Let sound become material for imagination and performance.
History and work
The Roy Hart Voice Centre at Malérargues in southern France is a place for teaching, research and artistic creation. Its historical account traces the work through Alfred Wolfsohn, Roy Hart and the Roy Hart Theatre company. The company emerged in 1969 and moved to Malérargues in 1974. Hart died in 1975. The account dates the Centre Artistique International Roy Hart to 1991, following the decision to stop using the company name. The living Centre and the historical company are related, distinct subjects.
Teaching approach
The Centre’s current programme brings together workshops, performances, teachers and archival resources. You can encounter voice alongside movement, singing and theatrical creation. Its historical account explicitly describes diverse teaching within the tradition. The name does not prescribe one identical lesson from every teacher.
For a participant’s perspective, Kaya Anderson’s recollection describes individual and group singing work and the movement towards theatrical action. It helps you see how a vocal exploration can become part of an ensemble’s creative material.
Applications for actors
You can take the invitation to discover more than your habitual speaking identity. A sound may suggest an image, rhythm, character or relationship before you have explained it in words. That possibility makes voice a source of performance material as well as a means of delivering text.
At JBAS, bring the discovery into an action. What does the sound ask of another person? What changes when they respond? The theatrical question gives your experiment somewhere to go.
Context and limitations
A striking sound is not a complete character or a finished performance. You still shape timing, language, relationship and structure. Your experience of an image also does not establish a psychological explanation for somebody else’s voice. Keep the discovery personal and test its artistic use in the scene.
The voice can begin the composition
In this tradition, you can encounter sound as a source of artistic material. A vocal quality may suggest a character before you have defined the person. A rhythm can invite movement. An exchange of sounds can establish a relationship before dialogue arrives. You begin with what the voice makes available and develop it through theatrical choices.
That direction of work changes the place of listening. You listen to the sound’s shape, duration, texture, and effect on the other person. You may find something forceful in a small sound or something comic in a carefully sustained tone. The artistic use depends on context, attention, and composition.
From individual lessons to an ensemble
Kaya Anderson’s account describes individual singing lessons developing into group work and connects that work with acting and rehearsal. You can recognize a transition from exploring your own resources to making something with other performers. Your sound enters a shared rhythm and changes through response.
An ensemble can make those relationships audible. A single voice may emerge from a group texture, be answered, or disappear into it. Repetition can establish an expectation that another voice disturbs. The performer’s task includes both contributing and hearing the whole.
This brings vocal exploration into the craft of a scene. You still need to decide what is happening, how it changes, and what the audience can follow. A discovery becomes material you can shape through timing, contrast, language, and action.
The company’s theatrical work
The Centre’s history traces the company’s work with Euripides’ The Bacchae, later experimental pieces, and L’Économiste, the production associated with its move to Malérargues. After Hart’s death, the company continued making work, including La Tempête, while smaller projects developed through individual artists.
You can see a tradition expressed through different scales of production. A large ensemble piece asks for shared structure and sustained coordination. A smaller work can concentrate on a particular performer’s material or a distinct artistic question. The common history does not require the resulting performances to look or sound alike.
A living centre with several approaches
The Roy Hart Voice Centre’s workshops and artistic activity bring together teachers whose practices have developed through different experiences. You can approach that diversity by asking what a particular teacher or project investigates: singing, text, movement, improvisation, composition, or their relationships.
At JBAS, your connection to this voice lineage comes through Jason Bennett’s study with Richard Armstrong and Jonathan Hart Makwaia. The teachers’ contributions remain specific. You can recognize a shared interest in voice and imagination while respecting the ways each artist develops the work.
As you listen and perform, the practical question remains yours: what does this sound make possible in the scene or song? Your discoveries become more useful as you can choose them, shape them, and bring them into relationship.
Related reading
Read the Centre’s history beside Anderson’s firsthand account and explore the recordings and documents listed in its resources. Attend to the speaker and date of each account. You can honour a living tradition while recognising the different contributions of its teachers, artists and witnesses.
Source for further study: The Roy Hart Voice Centre’s history.