Roy Hart Theatre
Past productions
- L’Economiste, Anduze, France, St Jean du Gard, France, and other locations.
Perhaps the question is easier answered in starting off by saying what the Roy Hart Theatre isn’t ! It still isn’t and it never has been anything to do with any of the following: flower power, the hippie movement, political activity of any kind, free love, any form of house squatting, anti nuclear bomb, any form of religious activity, guru worship, group sex nor any form of activity normally associated with the above forms of movements. The theatre’s primary activities are voice research and its application both to the conveyance of emotion through the word in general and therefore specifically to theatre and to song. To do this work, a great deal of dedication, discipline and time has to be given. It has been found over the years that the voice does have a powerful bearing on self-discovery and therefore to some degree on social comportment. The idea that at one time the theatre was a community is correct, however it must be said that this ‘community’ was only formed out of the financial necessity of that time. Hence Roy Hart’s renaming of the last theatre production, that he was directing at the time of his death in 1975, from “Café de Flora” to “L’Economiste”.
The origin of the theatre was “The Alfred Wolfsohn Voice Research Centre”. Alfred Wolfsohn started his work on this subject in the mid 1930’s, in Berlin. Roy Hart took over the work in 1962 in London, after Alfred Wolfsohn’s death. Roy Hart was a South African Jew, his grandfather was a Rabbi; Roy Hart was, therefore, not given to light frivolity, nor to anything that he considered would be harmful to his students. The basic content of the above is still carried out by his surviving theatre members in Malérargues, France to this day.
