183–185, 189–191 Paroles et Musique, radio play 61 Patchen, Kenneth 61, 65n9 pathology of growth 41 patriarchal prejudice, in singing lessons 80 Pénafiel, Jean Yves 11, 176, 180–182, 186, 190 Perls, Fritz 78, 85n3 Perls, Laura 78, 85n3 persona concept (Jung) 43, 64, 122, 124, 138 personal narratives (life-writings) 18–20 phallogocentrism 8 phenomenology 142–143, 144n2 ‘physiovocality’ tradition (of Grotowski) 100n2, 103 Pierrot Players 51, 543n5 Pikes, Margaret: adoption and motherhood 68–71, 73; childhood 22–24; doubts about Hart’s authority 76–77; dread of Rivers meetings 38–39; emphasis on importance of movement 145–152; experimentation with marijuana, LSD 28; focus on musicality 9, 168, 177–178; friendship with Vivienne Young 24–26, 32–33; grammar school photo 86; group workshops 11; illness with hepatitis 69–70; influence of her teachings on her students practices 184–190; lasting legacy of 190–194; linking of pre-verbal voice to vocal sources 102; meetings at The Studio 25, 31; move to Montpellier 64, 67; performance in Canto General 90;

202 Index

performance in Voyages 67, 91; pragmatic perspective as master voice teacher 95; psychotherapy and 58, 67–68, 131; reference to Jungian paradigms 117; relationship with Moore 62–63; return to Europe from Togo 72–73; role in carrying on the Wolfsohn-Hart legacy 96–97; on the role of the teacher 135–140; self-assessment by 67–68; singing performance in Agnes and Walter 74, 175, 189; teaching and singing in West Africa 71–72; teaching position in Cologne, Germany 73–74; thoughts on Hart’s roles as leader 77–78; transition into womanhood 26–29; use of scenarios 93–94; visit to Burkina Faso 68–70; voice lessons at The Studio 32–33; voice workshops in Malérargues and the UK 73; work as primary school teacher 33; working with song 169–173 see also freeing the voice; scenarios Pikes, Noah Dennis 26–28, 30n8, 72, 141, 166 pluriphony: defined 154, 174–175; role of Wolfsohn-Hart method in cultivating 155–156 Poirier, Rachel 178 ‘post-truth’ 154 preparation for voice work 109–112 Presley, Elvis 62 pre-verbal voice methodology 106–115; belly voice 110, 113–114, 148, 150–151, 152n5; as central to the Wolfsohn-Hart approach 102–104; deep chest voice 114; head voice 110–111; linking to sources of sound to text 114–115; link to vocal sources 102; opening into, connecting with a belly voice 113–114; preparation for voice work 109–112; preverbal sounds 111–112; psychosomatic ‘sources’ 102; releasing a warm deep chest voice 114; scenarios 112–115; soft chest voice 177, 179, 191; tenor voice 111, 118–119, 188; warm-up sessions 94, 109–110, 127–128, 158–160; yawning 110, 128, 149 see also scenarios Price You Pay: The Life and Lyrics of Bruce Springsteen, The (Lyons and Lewis) 170 primal screaming 36, 44n9, 121 Primal Therapy (Janov) 44n9, 121 ProArt Company (Czech Republic) 175 Problem of Limitations, The (Wolfsohn) 10 ‘psychic infection’ 132 psychosomatic processes 95, 102, 107, 117–118, 122, 141

psychotherapy: defined 85n1; overlap with voice work 136–137; participation by Pikes 58, 67–68; role in Hart’s approach 78; role in voice work 58 see also Jung, Carl Gustav Queen of the Night archetype 6, 7, 12n10, 41 RADA see Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) Régisseurs, RHT leadership group 54, 57 see also Armstrong, Richard; Harvey, Robert; Irwin, Barry; Silber, Paul Research through Practice (RtP) strategy 99–100 résumés (professional résumés) 17 Richards, Thomas 100n2 Rieff, Philip 41 Risser, James 100n1 Rite of Spring, The 175 Rivers, Stephen 58 The River (Springsteen) 74 Rivers (thrice-weekly meetings at RHT): Pikes dread of 38–39; readings, discussions of scholarly texts at 37–38; strict code of listening at 38 Roberts, Elizabeth 20 Rocha, Ricardo 176 Rodenburg, Patsy 103, 104, 124, 126 Rolfing 146 Rosen, Derek 24, 33 Rossignol, Derek Isaac 29n4 Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) 5, 77, 103–104 Royal Conservatories of Liege and Brussels 11, 64 Roy Hart Theatre Journals 38, 44n11 Roy Hart Theatre (RHT): acceptance of the feminine, rejection of ‘the Queen of the Night’ archetype 7; activities in Paris 60–61; Bacchae as the Frontae, The performance 43, 46, 106; Beckett de Trois Côtés performance 11, 61, 89; community culture of 6; description of communal life in 76; development of ways of working with groups 94; De Vive Voix performance 11, 58; Eight Songs for a Mad King performance 51; in England 46–47; in Europe 47–48; French plays 50, 51; Hart’s creation of 5, 76; on importance to human dialogue 155; incorporation of dance and movement classes 141; leadership problems 57–58; L’Economiste performance 50, 52, 55;

Index  203

Magic Chord, The performance 47, 88; new directions and directors 49–50; notion of living more consciously aspect 5–6; And performance 48, 49, 51, 88; performance of small cabaret-like pieces 59; performances in Paris 49, 61, 69–70; public-facing workshops 154; relocation to France 6–7; Song of Everest, A performance 48; synthetic family at 33–34; Tempest, The (La Tempête) performance 11, 55, 89; thrice-weekly Rivers meetings 6, 37–39; voice and movement changes (1968–1974) 34–36; Voyages performance 67, 91; wave of younger students (1968–1970) 33; weekly Rivers meetings 6, 37–39 Roy Hart Theatre (RHT) Archives (Malérargues, France) 10 RP (Received Pronunciation) 19, 20n1, 25, 31, 43n1, 103–104 Rudstrom, Sten 175 Sacred Dances (Gurdjieff) 44n13 Sansom, Rockford 103 scalar sound systems 167–168 scenarios 84, 93–94; Breath and Voice in the Spine 148–149, 184; building trust 126–127; connecting head to body 148, 150–152; description 112–115, 157; finding the note 139–140; freeing the voice 121–129; group improvisations 162–164; group work 158–162; Movement and Voice 149; name and gesture 158–160; Opening Into and Connecting with a Belly Voice 113, 148; opening to a deeper vocal source 128–129, 148, 150; playful initial scenarios 158–162; role of 99, 126–129; role of the teacher 138–140; Vocal Mirror 161–162; water-earth-air 160–161; working with resistance 110, 138–139 Schlaffhorst, Clara 162n2 Schubert, Franz 170 Secombe, Harry 29n1 self-harming 146 Sellars, Peter 29n1 semiotic (of Kristeva) 10, 143 shamanic power songs 177 Shin Somatic 146 Sikkhism 146 Silber, Paul 7, 52–53 Simon, Paul 62 singing lessons see voice lessons singing process see voice lessons

SMITH Dancetheatre (UK) 75, 175 see also Agnes and Walter: A Little Love Story sobbing 115n7 social class 19 social media posts 17 soft chest voice 177, 179, 191 soma 141–142, 146, 168, 187 somatic approach, of Wolfsohn-Hart voice work 102 Song Lines, The (Chatwin) 69 A Song of Everest performance 48 song (songs): in Agnes and Walter: A Little Love Story 74; bel canto vocal register 102–103, 166, 179; Cavarero on phonic emission exalted by 8; of Dylan 26, 49, 170; exploring vocal work within 172–173; interpretation of 62, 108; meaningful songs 49; physical connection to 57–58; poetic popular songs 62; power of group singing 62; shamanic power songs 147; singing as a thick event 166; singing lessons and 36; of Springsteen 62, 170; in Voyages 67; working with 108, 112, 115, 165–173; from the world music sphere 64 songworks/songing (Spatz and Mills) 165 Spain, performances and workshops 48–49 Spatz, Ben 165 Springsteen, Bruce 62, 74, 170 Squash Club 33–34, 37, 49, 141 Staniewski, Włodzimierz 167 Stanislavsky, Konstantin 77 Stark, Glenn D. 102 Der Steppenwolf (Hesse) 58 Stockhausen, Karl-Heinz 74 Studio, The: Armstrong’s membership 28; description 18; internal lessons at 131; key female members 19; voice work at 31–43; Young’s membership 19, 28 see also Roy Hart Theatre (RHT) syzygy 118–119, 119n1 Tai chi 146 ‘Take the A Train’ (Ellington) 72 Teac Damska (Ireland) 176 teaching Wolfsohn-Hart voice work 131; complex processes 132–133; connecting head to body 141–152; corporeal voice notion and 141–142; creating teacher-student trust 131–132, 135–136; ‘dynamic’ listening requirement 135; emphasis on movement, physical expressivity play 141–142; facial muscle exercises 136; grounding influence of dynamic listening 135, 166; group work

204 Index

11, 52, 154–164; incorporation of dance and movement classes 141; influence of Pikes on her students practices 184–190; overlap of psychotherapy 136–137; Pikes on the role of the teacher 135–140; psychophysical soma and 141–142; role in vocal discovery 135; supportive atmosphere development 158–160; teacher-student dyadic relationship 99, 132, 166, 168; transference, countertransference, and 137; use of archetypal characters 137–138; use of dream images 6, 138; use of scenarios 138–140; warm-up sessions 94, 109–110, 127–128, 158–160; Wolfsohn’s definition of teaching 131 see also scenarios Teatr Laboratorium see Laboratory Theatre (of Grotowski) Teatr Pieśń Kozła 100n2 Tempest, The (La Tempête) performance (Roy Hart Theatre) 11, 55, 89 tenor voice 111, 118–119, 188 Thatcher, Gavin 104 Le Théâtre du Cri (The Theatre of the Cry, or Shout) 49 Théâtre du Lierre 176 Theodorakis, Mikis 11, 61–62 therapeutic society 41 Theron, Johannes 61, 65n10 Thomaidis, Konstantinos 97–100, 100n2, 125, 144n2 Togo, West Africa 11, 71–72 Tools for Conviviality (Illich) 37 Transactional Analysis 78 transcendent function concept (Jung) 40 transference and countertransference 132–133, 133n1 Triangle Theatre (UK) 176 Truth and Method (Gadamer) 97–98, 100n1 Turner, Clifford 103 unchained voice 3, 5 vocal colour 2, 143 vocal freedom vs. vocal growth 117 ‘vocal fry’ phenomenon 146–147, 152n3 Vocal Mirror scenario 161–162 vocal resonators (of Grotowski) 103 vocal tenderness 9, 179 voice lessons: also known as singing lessons 36; description of 34–35; given by Andersen 32–33, 36–37; given by Hart 5; given by Wolfsohn 3; patriarchal prejudice, in singing lessons 80; Pikes

reflection on 11; at The Studio 33, 36–37; taken by Hart 5; taken by Pikes 32; use of movement during 35; Wolfsohn’s cathartic approach to 3 Voice Movement Integration 146 Vox Humana - Alfred Wolfsohn’s Experiments in Extension of Human Vocal Range LP 4, 12n6 Voyages 67 Voyages performance (Roy Hart Theatre) 67, 91 Wanderlieder (Müller) 170 warming-up for voice work 94, 109–110, 127–128, 158–160 Warren, Iris 103 water-earth-air scenario 160–161 Waterfield, Carran 11, 176, 180 Weber, Max 57 Wehr, Demaris S. 79–80 West Africa 71–72 Weston, Sarah 126 Wild, John 12n1, 177 WildWorks (UK) 175 Winterreise, Die (Schubert) 170 Wolfsohn, Alfred: background 2–5, 96; on being a teacher 131; beliefs on the range of the human voice 126; Braggins on talks with 81; conducting voice lessons in Germany 3; death from tuberculosis 5; dialogue with Jung 12n3; encouragement of students to connect with animus and anima 3; Hart’s comment on voice work with 77; Jung’s influence on 78–79; research into Jungian depth psychology 3; unconscious patriarchal bias of 80; virtuoso students of 3–4; on the work of developing the human voice 96; written works of 9–10 Wolfsohn-Hart voice work: androcentric nature of philosophies of 82; appreciation of human voice expressive potential 167; arpeggios 103, 166, 172; beliefs on the range of the human voice 126; Cavarero’s comment on 93–94; connecting head to body 145–152; contribution to raising consciousness 155–156; controversial idea related to 57–58; core belief of 8, 122, 124, 174; description of vocal exploration 96; emergence of 96; feminist considerations 7–9; group work 11, 52, 154–164; Hart’s verbal attack and humiliation teaching strategy 81; helpful teaching points 108;

Index  205

hermeneutics of the voice in 97–100, 100n1, 167, 175, 181, 185; holistic, somatic approach of 102; influence of Jung’s individuation concept 117–118, 121; love and sex in the community 82– 85; men’s vs. women’s egos and 81–82; musical scales 103; origins of 2–3; Pikes’ role in carrying on 97; pluriphonic exploration in 181; pre-verbal voice methodology 95, 106–115; reflections on gender in 122–124; relation to depth psychology 58; Research through Practice (RtP) strategy 99–100; sense of pluriphony in 154; singing as a thick event 166; synthesizing opposites component 122; teacher-student dyadic relationship 99, 132, 166, 168; treatment of the voice as an instrument 107; unconscious patriarchal bias in 80; use of The Magic Flute in 41; vocal freedom vs. vocal growth 117; vocal tenderness component 9, 179; warm-up sessions 94, 109–110, 127–128, 158–160; woman and early vocal research 80; working with song 165–173 see also methodology; pre-verbal voice; scenarios; teaching Wolfsohn-Hart voice work Workcentre (of Grotowski and Richards) 100n2

working with resistance scenario 110, 138–139 Work/the System, The (Gurdjieff) 39 World War I 2–3, 96, 122 World War II 2, 12n6 yawning 110, 128, 149 yoga traditions 146 Young, Sylvia 24, 54 Young, Vivienne: background 24–26, 29n3; car crash death of 7, 53; costume design by 51; directorial work 47; friendship with Pikes 24–26, 32–33; funeral ceremony in Malérargues 54; influence on Armstrong 51; membership in The Studio 19; photo with Roy Hart 87; role in the French plays 51; teacher role at Higher School of Dramatic Art 51–52; teaching Wolfsohn-Hart voice work 131; voice lessons at The Studio 33 Young Ensemble of the Theaterlabor Bielefeld (Germany) 176 Zaporah, Ruth 175 Zumthor, Paul 125 Zürich Otolaryngological Clinic 4 Zuss, Mark 18